We are in the midst of an empathy deficit, according to Peter Bazalgette in his latest book, The Empathy Instinct. He believes focusing on empathy can contribute to ‘kinder health and social care, and more effective criminal justice’.
Neuroscientific findings shows that empathy works in more complex and subtle ways and has particular relevance to arts and culture. Studies conducted at UCL a decade ago provided some interesting evidence about how your perceptions and enjoyment of an activity change, depending on whether or not you’ve tried it yourself. Using ballet dancers as subjects, we compared the brain activity when you’re watching a movement you have performed yourself with one that you’ve seen many times but can’t do. It turns out that you use the parts of your brain that control movement to help you see.
This means that we need audiences that have experience of doing as well as seeing, thus grass-roots participation in the arts is essential. The need for ‘empathetic citizens’, as Bazalgette calls them, has never been greater.
Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London
Listen to this week’s podcast at theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/neuroscientist-explains
