A look at the social media: insults, humiliation, and hatred seem to be Standard become. A clear case of too little empathy! Or? May not. Rather from too much.
“The bastard has to get the mercy shot! Respect!” So only one of the many despise the hate comments on the Internet was, after Stephan E. had shot the Hessian CDU politician Walter Lübcke. He was the author of the Post, a user by the name “Franz brand of wine” on Youtube.
In the apparent anonymity of the network users spread more and more hatred and Hetzkommentare. The recklessness is on the rise, the empathy has long since retreated.
Loser will be the people actually getting consideration? Or the social networks to reveal just a Rudeness that has always been there and is only moved out of the pubs of the Offline-times of the Internet? This is possible, of course, says Fritz Breithaupt, cognitive scientist at Indiana University in the United States. He also notes, however: “Verbal recklessness and rawness to take.”
A US study from 2011 examined in a Meta-analysis of the development of the empathic perception of students between the years of 1979 and 2009. The result: The ability for Empathy has dramatically decreased. Especially since the year 2000, there is a steep downhill.
More: Too much empathy can make you sick
The dark side of empathy
But is that really so bad? Breithaupt defined empathy as the “With-Experience with an other”. We can relate to both cognitively and emotionally, what is going on in another Person before. This social and moral Action is a result but not necessarily.
In his book “The dark side of empathy,” speaks Breithaupt of five of the threatening tendencies of empathy. One of these is that empathy for Black-and-White Thinking, seduced and the world in friend and enemy divided. “Empathy can stir up conflicts, to defuse instead of you.”
The right-wing extremist, who welcomes even the death of political opponents, is not without empathy – on the contrary! “Empathy leads to polarization, because we decide in situations of conflict, for one side, in the person’s shoes and their perspective and then the other side demonize,” says Breithaupt. “Empathy can lead to radicalisation.”
A reason why more and more people with a certain group or ideology, show empathy, the cognitive scientist, in the fragmentation of the “We” to “I”. The world is full of lone wolves in search of connection.
Many people do not have them registered groups, membership, more, says Breithaupt. Families are disrupted, communities have dissolved in the anonymity of big cities. Even though people cannot live without other people and want to (see graphic).
More: media researcher Appel: “narcissism and Social Media in a self-reinforcing spiral”
Who is now looking for a new pack, the must and the other members to prove that he belongs. Empathy with the group, your concerns and your comrades-in-arms is, therefore, essential.
“To feel this partisanship well, it helps if one keeps this group again and again for the better or the unterdrücktere,” says Breithaupt. “A cultural phenomenon, is that each discovered in any way as a victim, and thus also with empathy and compassion worthy of it.” This is per se not a Bad thing and can help in the workup of traumatic experiences immensely.
Less is more
However, the degree is narrow. “In many cases, empathy needs to be reduced. Empathy for one’s own side. In order to create openness.”
The social media are not necessarily helpful. With just a click of a contribution is to be replicated, a strange Statement sounds as if it were your own. What we retweet, share and like depends in the first line of what best fits our view of the world. The ditches between people of different groups deepen, the Polarizations, and thus, the verbal brutalization.
This leads not necessarily to a violent Act, says Breithaupt. “Physical violence and recklessness to take off,” he says, referring to the research work of the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker.
Its Thesis is that The world is not worse, but better. He, on the basis of Numbers of deaths by violence – Figures in the last 30 years, smaller and not bigger.
This development is not, however, carved naturally in stone and can change at any time. “I believe that words with deeds,” says Breithaupt. “The more people increase quite empathic in their own Position, the sooner you will be ready to move from words to deeds, and to be carried away in an extreme case, acts of violence,” he said.
More: We believe Fake News, in order to please
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomInseparable
Gorilla Mama Gana in the Zoo in Münster, Germany could not accept the death of her baby Claudio simple: days land, they carried the lifeless body, and defended him against the Zoopfleger. Not unusual for people to monkey mothers: Some could not separate itself from the now corpse of the deceased young mummified -.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomBurial at sea
Also Orcas, dolphins and other sea your deceased boy wearing mammals for a period of time around – in the water-not an easy task. Researchers observed how mothers attempted to balance the body on your snout. When the dead body fell down, afterwards appeared, the mothers. Although adult dolphins die, to guard the companions of the dead body for days.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomWake
Elephants are for your good memory known – no wonder you mourn in a particularly intensive and long your dead. An elephant dies, other elephants of the group to keep vigil on the corpse. There are elephants from neighbouring groups to come and visit the deceased types of the last Time enjoyed.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomGrooming as a consolation
Baboons show strong symptoms of stress, if you are familiar conspecific, dies. Your stress hormones in the blood to rise, have shown researchers. With a loss deal, they seek the proximity of other baboons and pay particular attention to intensive grooming.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomCall for farewell
When Ravens discover a dead conspecific, they call forth of other conspecifics. Together, they gather around the carcasses. They also eat for a long time nothing more. Especially bird species that spend their entire life with a Partner – geese, and many song-birds about – grieve heavily. This can go so far that you eat nothing more, and even die.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomAnd what’s with the fish?
Fish behavior often unusually quiet, when a conspecific in the same Aquarium dies. But that is probably due to the stress hormones that the dying fish makes in the water, researchers say. Whether fish can actually mourn, is not well studied. But there are living fish is at least some way – for example, for the French Angelfish.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomPussy and the mouse
Mourn, you can also belongs to a companion of a different species. This has been shown by the cat pussy and Kragenbärin fly on the wall in the Berlin Zoo. The two had befriended. As the bear died, it refused to take the cat to leave the bear enclosure, and I heard not a meow to a baby to.
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Mourning rituals in the animal KingdomGuard at the tomb
A person who loses his beloved dog, is terribly sad. The Same is true for a dog who loses his beloved master. The German shepherd Capitan kept for many years the grave of his master in the cemetery of Villa Carlos Paz in Argentina.