Rameson (2009) Empathy A Social Cognitive Neurociences

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3/1 (2009): 94–110, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00154.
Empathy: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience

Approach
Lian T. Rameson* and Matthew D. Lieberman
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
There has been recent widespread interest in the neural underpinnings of the
experience of empathy. In this review, we take a social cognitive neuroscience
approach to understanding the existing literature on the neuroscience of empathy.
A growing body of work suggests that we come to understand and share in the
experiences of others by commonly recruiting the same neural structures both
during our own experience and while observing others undergoing the same
experience. This literature supports a simulation theory of empathy, which proposes
that we understand the thoughts and feelings of others by using our own mind
as a model. In contrast, theory of mind research suggests that medial prefrontal
regions are critical for understanding the minds of others. In this review, we offer
ideas about how to integrate these two perspectives, point out unresolved issues
in the literature, and suggest avenues for future research.
In a way, most of our lives cannot really be called our own. We spend much
of our time thinking about and reacting to the thoughts, feelings, intentions,
and behaviors of others, and social psychology has demonstrated the manifold
ways that our lives are shared with and shaped by our social relationships.
It is a marker of the extreme sociality of our species that those who don’t
much care for other people are at best labeled something unflattering like
‘hermit’, and at worst diagnosed with a disorder like ‘psychopathy’ or ‘autism’.
Successfully navigating our highly social environment requires a brain that is
superbly evolved to process this type of complex and subtle information and
to orchestrate appropriate responses (Dunbar, 1998). The relatively new field
of social cognitive neuroscience has developed in an effort to understand how
our brains accomplish this rather astounding feat (Lieberman, 2007).
In recent years within the field of social cognitive neuroscience, there
has been increasing interest in the neural mechanisms that underlie the
psychological experience of empathy. This enthusiasm is partly due to
the fact that empathy, in some sense, cuts right to the heart of what it
means to be human: we are capable of not only recognizing the joys and
sorrows of others, but also of reflecting on and sharing in the experience
of those emotions. Such participation in the experiences and emotions of
© 2008 The Authors
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Empathy: An SCN approach 95
others is also thought to be an important motivator of altruistic behavior

(Batson, 1991). Furthermore, the construct of empathy has been the focus
of considerable research interest because a lack of empathy is characteristic
of many different kinds of mental disorders (Farrow & Woodruff, 2007).
In its broadest characterization, the neuroscience of empathy is concerned
with how the brain represents, understands, and reacts to the internal mental
states of others. However, providing a more specific, agreed-upon definition
of empathy is fraught with complications. The construct itself, although
thought to be critical to social functioning, has eluded consensus regarding
its key features. Some views emphasize the affective component of empathy,
or the matching of affective experience between a participant and a target
individual. Other researchers have focused more on the cognitive component
of empathy, which is concerned with the ability to take the perspective of
others. This has been called ‘everyday mindreading’, and it tends to focus
primarily upon the accuracy of empathic inferences (Ickes, 2003). Other
researchers have suggested that empathy can most properly be thought of in
terms of a dual-process model that incorporates both of these elements. In
this view, empathy consists of both automatic affective experience and con-
trolled cognitive processing, which are distinct but interrelated processes
that may be instantiated differently in the brain (Decety & Jackson, 2004;
Keysers & Gazzola, 2007; Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2005a; Singer, 2006).
Research in social cognitive neuroscience about how we understand the
minds of others has been guided by two dominant theoretical views that
are sometimes seen as being at odds with each other. Simulation theory
proposes that we understand the minds of others by using our own mind
as a model. By putting ourselves in the ‘mental shoes’ of another and
simulating his or her experience in our own mind, we can intuitively
understand what that experience might be like (Gordon, 1986). The discovery
of mirror neurons and other ‘shared circuits’ that are commonly activated
by one’s own and another’s actions have been viewed as neural evidence
in support of simulation theory (Gallese & Goldman, 1998). In contrast,
theory-theory suggests that we understand others through mentalizing, a
more cognitive form of mindreading which tends to activate temporal and
medial prefrontal structures (Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Gopnik, 1993). Our
purpose here is not to provide a precise definition of the construct of
empathy or endorse a particular theory of empathy, but rather to give a
sense of the complexity inherent to defining and understanding the
phenomenon. In this review, we will examine how these perspectives have
shaped the neuroscientific investigation of empathy and discuss ideas for
integrating these divergent views in future research.
Empathy and Mirror Neurons

The neural mechanisms by which affective states are matched between an
observer and a target individual have been a primary focus of neuroscientific
© 2008 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3/1 (2009): 94–110, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00154.x
96 Empathy: An SCN approach
research on empathy. Such research has been strongly influenced by the

perception-action model of empathy (Preston & de Waal, 2002). This
model is consistent with a simulation theory of empathy and posits that
perception of target’s state activates the observer’s own representations of
that state, which then triggers autonomic and somatic responses that create
an embodied emotional experience within the observer that mimics the
experience of the target. In this model, empathy is viewed as an automatic,
non-conscious process in which one comes to feel the emotions of another
via shared mental representations. This focus on the overlapping represen-
tations of the self and others draws heavily on research done on the mirror
neuron system.
In the early 1990s, researchers conducting single-cell recordings in the
premotor cortex of macaques discovered a class of neurons that fired
during the observation and the performance of a motor action, which
suggests that both share a common neural representation (di Pellegrino,
Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, & Rizzolatti, 1992; Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi, &
Rizzolatti, 1996; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). Functional neuroimaging
studies in humans have since demonstrated activations in areas that belong
to the mirror-neuron system, namely in inferior frontal and parietal cortices
(see Figure 1; Iacoboni et al., 1999; Rizzolatti et al., 1996).
Researchers have extended these findings to suggest that the mirror
neuron system may be important for the experience of empathy, as non-
conscious neural mirroring may allow us to vicariously experience the
emotional states of others and enable the affective sharing characteristic of
empathy (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Gallese, 2003; Gallese & Goldman,
1998; Iacoboni et al., 1999). Researchers have found support for this idea
by showing that imitation and observation of emotional facial expressions
commonly activated mirror neuron and limbic regions, including premotor
cortex, inferior frontal cortex (Brodmann’s area 44), superior temporal
sulcus, anterior insula, and amygdala (Carr, Iacoboni, Dubeau, Mazziotta,
& Lenzi, 2003). Carr et al. suggest that the insula may act as a relay station
for transmitting action information from premotor mirror areas to limbic
areas, which then process emotional content (Augustine, 1996). Additional
support for mirror neuron contributions to empathy comes from the
study of children with autism, who fail to display normal mirror neuron
activity in the inferior frontal cortex during imitation of emotional
expressions (Dapretto et al., 2006).
The neural overlap between the perception and execution of motor
action has inspired research into whether there are similar shared circuits
involved in the observation and experience of emotion. Much of this
research has been done using pain as a stimulus because of its inherently
salient and aversive nature. These studies generally show overlapping
activations between the experience and observation of pain in regions
associated with the affective, but not sensory, components of pain (but see
Avenanti, Bueti, Galati, & Aglioti, 2005). For example, receiving pain and
Figure 1 Ventral premotor/inferior frontal gyrus and rostral inferior parietal lobule are critical
components of the human mirror neuron system. The medial prefrontal cortex, superior tem-
poral sulcus, and temporal pole are engaged during mentalizing tasks.
watching another in pain commonly activate anterior insula and dorsal

anterior cingulate, areas known to be involved in the experience of distress
due to physical pain (Morrison, Lloyd, di Pellegrino, & Roberts, 2004;
Singer et al., 2004). Furthermore, greater activation in these regions during
observation was associated with higher levels of trait empathy (Singer et al.,
2004). Because these regions are active both for the experience and the
observation of pain, it may suggest that these participants were activating

their own representations of pain during observation in a manner consistent
with simulation theory.
Other studies have generally replicated these initial findings. For example,
viewing and rating pictures of feet and hands in potentially painful
situations (such as a finger placed between the blades of scissors) activates
dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula ( Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety,
2005). Furthermore, activations in the dorsal anterior cingulate correlate
with ratings of how painful the stimulus appears (Jackson, Meltzoff, &
Decety, 2005) as well as trait ratings of empathy (Lamm, Batson, & Decety,
2007). Similarly, watching facial expressions of pain activate anterior
insula and dorsal anterior cingulate (Botvinick et al., 2005) and ratings of
the intensity of the painful expression are correlated with activity in these
regions (Saarela et al., 2007).
This overlap between observation and experience has been demonstrated
in other domains as well. For example, smelling something disgusting and
watching someone else smell something disgusting both activate the anterior
insula (Wicker et al., 2003). Similarly, the secondary somatosensory cortex
is activated both when one is touched and when one observes someone
else being touched (Keysers et al., 2004). This study is consistent with
recent evidence for the existence of ‘mirror-touch’ synesthesia, in which
affected individuals have difficulty distinguishing between real and observed
touch (Banissy & Ward, 2007). Intriguingly, these synesthetes show higher
levels of empathy compared to controls. In another recent study, activation
in the gustatory cortex in response to watching pleased and disgusted faces
made after food consumption were correlated with trait empathy ( Jabbi,
Swart, & Keysers, 2007). There is also evidence for an auditory mirror
neuron system, which is active both while performing an action and
while listening to the sounds of a similar action (Gazzola, Aziz-Zadeh, &
Keysers, 2006).
Empathy and the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

The understanding that others have thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that
may differ from our own is referred to as ‘theory of mind’ (Premack &
Woodruff, 1978), and the metacognitive process of thinking about the
contents of other people’s minds is described as mentalizing (Frith & Frith,
1999). The understanding that others have an internal mental landscape that
differs from our own is a critical step in development and usually comes
on-line at around age 4 (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). This ability has often
been tested by tasks in which participants must report the false belief of
an individual whose factual knowledge differs from that of the participant.
The successful completion of such tasks demonstrates the ability to
distinguish between the contents of one’s mind and the knowledge that is
present in another’s mind.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the medial prefrontal cortex/

paracingulate gyrus, superior temporal sulcus, the temporal poles, and the
temporoparietal junction are all engaged for tasks that require theory of
mind (see Figure 1; Amodio & Frith, 2006; Gallagher & Frith, 2003;
Samson, Apperly, Chiavarino, & Humphreys, 2004). In particular, activation
of the medial prefrontal cortex is extremely robust across a variety of different
mentalizing tasks and it seems that this region may play a particularly
important role in representing the minds of others. For example, in a
study where children play ‘paper, scissor, rocks’, the medial prefrontal
cortex is active when the participants believe they are playing against the
experimenter, but not when they think they are playing against a computer
(Gallagher, Jack, Roepstorff, & Frith, 2002). Similarly, medial prefrontal cortex
is preferentially engaged when participants judge psychological characteristics
of a target, regardless of whether the target is a person or a dog (Mitchell,
Banaji, & Macrae, 2005). Furthermore, patients with lesions to the medial
prefrontal cortex are impaired on false belief tasks and recognizing instances
of faux pas, two very different kinds of mentalizing tasks (Gregory et al.,
2002; cf. Bird, Castelli, Malik, Frith, & Husain, 2004).
While theory of mind tasks tap into propositional reasoning about the
mental states of others, there has also been interest about the role of
medial prefrontal cortex in understanding the emotional states of others.
It has been suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex may be functionally
divided such that ventral regions may be important for affective processing
while more dorsal regions may be primarily involved in cognitive processes
(Phillips, Drevets, Rauch, & Lane, 2003; Stuss & Levine, 2002). It is plausible
that ventromedial prefrontal cortex may be important for affective aspects
of empathy but may be less involved in cognitive aspects of empathy, such
as reasoning about mental states (Sabbagh, 2004). Supporting this view,
Hynes et al. (2006) found that compared to cognitive perspective taking,
emotional perspective taking preferentially engaged ventromedial prefrontal
cortex. The authors note that this finding is consistent with the lesion
literature, which reports that patients with ventral prefrontal damage show
impairments in emotional perspective taking. In a study of observational
fear learning, the medial prefrontal cortex was selectively activated in
response to the observation but not the receipt of pain, which is consistent
with this region playing a role in understanding affective components
of another’s experience (Olsson, Nearing, & Phelps, 2007). Similarly,
neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with prefrontal damage
display impaired empathy, especially when damage is localized to the
ventromedial area (Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, Berger, & Aharon-Peretz,
2003). In addition, patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage have
been shown to be impaired on irony and faux pas tasks, which require
affective processing, but not on false-belief tasks, which are more cognitive
in nature and may depend upon more dorsal regions (Shamay-Tsoory,
Tomer, Berger, Goldsher, & Aharon-Peretz, 2005b).
Empirical Issues
This fascinating and productive line of research on the social neuroscience
of empathy raises a number of interesting issues. The first is one of
methodology. It is somewhat surprising that none of the studies reviewed
above explicitly instructed the individuals to engage (or not engage) in
empathic processing. If one wishes to conclusively isolate the neural
correlates of a phenomenon, it is important to know that the participants
are in fact experiencing the phenomenon of interest. Therefore, studies
that specifically ask participants to engage in empathic processing are
needed, and a fruitful direction for future research would be to contrast
neural activity in response to empathic and non-empathic instructions. If
neuronal mirroring is a critical mechanism for the experience of empathy,
one would expect to see such areas activate more strongly in response to
empathic instructions.
Another issue concerns phenomenology. None of the studies reviewed
above reported upon the emotional experience of the participants in
response to the tasks. Rather, empathetic responses tend to be inferred by
the presence of neural overlap between the two conditions. However, this
result does not conclusively show that participants experienced empathy,
or any other sort of affective response. Because the neural mechanism of
empathy should correlate with its phenomenological experience, studies
that correlate self-reports of empathy during the task to brain activity are
needed. As of yet, brain activity has only been correlated with trait empathy.
This methodology implicitly assumes trait empathy is an appropriate proxy
for state empathy during the task, but this assumption remains untested.
Furthermore, it is not clear the extent to which a shared circuit model
can account for displays of empathy in which the emotions of the perceiver
and target are incongruent. For example, seeing a child in tears because
a bully is tormenting him might stir feelings of anger in an observer (as
opposed to the fear the child experiences), yet the response is surely still
an empathetic one. As noted by Hoffman, empathy does not simply entail
the matching of feelings, but the adoption of feelings ‘that are more congruent
with another’s situation than with his own situation’ (2000). If perception of
the target’s emotion automatically triggers a similar emotion (or the precursor
to this emotion) in the observer, it is unclear how these appropriate,
incongruent emotional responses would come into being through utilization
of neural mirror mechanisms alone.
In a similar vein, the use of congruent stimuli makes it difficult to
separate out responses that are self-focused from those that are other-focused,
and thus truly empathic. For example, if a participant sees a picture of a
mutilated body, she may feel quite distressed by it and exhibit insula
activation. If she is then told that her partner is viewing the same distressing
picture, she may react in one of two ways: she might feel distressed for
her partner, or she might feel distressed upon thinking about the upsetting
picture. Only the first response is truly empathetic, but it is likely that
both would commonly activate the insula. The methods that have been
popularly employed in the neuroscientific study of empathy are unable to
distinguish between these two quite qualitatively different responses. As
Singer (2006) noted, the empathic response to watching a masochist
receive pain should not be one of distress – it should be one of pleasure,
because for the masochist, pain is pleasurable.
As an analogy, in research on theory of mind, it was recognized that to
truly test the construct, the participant must hold a belief that differs from
the belief of the target. If the target and the participant both hold the
same belief, a correct response about the target’s mental state may simply
reflect the belief of the participant, rather than the participant’s belief
about the target. Utilizing this same logic, it will be important for future
research on empathy to incorporate incongruent responses into experimental
designs to ensure that participants are experiencing empathic, rather than
self-focused, responses. The introduction of such designs will also help to
disentangle responses of empathy and emotional contagion, which has not
yet been attempted. It is important for future research in this area to
consider that while emotional contagion and empathy may share certain
features (such as affect matching in some cases), the two constructs are not
synonymous.
Empathic Focus and Processing Mode

One possible way of integrating the body of work reviewed so far is to
further consider the important roles empathic focus and processing mode
play in the experience of empathy. One relevant aspect of this question is
whether the individual is focused on the self or the other, as self-focus is
likely to have very different emotional and behavioral consequences from
other-focus. Furthermore, it seems important to distinguish between the
object of one’s focus and the processing mode one adopts. More speci-
fically, we suggest that it is possible to adopt one of two general kinds of
modes when processing information about the self or another individual,
which we will term experiential or propositional. In this view, which
recalls James’s conception of selfhood (1890), experiential processing can
be thought of as an automatic, affective, stream-of-consciousness experience
that feels like unmediated reality (Lieberman, Gaunt, Gilbert, & Trope,
2002). For example, a self-focused experiential reaction to an upsetting
event would be made up of the affective and cognitive reactions to the event
that simply feels like one’s experience of the event. In contrast, propositional
processing can be thought of as a controlled cognitive process. Self-focused
propositional processing of an upsetting event would be the metacognitive
evaluation of one’s thoughts and feelings in response to the event.
Importantly for the study of empathy, which should by definition be
other-focused, this view suggests that one is capable of thinking about the
Figure 2 Phenomenological experience and behavior in response to another’s distress may

differ depending upon processing mode and empathic focus.
experiences of other in either an experiential or propositional way.

Experiential processing in this case maps very closely onto simulation
theory. That is, in order to understand the experience of another, there
is a way in which one can jump into that situation and experience it as
though it is happening to oneself, in a very automatic way. A familiar
example of this is being fully engrossed in a movie, where we can vicariously
experience the mental world of the character in an other-focused manner
that takes into account the target’s perspective and preferences. For example,
when one watches a villain brandish a firearm at Superman, one can
experientially share Superman’s confident, nonchalant emotional reaction.
This is because of his (not our) invulnerability to bullets, but one probably
does not consider this fact in a propositional manner. Thus, in this way,
it is possible to maintain an other-focused orientation while employing
experiential processing. In contrast, propositional processing of another’s
experience employs controlled reasoning about the mental states of others,
which recalls theory-theories of empathy.
In this conceptualization, the object and mode of thought form a two-
by-two matrix that is fully crossed (see Figure 2). The conditions under
which one employs the different kinds of processing modes will likely
depend upon many factors, including cognitive resources, motivation,
individual differences, the nature of the relationship between target and
actor, and the medium of presentation (e.g., movies are probably easier to
process in an experiential manner than a news report, as is reading a novel
in the first-person compared to the third). It seems likely that each quadrant
represents a unique psychological experience that may hold implications
for behavior. For example, adopting an experiential self-focused perspective
about a negative event would likely result in personal distress and a desire
to avoid the unpleasant stimulus. In contrast, adopting an experiential
other-focused perspective would likely result in empathic concern, which
might lead to altruistic behavior (Batson, 1991). Employing propositional,
self-focused processing would likely be related to reflecting upon one’s
own thoughts and feelings about the experience in a metacognitive way.
Alternatively, utilizing propositional, other-focused processing would

be associated with understanding the thoughts and feelings of others,
which is likely to play an important role in empathic accuracy as well as
altruistic behavior.
Although we argue that both empathic concern and empathic accuracy
may lead to altruism, it is likely that the two experiences will give rise to
qualitative differences in motivation and the types of resultant behaviors.
For example, altruism resulting from empathic concern (engendered by
other-focused experiential processing) is likely to be based on an affective
reaction to the target’s distress. In contrast, altruism arising from empathic
accuracy (instantiated by other-focused propositional processing) may result
more from social rules and knowledge. Furthermore, empathic concern
and accuracy might also be distinguished by the kinds of altruistic behavior
engendered. For example, empathic concern might motivate immediate
physical engagement, while empathic accuracy might initiate more complex
thinking about long-term solutions to problems that might not be immediately
gratifying, but might produce systemic changes in the target’s situation.
It is important to recognize the ways in which both of these processing
modes interact and depend upon each other. For example, appropriate
empathic concern may depend upon the ability to accurately ascertain an
individual’s mental state. In a simplistic example, if someone does not
sense that another person is upset, it is impossible for him to feel sad for
her. Moreover, engagement of one process could easily trigger or inhibit
another. For instance, thinking in a propositional way about the circumstances
of your friend’s divorce could quickly evolve into an experiential response
of sadness for your friend. Alternatively, a picture of a child crying could
generate an affective response that could either be magnified or inhibited
by further consideration of the child’s situation and mental state. It is
probable that we switch between these modes as we make sense of the
world, and that the ability to understand the experiences of others in both
ways is quite important to the experience of empathy.
Furthermore, the literature we have reviewed so far suggests both that
each quadrant should have a unique neural signature as well as share some
common neural circuitry. For example, medial prefrontal regions are likely
to be implicated in propositional processing regardless of empathic focus.
However, it is difficult to say at this point exactly what the neural signature
of each quadrant may be because most studies have not explicitly isolated
these elements.
Separating processes this way also suggests that behavioral responses in
each quadrant may be moderated by unique variables. For instance, it
seems likely that the extent to which other-focused experiential processing
elicits an altruistic response depends upon the amount of personal experience
that an individual has in the relevant domain. In contrast, the likelihood
of altruistic behavior in response to other-focused propositional processing
may relate to the prior knowledge that an individual has about the domain.
One recent study examined the relationship between experience and empathy
by recruiting individuals with congenital insensitivity to pain (Danziger,
Prkachin, & Willer, 2006). These individuals displayed semantic knowledge
about pain that was very similar to controls, although their ratings of painful
stimuli were lower and more variable. Interestingly, these judgments were
highly related to individual differences in trait empathy, which was not
the case for controls. It would be interesting to conduct a neuroimaging
study to see if dissociable neural mechanisms are activated during the
viewing of painful stimuli in others in controls and pain insensitive
individuals. For example, would pain insensitive individuals activate dorsal
anterior cingulate and anterior insula, or would they perhaps engage
medial prefrontal regions to construct a more cognitive representation of
the situation of the other?
The potential interrelationship of processing mode and empathy is nicely
illustrated by the study of alexithymia. Alexithymia is characterized by
difficulty in recognizing and describing one’s own emotional states and has
also been associated with difficulties in describing the emotional experience
of others in hypothetical situations (Bydlowski et al., 2005). In a recent
functional magnetic resonance imaging study, Moriguchi et al. (2006) found
that alexithymics performed worse on theory of mind tasks and displayed
reduced levels of empathy and higher levels of personal distress compared
to controls. Furthermore, alexithymics showed lower levels of medial
prefrontal activation during a theory of mind task. For all subjects, medial
prefrontal cortex activity was positively correlated with mentalizing scores
and negatively correlated with alexithymic symptoms. The authors interpret
this finding as evidence that alexithymics have a mentalizing impairment
that is associated with the inability to take the perspective of others.
They further suggest that such a deficit might account for the inability of
alexithymics to report upon their own feelings, as such a process might
require the adoption of propositional processing towards the self.
Successfully adopting a propositional processing mode may also depend
upon the inhibition of one’s own experiential processing. Vogeley et al.
(2001) found that a region of right inferior frontal cortex that is engaged
when comparing conditions in which a participant attributes a mental state
to a character in a story in which the participant is featured and one in
which the participant is absent. In one recent intriguing paper, Samson
and colleagues (Samson, Apperly, Kathirgamanathan, & Humphreys, 2005)
extended this finding to describe an individual with a right inferior frontal
gyrus lesion to see if this area is critical for the inhibition of self-perspective.
Interestingly, this individual was impaired at theory of mind tasks that
required the suppression of his own perspective but performed well if they
did not. He also showed egocentric errors when performing social and
visual perspective tasks. For example, in a visual array task, he consistently
chose the array that corresponded to his own visual perspective. Interestingly,
he seemed wholly unaware of his highly impaired performance and actually
requested that the task be stopped because it was too easy. Future research
in this area is needed to confirm the role of this region in the inhibition
of self-perspective and also show its relationship to empathy. It would also
be interesting to explore whether personality traits such as narcissism
might be associated with abnormal function of this region.
Conclusion
The field of social cognitive neuroscience has recently turned its attention
to the neural mechanisms that underpin the experience of empathy. This
new area of research has already proven to be extremely fruitful in extending
our understanding of how we represent the minds of others and share in
their experiences.
We would like to conclude with some ideas for future research in this
exciting new area. While pain has properties that make it an attractive
stimulus with which to investigate empathy, it would be exciting to see
future research expand methodologically to include more diverse forms of
empathy. For example, there are virtually no neuroscientific studies of
empathy for positive emotions, but there is no theoretical reason why
sharing positive emotions is not as important to interpersonal functioning
as sharing negative ones. One straightforward prediction would be to
observe neural overlap between self and other for reward in the ventral
striatum (Knutson & Cooper, 2005).
Additionally, because empathy is thought to be important partly due to
its relationship to altruism and helping behaviors (Batson, 1991), studies
of how neural processes relate to real-world behaviors would be extremely
interesting. Phrased differently, to what extent can we predict everyday
experiences of empathy as well as helping behaviors from the neural
activation that we see in response to empathy tasks?
A productive line of research has already begun using imaging techniques
to study how the neural responses of individuals who suffer from disorders
such as autism differ from controls during empathic processes. Future
research might use functional neuroimaging to investigate other disorders
of empathy such as psychopathy. It is illuminating that psychopaths, who
are by definition deficient in the experience of empathy, have been shown
to exhibit normal theory of mind abilities but are impaired at recognizing
emotions such as sadness and fear (Blair, Colledge, Murray, & Mitchell,
2001; Blair et al., 1996). It would be quite interesting to see, for example,
whether psychopathic individuals show reduced activation of mirror
neuron systems and whether such activations correlate with behavioral
symptoms. This result would be convergent with findings in the autism
literature, while a failure to find mirror neuron dysfunction would suggest
that other neural regions are critically important in instantiating empathy.
Future studies might also investigate potential moderators of empathy
and how the presence of such moderators affects neural responses. For
example, if we are more prone to empathize with loved ones, the tendency
to use strangers as targets may actually reduce our ability to detect an
effect. Preston and de Waal (2002) suggest that similarity, familiarity,
experience, and salience are important moderators of empathic experience,
and these dimensions warrant further investigation. For example, behavioral
responses akin to empathy in mice (as evidenced by social modulation of
pain) only occur among mice who were familiar with each other (Langford
et al., 2006). Motivation is also likely to be an important moderator of
empathic responding. A suggestive recent study showed that mirror neuron
activity related to grasping at food items was increased as a function of
participant hunger (Cheng, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2007). More neuroscientific
research that explores and is sensitive to the effects of these various moderators
will greatly increase our understanding of empathy as a construct.
Furthermore, studying the moderators of empathy may give us more
insight into situations in which we observe a failure of empathy. It is a sad
truth about the human race that war, homelessness, violence, racism, and
many other societal ills would be much less pervasive if we responded to
all individuals in need with greater empathy. Therefore, research into how
and why these failures occur may also be of critical importance in generating
a more complete understanding of the phenomenon of interpersonal empathy.
It seems fitting to conclude by considering how this neuroscientific
investigation may contribute to our social psychological understanding of
empathy. Because this effort is in its infancy, it is still too soon to fully
appreciate the contributions this research may make to psychological
theory. Like many other psychological processes, empathy is difficult to
introspect and report upon, and even gaining a sense of the component
processes that make up empathic experience has proven challenging. The
inability to know exactly what processes are taking place inside our minds
when we experience empathy is probably one reason why there are so
many different definitions of the phenomenon. However, this inherent
difficulty is one reason why neuroimaging techniques have tremendous
potential to help us gain a better understanding of the construct of empathy.
For example, the current research suggests that both simulation theory
and theory of mind play an important role in the experience of empathy.
We have also reviewed evidence that these areas are subserved by different
neural circuitry, which suggests that these processes may be qualitatively
distinct but nonetheless interact. This literature further suggests that
debates over which theory most correctly outlines how we understand the
minds of others are perhaps somewhat misguided. It is probably more
useful to consider the different component processes that are at work in
the production of empathy, and neuroscience may help us to identify and
understand these processes.
For example, as already reviewed, a very interesting question is whether
personal experience in a domain is a critical moderator of the ability to
empathize with another in that domain. Behavioral research is limited in
its ability to address this question because it is difficult to assess the

qualitative aspects of someone’s empathic experience in this case. However,
neuroimaging techniques might help elucidate questions like these, which
are difficult to report upon through introspection. For example, if pain-
insensitive participants show greatly enhanced prefrontal activity compared
to controls, it might suggest that these individuals are understanding the
target’s pain in a more cognitive, propositional way than controls, which is
likely to be a qualitatively different kind of empathic experience. On the other
hand, if pain-insensitive participants engage the same neural regions as controls
but show lowered levels of activation, it might suggest these participants
share a qualitatively similar experience of empathy but the magnitude of
this experience differs quantitatively. The first result would suggest that
experience may determine the kind of empathy one feels, the latter suggests
that experience is a critical moderator of our ability to empathize at all.
These kinds of results would shed further light upon the component
processes, moderators, and consequences of empathy, which would enrich
our theoretical understanding of this psychological construct.
We hope that future research in this field will continue to attempt to
elucidate unanswered social psychological questions about this fascinating,
complex, and important topic.
Short Biography
Matthew Lieberman’s primary research interests lie in the field of social
cognitive neuroscience, which integrates concepts and methodologies
from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He was recently
honored with an APA early career award in recognition of his pioneering
work in this field. Lieberman’s previous publications include work on the
neural bases of controlled and automatic processes, self-knowledge, inter-
personal rejection, and cognitive dissonance. He is also the founding
editor of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN).
Lieberman holds a BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Rutgers
University and a PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University.
Currently, Lieberman is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Depart-
ment at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is working on a
book tentatively titled Experience Shrugged: The Rise of Simulated Experience
in Mental Life and the Modern World.
Lian Rameson is currently a doctoral student and NSF fellow in the
Social Psychology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Her interests include the neural correlates of self-knowledge and empathy.
In collaboration with Matt Lieberman, she is currently conducting studies
that examine the neural correlates of self-schemas and different forms of
empathic processing. Rameson holds a BA in Psychology and English
Literature from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in
Social Psychology from UCLA.
Endnotes
* Correspondence address: Department of Psychology, Franz Hall, University of California Los
Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563, USA. Email: lrameson@ucla.edu
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Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3/1 (2009): 94–110, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00154.

Empathy: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience

others is also thought to be an important motivator of altruistic behavior

Empathy and Mirror Neurons

research on empathy. Such research has been strongly influenced by the

watching another in pain commonly activate anterior insula and dorsal

observation of pain, it may suggest that these participants were activating

Empathy and the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the medial prefrontal cortex/

Empathic Focus and Processing Mode

Figure 2 Phenomenological experience and behavior in response to another’s distress may

experiences of other in either an experiential or propositional way.

Alternatively, utilizing propositional, other-focused processing would

its ability to address this question because it is difficult to assess the

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