What is empathy?
Listener Maria gets a headache when her husband gets migraines. She wants to know if she's experiencing an extreme form of empathy and what’s happening in her brain to cause this.
What is empathy? This week’s question comes from Maria in Amsterdam who has noticed that when one of her friends is in pain, she feels their pain too, literally. Maria wants to know - is she experiencing a type of ‘super’ empathy?
To help find the answer, Marnie Chesterton visits the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and gets into an MRI scanner to discover what is happening in her brain when she empathises.
She talks with a pro-social psychopath to find out how psychopaths experience empathy differently and how they navigate social situations.
And Marnie meets with a mediator specialising in The Israeli–Palestinian conflict, to learn the value of empathy when the stakes are at their highest.
(Photo: Back view of loving Mum hug teen daughter. Credit: Getty Images)
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What makes someone a psychopath?
Duration: 03:00
Broadcasts
- Fri 3 Jan 202020:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview, Online & Europe and the Middle East only
- Fri 3 Jan 202021:32GMTBBC World Service News Internet & East Asia only
- Sun 5 Jan 202000:32GMTBBC World Service
- Mon 6 Jan 202005:32GMTBBC World Service Online, UK DAB/Freeview, News Internet & Europe and the Middle East only
- Mon 6 Jan 202006:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean & South Asia only
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- Mon 6 Jan 202011:32GMTBBC World Service West and Central Africa
- Mon 6 Jan 202014:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia
- Mon 6 Jan 202018:32GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa, South Asia & West and Central Africa only
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