A look for empathy

A study conducted by the LWL University Hospital in Bochum (Germany) showed that staring into another person’s gaze activates the areas of the brain responsible for recognising the other person’s emotional experience. In particular, the amygdala and hippocampus play a key role in allowing us to decipher feelings and memories of the past linked to emotions. Like Proust’s madeleine, the mental representation of emotional states connected to a past experience facilitates empathy and allows us to anticipate beliefs, intentions and behaviour. But this is only true if we relate to people of the same sex. In fact, research shows that men have an easier time ‘dressing in the other’s shoes’ when it is a man, while their perceptions become confused when they stare into the gaze of a woman. But gender differences do not stop there…

Even some of the most ‘dangerous’ relationship emotions, such as disgust and contempt, activate a different network of brain areas in men and women. Let us analyse together exactly what this is all about, because although related in common experience, disgust and contempt present important differences in meaning. In summary, we can say that contempt is a response to the violation of moral codes concerning disrespect for duties or hierarchies, whereas disgust is a response to violations of bodily purity, such as food or sexual taboos.

Both emotions provoke a reaction of disapproval, which may be accompanied by a sense of physical discomfort (disgust) or indignant complacency (contempt) and followed by a degree of hostility (anger). The expression of contempt by its very nature signals interpersonal information of positioning in the social hierarchy and is therefore always directed at a person: if one person shows contempt towards another, it signals their perception of occupying a superior position. Disgust, on the other hand, concerns inanimate objects and is induced by non-social stimuli, such as eating bad or spoiled food. It will only be directed at people’s behaviour, not at people per se, if such behaviour violates socio-cultural rules of body purity. Schematically, and following Schweder’s definition, we can define contempt as violating codes of ‘community ethics’ and disgust as violating codes of ‘divinity ethics’.

In all this, and to return to the differences between men and women in their reaction to emotions, it appears that men show stronger neural responses to expressions of contempt, while women to those of disgust. And that women are more responsive to expressions of contempt shown by men than by women. Scientific research seems to suggest that there is a ‘biological’ neural basis for differences in moral sensitivity to hierarchy (men) on the one hand and physical purity (women) on the other. Not to mention that on a more individual level, the expression of contempt seems to be related to testosterone levels.

How to deal with all this? How to prevent disgust and contempt from destroying our relationships already so complicated by our gender differences?

Gaining competence in knowing emotions, learning to read them on faces and distinguish them in the timbre of voices, managing our reactions to what we perceive and finally choosing what to do.

With a single, attentive look, understand what is really going on and react by bringing our emotional skills into play.