Empathy and prosocial behavior

A reflection from cognitive neuroscience

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34024/prometeica.2025.32.19725

Keywords:

empathy, prosociality, emotions, feelings, neurophenomenology

Abstract

In the field of contemporary social neuroscience, the perception of human nature encompasses a broad spectrum ranging from selfishness to innate goodness. From this perspective, the exploration of prosocial behavior is introduced, which is based on understanding how individuals can exhibit altruistic or collaborative behaviors along a continuum that oscillates between self-serving benefits and the innate desire to help others. The interrelationship between prosocial behavior and empathy becomes a key point of study, as both dimensions are intrinsically connected to how individuals interact and relate within society. Understanding how these two facets intertwine allows for a better appreciation of the complexity of human nature and its influence on social dynamics.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biographies

  • Francisco Cerić Garrido, Universidad del Desarrollo

    Francisco Ceric is a biologist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and holds a PhD in Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His research area has focused on the neurobiological bases of cognitive processes. Specifically, his interest lies in studying how emotions regulate behavior from a neuroscience perspective.

  • Maria del Carmen Tejada, Universidad del Alba

    María del Carmen Tejada holds a PhD and Master's degree in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology from the Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile. She also holds a Master's in Science with a specialization in Child and Adolescent Clinical-Educational Psychology from the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín and is a psychologist from the Universidad Católica San Pablo. Her research focuses on social and affective neuroscience, with a special emphasis on embodied cognition and emotion. Her primary interest lies in studying how emotions modulate decision-making and regulate behavior, integrating behavioral, neurophysiological, and phenomenological dimensions from a multi-level perspective.

References

Bailey, O. (2022). Empathy and the value of humane understanding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 104(1), 50-65.

Brown, C. L., West, T. V., Sanchez, A. H., & Mendes, W. B. (2021). Emotional empathy in the social regulation of distress: A dyadic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(6), 1004-1019.

Bruneau, E. G., Jacoby, N., & Saxe, R. (2015). Empathic control through coordinated interaction of amygdala, theory of mind and extended pain matrix brain regions. NeuroImage, 114, 105-119.

Carlson, R. W., Aknin, L. B., & Liotti, M. (2015). When is giving an impulse? An ERP investigation of intuitive prosocial behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(7), 1121–1129. doi:10.1093/scan/nsv077

Carr, L., Iacoboni, M., Dubeau, M. C., Mazziotta, J. C., & Lenzi, G. L. (2003). Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: a relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, 100(9), 5497-5502.

Corradini, A., & Antonietti, A. (2013). Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy. Consciousness and cognition, 22(3), 1152-1161.

Cox, A., Kohls, G., Naples, A. J., Mukerji, C. E., Coffman, M. C., Rutherford, H. J. V., McPartland, J. C. (2015). Diminished social reward anticipation in the broad autism phenotype as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(10), 1357–1364. doi:10.1093/scan/nsv024

Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. A Harvest Book.

Damasio, A. R. (1998). Emotion in the perspective of an integrated nervous system. Brain research reviews, 26(2-3), 83-86.

Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2022). Homeostatic feelings and the biology of consciousness. Brain, 145(7), 2231-2235.

Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2024). Sensing, feeling and consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379(1908), 20230243.

Davis, M. H. (2006). Empathy. In Handbook of the sociology of emotions (pp. 443-466). Boston, MA: Springer US.

Debes, R. (2017). Empathy and mirror neurons. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy (pp. 54-63). Routledge.

Decety, J. & Michalsa, K. (2020). A developmental neuroscience perspective on empathy. In J. Rubenstein, Rakik, P., Chen, B. & Kwan, K. (Eds.), Neural Circuit and Cognitive Development. Comprehensive Developmental Neuroscience (p. 485-503). Academic Press.

Decety, J. (2010). The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental neuroscience, 32(4), 257-267.

Decety, J., & Holvoet, C. (2021). The emergence of empathy: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Developmental Review, 62, 100999.

Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2009). The biological basis of empathy. Handbook of neuroscience for the behavioral sciences, 940-957.

Depow, G. J., Francis, Z., & Inzlicht, M. (2021). The experience of empathy in everyday life. Psychological Science, 32(8), 1198-1213.

Dor‐Ziderman, Y., Cohen, D., Levit‐Binnun, N., & Golland, Y. (2021). Synchrony with distress in affective empathy and compassion. Psychophysiology, 58(10), e13889.

Ferguson, H. J., & Wimmer, L. (2023). A psychological exploration of empathy. In Conversations on Empathy (pp. 60-77). Routledge.

Fuchs, T. (2013). The phenomenology and development of social perspectives. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 655–683.

Gallese, V. (2001). The'shared manifold'hypothesis. From mirror neurons to empathy. Journal of consciousness studies, 8(5-6), 33-50.

Hartmann, H., Rütgen, M., Riva, F., & Lamm, C. (2021). Another's pain in my brain: No evidence that placebo analgesia affects the sensory-discriminative component in empathy for pain. NeuroImage, 224, 117397.

Hein, G.; Singer, T. (2008) I feel how you feel but not always: The empathic brain and its modulation. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 18, 153–158

Houston, D. A. (1990). Empathy and the self: Cognitive and emotional influences on the evaluation of negative affect in others. Journal of personality and social psychology, 59(5), 859.

Iacoboni, M., & Lenzi, G. L. (2002). Mirror neurons, the insula, and empathy. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(1), 39-40.

Immordino‐Yang, M. H., & Singh, V. (2013). Hippocampal contributions to the processing of social emotions. Human brain mapping, 34(4), 945-955.

Jääskeläinen, I., Ahveninen, J., Klucharev, V., Shestakova, A., & Levy, J. (2022). Movies and narratives are increasingly utilized as stimuli in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG) studies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 16, Article 813684.

Jackson, P.L.; Meltzoff, A.N.; Decety, J. (2005) How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy. NeuroImage 24, 771–779

Jones, N. A., & Gagnon, C. M. (2007). The neurophysiology of empathy. Empathy in mental illness, 217-238.

Kanske P. (2018) The social mind: disentangling affective and cognitive routes to understanding others. Interdiscip Sci Rev. 43:115–24.

Kaplan, J. T., & Iacoboni, M. (2006). Getting a grip on other minds: Mirror neurons, intention understanding, and cognitive empathy. Social neuroscience, 1(3-4), 175-183.

Lamm, C., & Singer, T. (2010). The role of anterior insular cortex in social emotions. Brain structure and function, 214, 579-591.

Levy, J., & Bader, O. (2020). The neuroscience of empathy has enormously expanded in the past two decades, thereby making instrumental progress for the understanding of neural substrates involved in affective and cognitive aspects of empathy. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, Article 554848.

Lim, K. Y., & Hong, W. (2023). Neural mechanisms of comforting: Prosocial touch and stress buffering. Hormones and Behavior, 153, 105391.

Lima, F., & Osório, F. (2021). Empathy: Assessment instruments and psychometric quality – A systematic literature review with a meta-analysis of the past ten years. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 781346.

Luis, E. O., Martínez, M., Akrivou, K., Scalzo, G., Aoiz, M., & Orón Semper, J. V. (2023). The role of empathy in shared intentionality: Contributions from Inter-Processual Self theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1079950.

Maibom, H. (2020). Empathy. Routledge.

Marsh, A. A. (2018). The neuroscience of empathy. Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 19, 110-115.

Martínez-Pernía, D., Cea, I., Troncoso, A., Blanco, K., Calderón Vergara, J., Baquedano, C., Araya-Veliz, C., Useros-Olmo, A., Huepe, D., Carrera, V., Mack Silva, V., & Vergara, M. (2023). “I am feeling tension in my whole body”: An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 999227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.999227

Morrison, I., Lloyd, D., Di Pellegrino, G., & Roberts, N. (2004). Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: is empathy a multisensory issue?. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 4(2), 270-278.

Moya-Albiol, L., Herrero, N., & Bernal, M. C. (2010). The neural bases of empathy. Rev Neurol, 50(2), 89-100.

Mutschler, I., Reinbold, C., Wankerl, J., Seifritz, E., & Ball, T. (2013). Structural basis of empathy and the domain general region in the anterior insular cortex. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 177.

Oliva, V., Riegner, G., Dean, J., Khatib, L. A., Allen, A., Barrows, D., ... & Zeidan, F. (2022). I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity. PAIN, 10-10

Oliver, L. D., Vieira, J. B., Neufeld, R. W., Dziobek, I., & Mitchell, D. G. (2018). Greater involvement of action simulation mechanisms in emotional vs cognitive empathy. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(4), 367-380.

Perry, A., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2013). Understanding emotional and cognitive empathy: A neuropsychological perspective. Understanding other minds: Perspectives from developmental social neuroscience, 179-194.

Poole, K. L., & Henderson, H. A. (2023). Social cognitive correlates of contagious yawning and smiling. Human Nature, 34(4), 569-587.

Preston, S. D., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Grabowski, T. J., Stansfield, R. B., Mehta, S., & Damasio, A. R. (2007). The neural substrates of cognitive empathy. Social neuroscience, 2(3-4), 254-275.

Raimo, S., Boccia, M., Gaita, M., Canino, S., Torchia, V., Vetere, M. A., ... & Palermo, L. (2023). The bodily fundament of empathy: The role of action, nonaction-oriented, and interoceptive body representations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30(3), 963-973.

Reniers, R. L., Corcoran, R., Drake, R., Shryane, N. M., & Völlm, B. A. (2011). The QCAE: A questionnaire of cognitive and affective empathy. Journal of personality assessment, 93(1), 84-95.

Rizzolatti, G. Y Sinigaglia, C. (2006). Las neuronas espejo. Los mecanismos de la empatía emocional. Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós Ibérica.

Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2005). Mirror neuron: a neurological approach to empathy. In Neurobiology of human values (pp. 107-123). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Schnell, K., Bluschke, S., Konradt, B., & Walter, H. (2011). Functional relations of empathy and mentalizing: an fMRI study on the neural basis of cognitive empathy. Neuroimage, 54(2), 1743-1754.

Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2011). The neural bases for empathy. The Neuroscientist, 17(1), 18-24.

Spaulding, S. (2017). Cognitive empathy. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy (pp. 13-21). Routledge.

Stevens, F., & Taber, K. (2021). The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior. Neuropsychologia, 159, 107925. Stevens, F., & Taber, K. (2021). The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior. Neuropsychologia, 159, 107925. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107925

Stietz, J., Jauk, E., Krach, S., & Kanske, P. (2019). Dissociating empathy from perspective-taking: Evidence from intra-and inter-individual differences research. Frontiers in psychiatry, 10, 126.

Stietz, J., Jauk, E., Krach, S., & Kanske, P. (2019). Dissociating empathy from perspective-taking: Evidence from intra-and inter-individual differences research. Frontiers in psychiatry, 10, 126.

Thompson, N. M., Van Reekum, C. M., & Chakrabarti, B. (2022). Cognitive and affective empathy relate differentially to emotion regulation. Affective Science, 3(1), 118-134.

Troncoso, A., Blanco, K., Rivera-Rei, Á., & Martínez-Pernía, D. (2024). Empathy bodyssence: Temporal dynamics of sensorimotor and physiological responses and the subjective experience in synchrony with the other’s suffering. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1362064.

Troncoso, A., Soto, V., Gomila, A., & Martínez-Pernía, D. (2023). Moving beyond the lab: Investigating empathy through the Empirical 5E approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, Article 1119469.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.

Watt, D. (2007). Toward a neuroscience of empathy: Integrating affective and cognitive perspectives. Neuropsychoanalysis, 9(2), 119-140.

Yorio, A. A. (2010). El sistema de neuronas espejo: evidencias fisiológicas e hipótesis funcionales. Revista argentina de neurocirugía, 24, S33-S37.

Yuan, J., He, Y., Qinglin, Z., Chen, A., & Li, H. (2008). Gender differences in behavioral inhibitory control: ERP evidence from a two-choice oddball task. Psychophysiology, 45(6), 986–993.

Zerwas, F. K., Springstein, T., Karnilowicz, H. R., Lam, P., Butler, E. A., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2021). “I feel you”: Greater linkage between friends’ physiological responses and emotional experience is associated with greater empathic accuracy. Biological psychology, 161, 108079.

Prometeica v.32

Downloads

Published

2025-03-01

Issue

Vol. 32 (2025): Prometeica - v 32 (03/2025 - 12/2025)

Section

Articles - Dossier 1

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Maria del Carmen Tejada, Francisco Cerić Gaarrido

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Copyright: Prometeica allows the author (s) to keep their copyrights unrestricted. Prometeica allows the author (s) to retain their publication rights without restriction. Authors should ensure that the article is an original work without fabrication, fraud or plagiarism; does not infringe any copyright or right of ownership of any third party. Authors should also ensure that each one complies with the authorship requirements as recommended by the ICMJE and understand that if the article or part of it is flawed or fraudulent, each author shares responsibility.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Prometeica - Journal of Philosophy and Sciences is governed by the licencse CC-By-NC

You are free to:

  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

 

Copyright maintenance

Prometeica allows the author (s) to keep their copyright without restrictions.

Prometeica allows the author (s) to retain their publication rights without restriction.

How to Cite

Cerić Garrido, F., & Tejada, M. del C. (2025). Empathy and prosocial behavior: A reflection from cognitive neuroscience. Prometeica - Journal of Philosophy and Science, 32, e19725 (1-17). https://doi.org/10.34024/prometeica.2025.32.19725
Received 2024-11-14
Accepted 2025-02-13
Published 2025-03-01