Im Alltag habe ich oft das Gefühl, dass Menschen, die Empathie zeigen, irgendwie "künstlich" wirken. Als würden sie nur erlerntes Verhalten abspielen.
Ich empfehl dir mal das Buch "Träumen Androiden von elektrischen Schafen?" (wurde später in "Blade Runner" verfilmt) zu lesen - da geht es genau um Empathie und künstliche Menschen (im Buch "Androiden").
ist Empathie eine Eigenschaft, die ein Mensch von Geburt an haben kann oder ist es eine Fähigkeit, die man im Laufe seines Lebens erlernen muss?
Eine gute Frage! Und auch eine heiß diskutierte in den Disziplinen Psychologie & Neurologie (und weiteren bzw. Überschneidungsbereichen).
Die Antwort lautet wahrscheinlich beides. Die Kapazität dazu ist angeboren (wie in einigen anderen Tieren auch), muss aber gefördert (teils erlernt) werden.
Es gibt psychische Krankheiten, bei denen derjenige kaum oder gar keine Empathie entwickeln kann. Das wäre also ein Argument dafür, dass es angeboren ist.
Und es gibt Experimente / Nachweise bei denen Menschen kaum oder wenig Empathie entwickeln konnten, da dies nicht gefördert wurde.
Wenn dich das Thema interessiert kannst du ja auch mal die kompletten Artikel, die unten verlinkt sind, lesen.
Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are characterized. If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.
~en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
When it comes to how empathetic someone is, Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist and ethologist, believes it’s both nature and nurture. He says that a person’s empathy is “innate” – inherited through genes – but also that a person can learn to become more or less empathetic. That seems reasonable; depending on early experiences and education, someone may be more or less of a certain characteristic.
But how is empathy innate? Two NewScientist writers, Philip Cohen and Ewen Callaway, wrote articles discussing the areas in our brains called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the anterior insula (AI), which become active not only when we are in pain but also when others are.
Imaging studies, cited in their articles, found a positive correlation between a volunteer’s reported empathy for a person in pain and activity in the pain-processing areas of the volunteer’s brain. This has led Cohen to believe, “Humans are hardwired to feel empathy.”
~http://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2010/07/24/all-about-empathy/
The capacity for empathy seems to be innate, and is evident even in other species — the adult elephant that tried to rescue a baby rhino stuck in the mud despite being charged by its mother, as recounted by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy in “When Elephants Weep” (Delacorte Press, 1995).
Manifestations of empathy often show up early in life, as when a toddler brings a favorite toy or blanket to another child who is injured or in distress. Some experts maintain that infants display empathy when they whimper or cry upon hearing another baby cry.
Children may enter the world with different capacities for empathy, a result of neural connections in the brain. The capacity for empathy may be partly or wholly lacking in disorders like autism and schizophrenia, in which the mind is focused inward.
~nytimes.com/2010/02/16/health/16brod.html
