altruistically, but only 8% of those in
the US did. By one estimate, culture—
what it teaches about responsibility to
others, how collectivist or individualist
a society is, and other influences—has
10 times more influence on altruism
than genes do.
That makes sense, since genetically
based altruism focuses on relatives
and members of our group—that
is, those most like us—rather than
strangers and “others.” Since extreme
altruism is directed at strangers, it,
too, likely has a nongenetic explana-
tion in addition to a genetic one.
Acts of impulsive X-altruism, such
as saving a stranger on a subway track,
arise from extreme empathy, a brain
circuit that kicks in so powerfully that
seeing the suffering and distress of
another overrides considerations of
personal safety. These usually one-off
acts sit on the same continuum as
everyday altruism, with both driven
by a genetically based ability to feel
others’ distress and a culturally nur-
tured belief in putting one’s own needs
aside, at least temporarily, to help
someone else. Considered, as opposed
to impulsive, X-altruism has different
cognitive and emotional roots.
When Empathy Isn’t Enough
It’s usually not possible to scan the
brains of people while they’re in the
middle of impulsive X-altruism, but sci-
entists have done neuroimaging studies
of the kidney donors. When it comes to
considered X-altruism, while empathy
is necessary, the research shows, it is
far from sufficient. Rather, negative
emotions such as anxiety are key: a
palpable sense of itchy, jumpy, can’t-
sit-still angst at the mere thought of
not helping compels these considered
extreme altruists to act.
Amy Donohue, a stand-up comic,
donated a kidney when a woman
on Twitter pleaded with someone,
anyone, to save her mother’s life
by doing so. Although friends and
family describe Donahue as unusually
compassionate, she said she was
compelled by a different motivation:
a visceral anger at the selfishness she
sees throughout society. “When did
we forget to help other people?” she
told me when I asked her about this
extreme gesture. It was an anxious
anger she could calm only by acting as
she did.
In a brain-imaging study of such
donors, scientists found that their
right amygdala, which processes the
sense of fear, was about 8% larger
than in nondonors. The amygdala
also became significantly more active,
compared to controls’, when donors
looked at faces with fearful expres-
sions, Abigail Marsh of Georgetown
University and her colleagues saw.
That suggests greater sensitivity to
others’ distress—and, perhaps, a moti-
vation for X-altruism: Seeing others’
distress triggers it in themselves. That
is classic empathy. Indeed, the brains
of Marsh’s kidney donors showed as
much pain perception when seeing a
stranger’s thumb squashed as when
feeling their own squashed.
But the amygdala is also responsi-
ble for fear and vigilance, scanning
the world, and alerting the mind to
the presence of danger, generating a
palpable sense of fear, foreboding, and
anxiety. That supports the idea that
empathy alone isn’t enough for con-
sidered X-altruism: Instead, compas-
sion is the force that compels.The Difference
Compassion MakesIn her 2018 book Standing at the Edge,
anthropologist, hospice caregiver,
and Buddhist scholar Joan Halifax
draws a distinction between empa-
thy and compassion. Empathy, she
writes, “is feeling into another, while
compassion is feeling for another,
accompanied by the aspiration to
take action that benefits the other.”
Crucially, empathy can be crippling,
as when a physician or disaster
worker or psychologist identifies sostrongly with
others’ suffering
and anguish that
she becomes
paralyzed. “If
our experi-
ence of [oth-
ers’] suffering
overwhelms
us, empathic
distress can also
cause us to...
abandon others
in an attempt to protect ourselves
from suffering too heavy to bear,”
Halifax writes.
Compassion, in contrast, comes
with less emotional attachment and
more motivation. During compassion
meditation, the brain’s motor cortex
becomes active, as the desire to end
the suffering of others is accompa-
nied by a propulsive power. In one
study, Matthieu Ricard, a French-
born Buddhist monk and scholar,
engaged in empathy practice, con-
sciously trying to feel the distress
of others (he focused on suffering
Romanian orphans) while fMRI
recorded his brain activity. The more
he felt their pain and suffering, the
more quickly he felt overwhelmed
and exhausted.
But when he switched to com-
passion meditation, focusing on the
wish that others’ pain be alleviated
but without trying to feel it one-
self, Ricard never flagged. Empathy
practice and its quick descent into
empathic distress activated neural
networks associated with the distress
of suffering pain oneself and seeing
it in others, and can’t be sustained.
But compassion meditation activated
brain networks associated with con-
necting and belonging, with positive
emotions, and with maternal love.
Compassion, it seems, can make the
difference between feeling the pain of
others and doing something to help—a
lesson worth remembering, even for
those of us who are unlikely to play
subway-track hero or donate a kidney
to a stranger. ●SINCE EXTREME
ALTRUISM IS
DIRECTED AT
STRANGERS, IT,
TOO, LIKELY HAS
A NONGENETIC
EXPLANATION IN
ADDITION TO A
GENETIC ONE.August 2019 mindful 35brain science