Empathy
Altruism
Compassion
Generosity
Prosocial
Nurturing Styles
Roots of morality
The Critical Importance of Kindness
From www.theatlantic.com -December 19, 2014
Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.

Nurture children with empathy
Wausau Daily Herald
March 22, 2012
Bavolek finds empathy to be "the single most desirable quality in nurturing parenting" because empathy and abuse are "essentially incompatible." Parents who lack empathy might believe that they do not want to "spoil" their children and place great ...
Farm program plants seeds of empathy in abused children
Vancouver Sun
Compassion must be learned
Toronto Star
March  21 2012
While public discourse is focused on the taming of fiscal deficits worldwide, it has become clear there is another equally serious gap that must be addressed: the empathy deficit. 
Children aren't sociopaths
What Makes Us Human
Psychology Today Blog
November 22, 2010 
by Rosemary Joyce, Ph.D.  
Very young children can already reach sound moral judgments.
Young children-- as young as 3 years old-- decline to cooperate with people who have done something antisocial in their presence.
The Regularities of Giving 
Wired Science | Wired.com
By Samuel Arbesman
May 9, 2012
Prosocial behavior — generosity, altruism, and other behaviors that promote the social welfare of society — are not unpredictable. Just like many other human behaviors, when examined in the aggregate, they exhibit all sorts of regularities. People cooperate in certain predictable ways, and there are certain scaling laws between prosocial behaviors and the sizes of cities. Well, charity also obeys certain quantitative rules.
Studies indicate that children's health is boosted by having pets 
AnnArbor.com 
By Lorrie Shaw
Jul 21, 2012
Studies indicate that children's health is boosted by having pets - but are there other benefits as well?
Activating Empathy: Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters
Genetic and Neuro-Physiological Basis for Hyper-Empathy 
Psychology TodayMarch 11, 2012 by 
Sandra Brown, M.A. 
Pathological Relationships
From: Greater Good
Kindness Makes You Happy... and Happiness Makes You Kind
September 6, 2011
New research suggests that once you start doing nice things for other people, you might not want to stop.
Feeling Connected Makes Us Kind
September 15, 2011
A recent study suggests that our social connections inspire altruism.
From: MIT News
Moral judgments can be altered ... by magnets
March 30, 2010
By disrupting brain activity in a particular region, neuroscientists can sway people’s views of moral situations.
Researchers Argue Non-Human Empathy Studies
Laboratory Equipment
Empathy–recognizing and sharing feelings experienced by another individual– is a key human trait and to understand its evolution, numerous studies have looked for evidence of it in non-human animals. 
Empathy's neural mechanism
UAB Kaleidoscope
Aug 14, 2012 in News
Recently, the neural network of ToM responsible for interpreting the full meaning behind a single remark has been identified.
The Empathy Belly at Ford Motor Company 
| Pleasure and Pain
Teaching Children Skills for Empathy
by Shari LaRosa 
Aug 16, 2012
Brain Structure and Moral Attitudes
Red States, Blue States, Gray Matter
August 10, 2012 • By Tom Jacobs 
Researchers report people’s attitudes toward moral issues can be traced in part to differences in the structure of their brains.
Emotions Key to Judging Others
insciences
Mar 25, 2010
Study offers a new piece to the puzzle of how the human brain constructs morality. 
No Excuses – Empathy Needed
PsychCentral.com (blog)
Empathy is an essential quality for effective care-giving. No excuses. What I mean by that is: As Care-givers–We have No Excuse Not to Show Empathy! I know: You're exhausted, frustrated, hungry, down, misunderstood, unappreciated, overworked and ...
The Situation of Cultivating Conscience
Posted by Adam Benforado on February 6, 2012
The Situationist
Intangible Dividend of Antipoverty Effort: Happiness
NY Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
September 20, 2012
Equality and empathy may curb domestic violence
Macon Telegraph (blog)
September 25, 2012 
By Bruce Conn 
Compassionate Meditation Can Boost Empathy
By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor
PsychCentral
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 5, 2012
New research suggest a compassion-based meditation program can significantly improve an individual’s ability to read the emotions of others.
Understanding Why Autistic People May Reject Social Touch healthland.time.com
Mar 19, 2012
Area of the Brain That Processes Empathy Identified
ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2012) — An international team led by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York has for the first time shown that one area of the brain, called the anterior insular cortex, is the activity center of human empathy, whereas other areas of the brain are not. The study is published in the September 2012 issue of the journal Brain.
X. Gu, Z. Gao, X. Wang, X. Liu, R. T. Knight, P. R. Hof, J. Fan. Anterior insular cortex is necessary for empathetic pain perception. Brain, 2012; 135 (9): 2726 DOI:10.1093/brain/aws199
Decoding our good side
By Kevin Spurgaitis
United Church Observer
In recent years, neuroscientists have begun to illuminate this idea, tracing the evolutionary origins of empathy and uncovering the genes that dispose some individuals to senseless violence and others to acts of altruism. 
Video
7 Facts about Empathy - Goodnet
American economist and political advisor Jeremy Rifkin explains in Empathic Civilisation why we need to rethink the human narrative, and base it on empathy and compassion rather than aggression and animosity. History, biology and sociology of the human race prove it’s possible.
Tune in to the following 7 facts about empathy and watch this video.
www.goodnet.org/articles/741
Want to be More Generous? Follow Your Gut, Harvard Study Suggests
September 19, 2012
Carolyn Y. Johnson, Boston Globe
Want to be a more generous, cooperative person?
David Rand, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University led the work. “People cooperate a lot, but not always. So, from a cognitive perspective: Why? Or how?” Working with evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak , who studies the evolution of cooperation, and psychology professor Joshua Greene , who studies the cognitive basis of moral judgments . . .
NYT Well
Understanding How Children Develop Empathy
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
December 10, 2012
Babies can read your mind! Research shows one-year-olds can guess thoughts through empathy
By DAMIEN GAYLE
31 January 2013
Daily Mail
  • Study shows children as young as 18 months old can see the world from another's perspective
  • It was previously believed that this ability only emerges by the ages of four to seven
  • Study also shows that the development of the ability occurs at the same time across cultures 
At Ten Months Old Infants Are Able To Understand Thought Process Of Others
From www.medicalnewstoday.com - November 3, 2011
New research from the University of Missouri indicates that at 10 months, babies start to understand another person's thought process, providing new insights on how humans acquire knowledge and ho...
Jefferson researcher seeks ways to make doctors more empathetic
Philadelphia Inquirer
March 14, 2012
He helped create the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, wrote a textbook, Empathy in Patient Care, and began studying how empathy changes as doctors go through medical school. 
Physician Empathy Improves Clinical Outcomes
Outcome Magazine
09/10/2012 
Doctors who are empathetic toward their patients experience higher rates of success in managing patients’ health.
A large empirical study performed by a team of Thomas Jefferson University and Italian researchers confirmed the relationships between physician empathy and clinical outcomes.
Is Empathy An Outdated Concept?
PsychCentral.com (blog)
By David Sack, MD
I’ve always believed that empathy is a core part of what makes us human – and what makes the world a place we can and want to share with others. And I’m certainly not alone.

“Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and educators believe that bullying and other kinds of violence can indeed be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age,” reported Maia Szalavitz in an April 17, 2010 article in Time. “Over the past decade, research in empathy — the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes — has suggested that it is key, if not the key, to all human social interaction and morality.

Without empathy, we would have no cohesive society, no trust and no reason not to murder, cheat, steal or lie. At best, we would act only out of self-interest; at worst, we would be a collection of sociopaths.”
Rare Neurons Linked to Empathy and Self-Awareness Discovered in Monkey Brains 
Science Daily
May 21, 2012
Max Planck scientists have discovered brain cells in monkeys that may be linked to self-awareness and empathy in humans.
Shivering Liberals, Parched Conservatives
Huffington Post (blog)
By Wray Herbert
March 21 2012
Will your situation influence the empathy you feel for this stranger? Or what about her values and politics? What if the story mentions in passing that the hiker was a well-known gay rights activist, or that she was a staffer for a staunchly 
How the Rich are Different from the Poor II: Empathy
"Psych Your Mind"
Posted by Michael
August 12, 2012
Christian Science Monitor
Beyond standardized tests – teaching empathy
Ashoka Changemakers
By Alison Hockenberry
 June 8, 2012
More than ever children need skills in how to work with changing teams of collaborators and how to seek solutions rooted in the needs of others, the author says.
The Center for Inspired Teaching in Washington, D.C., invests in teachers to ensure that schools make the most of children's innate desire to learn.
From Sentient Insight
Emotion and Reasoning: The competing forces in moral judgment
By Yi Zhang, PhD
07/22/2011
Philosophers have long been interested in how and why people make judgments in moral dilemmas. Imagine the following scenario (let’s call it the “switch scenario”): a trolley is heading down the tracks toward five people. The only way to save those five lives is to hit a switch that diverts the track down a different track which will kill one person. During this scenario, most people would agree that it’s morally OK to kill the one person to save five others. This is referred to as a utilitarian judgment.
From Ethics Illustrated
Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy
by Yara Tercero-Parker, BEI Intern
June 24, 2011
Neuroscience and Compassion Training Predict a Better World
PsychCentral.com (blog)
However, the brain imagining piece found that participants in the compassion group showed more activity in a particular area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, and the brain imaging studies found that the higher the activation in this area of the brain
Game Builds Student Empathy
Teaching healthy habits of the mind through gaming
By Kelly Ni
Epoch Times Staff
August 14, 2012
Screen time is more commonplace than ever in children’s lives, and there is a desperate need for kind, yet compelling, virtual games, according to neuroscience researchers, educators, game developers, and those who cheered for Dr. Richard Davidson’s comments at a meeting in Washington, D.C.
Oxytocin Receptor Variant Boosts Empathy
FuturePundit
Nov 14, 2011
Music makes kids more empathetic, research finds
Sacramento BeeSep. 4, 2012
The study defined empathy as a child having an understanding of the emotional state of another.
What Is Empathy?
Forum tackles the issue of empathy.
September 23, 2012 by Lynne Soraya in Asperger's Diary
 Posts on Asperger’s Diary regarding empathy:
New findings illuminate basis in brain for social decisions, reactions
Science Codex
October 16, 2012
The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. 
People make more moral decisions when they think their heart is racing
British Psychological Society Research Digest
October 17, 2012
Compassion for Social Pain
Compassionate Seattle
by PamKM on November 29, 2009 
Neurological Roots of Compassion Run Deep
Wired Science | Wired.com
By Brandon Keim 
April 13, 2009
The Early Science of Altruism
Wired Science | Wired.com
By Brandon Keim
July 12, 2007
Videos: 60 Minutes
Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality
13:33/November 18, 2012
Starting life with a "narrow morality"
Psychology professor Paul Bloom tells Lesley Stahl that babies' "innate morality" is focused on their families and those who are similar to them, but enlightened humans learn to "expand their moral circle."
Transcript from "The Baby Lab"
aired on Nov. 18, 2012. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. 
Web Extras
Another View:
Social Evaluation or Simple Association? Simple Associations May Explain Moral Reasoning in Infants
Scarf D, Imuta K, Colombo M, Hayne H (2012) PLoS ONE 7(8): e42698. doi:10.1371
From: The Neurocritic
Music and Empathy
December 26, 2o12
More Music, More Empathy
December 30, 2012
The Empathy Formula
Sam Chaltain
www.samchaltain.com
Huff Post: The Blog
11/13/2012
Instead of offering disconnected but well-intentioned efforts to help children think, feel or act, would adults start to help children think, feel and act?
Disasters put kids’ altruism to the test
William Harms-Chicago 
Futurity
January 30, 2013 
After the 2008 earthquake in China, the willingness of 9-year-old children to share nearly tripled, but dropped by a third among 6-year-olds. Three years later, children in both age groups returned to pre-earthquake levels of altruism. 
Brain Study Shows That Moral Evaluations Of Harm Are Instant And Emotional
medicalnewstoday.com - December 3, 2012
People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.