Empathy is among humanity’s defining characteristics.
Understanding another person’s plight can inspire gentle
emotions and encourage nurturing behaviors.

Yet under certain circumstances, feelings of warmth, tenderness
and sympathy can, in fact, predict aggressive behaviors, according
to a recent study by two UB researchers.

But why?

That an expression of kindness might be manifest as a punch in
the nose can leave observers scratching their heads.

The answer is that it’s not about anger or feeling
personally threatened, says Michael J. Poulin, whose study,
“Empathy, Target Distress and Neurohormone Genes Interact to
Predict Aggression for Others — Even Without
Provocation,” with Anneke E.K. Buffone, a graduate student in
the Department of Psychology, was published in this month’s
edition of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Two neurohormones appear to be among the mechanisms contributing
to the counterintuitive response. These are chemicals that act as
both hormones in the blood stream and neurotransmitters in the
brain.

“Both oxytocin and vasopressin seem to serve a function
leading to increased ‘approach behaviors,’” says
Poulin, associate professor of psychology. “People are
motivated by social approach or getting closer to
others.”

But Poulin adds that people approach one another for many
reasons, including aggression, so it stands to reason that if
compassion is linked to the action of these hormones and these
hormones are linked to social approach behaviors that they might
help account for the link between compassion and aggression.

The researchers conducted a two-part study consisting of a
survey and an experiment. “The results of both indicate that
the feelings we broadly call empathic concern, or compassion, can
predict aggression on behalf of those in need,” says
Poulin.

The survey asked people to report on someone close to them and
explain how that person was threatened by a third-party. Then,
participants described their emotions and reaction to the
situation.

“That wasn’t surprising,” says Poulin.

People aggressing on behalf of others has been widely
researched, but Buffone and Poulin say “the idea that empathy
can drive aggression absent of provocation or injustice is quite
novel.”

In the experiment, participants provided a saliva sample in
order to measure neurohormone levels, then heard a
compassion-evoking story about someone they never met, a fictional
participant who was supposedly in another room with a second
fictional participant. The actual participants were informed that
the pair in the other room, strangers to each other, who were to
take a math test, would be exposed to a painful but harmless
stimulus (hot sauce) to measure the effects of physical pain on
performance. During the test, the real subject had a choice on how
much of a painful stimulus they would provide to the third party
who was competing with the person they had compassion toward.

“The results of both the survey and the experiment
indicate that the feelings we have when other people are in need
— what we broadly call empathic concern or compassion —
can predict aggression on behalf of those in need,” says
Poulin. “In situations where we care about someone very much,
as humans, we were motivated to benefit them, but if there is
someone else in the way, we may do things to harm that third
party.”

And that reaction is not because the third party has done
anything wrong.

Consider parents who in order to benefit their child in
competition might do something destructive to another challenger,
Poulin says, or soldiers who in battle think more of protecting a
comrade than fighting against a broader national threat.

The study adds that our response is because of love or
compassion for those we care about, he says.