How is it that people can sometimes show such empathy when other times our ability to feel compassion seems to be in such short supply? A study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 15 shows that stress is a major factor.
A drug that blocks stress hormones increases the ability of college students and mice to "feel" the pain of a stranger, the study shows. That phenomenon, known as "emotional contagion of pain," is one form of empathy. In even better news, a shared round of the video game Rock Band worked just as well as the drugs among those undergrads.