Abandoning a pet is a sign of a lack of empathy. Empathy is the awareness and understanding of the emotions and feelings of others in their place. It is mainly reflected in the aspects related to emotional intelligence, such as self-control, empathy, listening skills and respect. Two thousand years ago, Confucius’ saying “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is similar to empathy in that the ability to understand the suffering of others allows us to avoid hurting them and develop altruistic thinking and behavior. The cultivation and development of empathy cannot be achieved without a combination of innate and acquired factors. The innate causes of empathy Rizzolatti and his research team named the specific nerve cells “mirror neurons”. For example, when Little A’s knee was injured and bleeding, I saw that my knee was hurting too. This is the “mirror neuron” at work. A series of studies on empathy and mirror neurons found that if a subject scores high on an empathy test, his mirror neurons are more active; conversely, if the mirror neuron circuit does not function properly and the empathy test score is low, the subject may not be able to read others’ intentions, express emotions, or engage in prosocial behavior. Acquired Causes of Influence on Empathy Children trained in persuasive induction have more mature moral development, which promotes empathy, empathy, and willingness to comply with parental demands, whereas children raised with frequent use of power-over methods are more likely to have immature moral performance and may become rebellious, resistant, and incapable of caring for others. The book “The Civilization of Empathy” by Jeremy Rikoff provides insight into the development of empathy. He argues that induced discipline is the best way to tap into the potential of empathy by teaching children the essence of human morality – the idea of taking responsibility, understanding others, helping others, and establishing fairness. When this educational intervention is done with love and fairness in mind, the child can truly realize that the suffering of others is caused by his or her own actions, and thus develop guilt and remorse and a sincere desire to make amends. This kind of induced discipline has a script-like routine: the child gets into trouble, after which the parent intervenes to induce, then the child develops empathetic pain and guilt, and finally the parent proposes a compensatory measure, such as apologizing or hugging the victim, so that the child can experience a sense of relief and eliminate the guilt.
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