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Empathy as Spontaneous Communication: At the Intersection of the Traditional Social and Behavioral Sciences and the New Affective and Communication Sciences

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Abstract

Humans have within an ongoing symphony of feelings and desires functioning as voices of the genes. Genes also broadcast their voices outside the individual organism to the world via the displays and preattunements of spontaneous communication. In this chapter, we first consider subjectively experienced affect, the roles of the individual expressivity of senders and accuracy of receivers in communication, and dyad-level accuracy in unique sender-receiver pairings. Second, we consider the development of empathy, dyad-level variables such as interpersonal immediacy and synchrony, selfish gene theory, and expressivity as a marker of honest signaling and trustworthiness. We then consider emotion and empathy in media communication including the uncanny valley, trust in machines, empathy in entertainment including silly love songs and motion pictures, and the “empathy molecule” oxytocin.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Many suggest that higher-level emotions must involve cognitive appraisal, but the presence of higher-level emotions among animals and young children excludes this possibility (e.g., Bloom & Wynn, 2016; de Waal & Preston, 2017).

  2. 2.

    See Buck, Graham, Allred, and Hancock, this volume.

  3. 3.

    From the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

  4. 4.

    © 1980 by the J. Geils Band.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Ross Buck, Stephen Stifano, Brett Graham & Ryan J. Allred

  2. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Ross Buck, Stephen Stifano, Brett Graham & Ryan J. Allred

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  1. Ross Buck
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  2. Stephen Stifano
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Correspondence to Ross Buck .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Robert J. Sternberg

  2. Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, The University of Niš, Niš, Serbia

    Aleksandra Kostić

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Buck, R., Stifano, S., Graham, B., Allred, R.J. (2020). Empathy as Spontaneous Communication: At the Intersection of the Traditional Social and Behavioral Sciences and the New Affective and Communication Sciences. In: Sternberg, R.J., Kostić, A. (eds) Social Intelligence and Nonverbal Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34964-6_3

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