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Marceline had a close bond with Simon (ice king)

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Adventure Time | I Remember You - Sing Along | Cartoon Network

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this hits close to home

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tips

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Commit to the Act of Creating w/ Sarah Peck | Unmistakable Creative

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The history of the world I guess.

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"If you speak to man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his [mother] language, that goes to his heart."
- Nelson Mandela

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We're all connected to each other more than we might think.

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a social experiment done in enmark

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Ain't No Rest For the Wicked

-Cage the Elephant

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Joy and happiness aren't always the main feelings in stories.

"Cyberbully" is a movie about a high school teen's life being flipped upside down when she begins to get bullied online.
(can be watched on Hulu)

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Even great artists wanted to make connections, even if they didn't know how to make them.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2014/12/19/van-goghs-deeply-human-letters/

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A poem written on an online platform:

Connection Error
Most days I feel like a loading screen
I mean I always go in circles
move slow
end up
blank.

I have too much data stored
my memory is low
I need to send but no message is received
and all my files are corrupt.

Every soul I've met
has left me wanting
craving to know more
for that connection

But I will get the error 404
that tells me I have system failure
and once again I'll have to restart
try again.

Yet as I walk through doors
I'm left standing in the hallways
chasing the taste of laughter
only catching up with silence

Still I'm left with hope
for what's around that corner
even with charred fingertips
I turn those handles

Must be a glitch in my matrix
because even though I try
I can't erase my hard drive
and while all the nothing between us
still lingers...

I keep seeking corners.

- K.R.B.

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I wanted to do something similar to the Hula dance demonstration, but with Mexican folklore dance. I have a personal connection to this style of dance seeing as its been a part of my life for so long. Ballet Folklorico is a way to express ones self and to tell the story of their land. It's lovely and I will always hold it close to my heart.

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I was inspired by the Hula video shown in class and wanted to see if it could connect to another topic (of course it did).

Here's a scientific point of view on why we might dance.

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Credit: Shutterstock

Monday night's premiere of "Dancing with the Stars" has celebrities - among them Pamela Anderson, Buzz Aldrin and Kate Gosselin - showcasing their dance moves for the world and driving a point home for those sitting at home: For some people, dancing is a natural form of expression. For others with two left feet, dancing can be more of a spectacle.

The answer to why we dance - and even why some people are better dancers than others - can be found in evolution. A study published in the Public Library of Science's genetics journal in 2006 suggested that long ago the ability to dance was actually connected to the ability to survive.

According to the study, dancing was a way for our prehistoric ancestors to bond and communicate, particularly during tough times. As a result, scientists believe that early humans who were coordinated and rhythmic could have had an evolutionary advantage.

The researchers examined the DNA of a group of dancers and non-dancers and found that the dancers shared two genes associated with a predisposition for being good social communicators. In addition, the dancers were found to have higher levels of serotonin, known to boost moods in humans and mice.

Early humans might have danced to attract a mate, as far back as 1.5 million years ago, according to Steven J. Mithen, an archaeologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

A more recent study suggests babies are born to dance, with the ability to bop to the beat as young as 5 months old. The scientists aren't sure why humans might have this innate ability. Of course, not everyone is born with as much ability as the best dancers. One difference: body symmetry. Dancers are more symmetrical, research has shown.

So, while dancing is no longer a factor in our everyday survival, this season's contestants on "Dancing with the Stars" will be dancing for their survival on the show. And which of the celebrities will earn bragging rights and the coveted disco ball trophy? Only time (and fan votes) will tell.

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Monday night's premiere of "Dancing with the Stars" has celebrities - among them Pamela Anderson, Buzz Aldrin and Kate Gosselin - showcasing their dance moves for the world and driving a point home for those sitting at home: For some people, dancing is a natural form of expression.

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How does technology affect our compassion?

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Can technology make us more empathetic? | Romain Sepehr Vakilitabar | TEDxMileHigh

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Free advice on Empathy: 11 Year Old Edition

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How to Have Empathy, As Told By an 11-Year-Old | Free Advice

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11 year-old Adam Chernick is not your average 11-year-old. He wears a bowtie everyday, manages his own stock portfolio, and has the greatest toy plane collection we've ever seen. All this combines to make an awesome kid with some pretty smart advice.

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Empathy V.S. Sympathy

What is the difference?

(in English with Spanish subtitles)

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la empatia no es lo mismo que la simpatia

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El poder de la empatía The power of empathy  Brené Brown Subtitulado español

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El poder de la empatía es un corto animado que explica la diferencia entre la empatía y la compasión. No siempre somos capaces de conectar con las emociones de otras personas cuando nos muestran y comunican sus emociones, especialmente las negativas.

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How does story telling help us create connections?

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What Can Storytelling Teach Us About Creating Connection?  | Doug Lipman | TEDxWilmingtonSalon

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Thomas Pueyo brings insight on the topic of storytelling and what makes people listen to them.

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Why Stories Captivate | Tomas Pueyo | TEDxHumboldtBay

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Joseph Stromberg wrote a riveting article explaining what scientists expect to be the reason for feeling empathy

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Brain scans show that the neurological patterns linked with pangs of empathy for humans also occur when we see a robot treated harshly

smithsonian.com

If, while watching , your heart broke just a little bit when you saw the title character desperately travel across outer space in search of true love, it doesn't mean you're crazy. Sure, WALL-E is a robot. But its cute, anthropomorphized look and all too human desire to end its loneliness made us subconsciously forget that it is not human.

The ability to forget that key point wasn't just a matter of clever storytelling. New research shows that, at least in a small sample of people tested, the same neural patterns that occur when we feel empathy for a human onscreen are present in our brains when we see a robot onscreen.

A group of researchers from the University of Duisburg Essen in Germany used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to come to the finding, tracking blood flow in the brains of 14 study participants when they were shown videos of humans, robots and inanimate objects being treated either affectionately or harshly. The researchers, who will present their findings at the June International Communication Association conference in London, found that when participants were shown videos of a robot ( a product called Pleo, which resembles a dinosaur) petted, tickled and fed, areas in their limbic structures -a region of the brain believed to be involved in emotional responses-activated. When they were shown videos of a human getting a massage, the same sorts of neural activity occurred.

The same pattern also occurred when the participants were shown videos of the robots and humans being treated harshly-shaken, dropped or suffocated with a plastic bag-but with a twist. Interestingly, their fMRI results showed levels of limbic activity much greater when they saw humans treated poorly than when they saw the robots. This correlated with the responses on surveys that the participants took after watching the videos, on which they reported some empathy for the robots, but more for the humans.

The results suggest that the reason we feel empathy for robots like WALL-E is that, when we see them treated a certain manner, it triggers the same sort of neural activity as seeing a human treated that way. In a sense, our mind interprets the robot to be human-like in a way that it doesn't for, say, a rock. On the other hand, one possible explanation for why, despite this pattern, they still arouse less empathy than humans when being treated harshly is that we interpret them as something slightly less than human-something more like a pet.

Of course, this explanation comes with an important caveat: correlation vs. causation. We don't know for sure that these neurological patterns cause empathy, per se, just that they reliably occur at the same time. (Further, we can't say for sure that this effect is unique to robots-stuffed animals and dolls might engender the same feelings of empathy.)

Even if the patterns only correlate with empathy, though, they could be an effective objective measure of how much empathy people feel when observing various types of robots-and research into that area has practical implications that go far beyond Hollywood. One of the main areas, the scientists say, is in the engineering of robots that engage with humans on a frequent and long-term basis.

"One goal of current robotics research is to develop robotic companions that establish a long-term relationship with a human user, because robot companions can be useful and beneficial tools. They could assist elderly people in daily tasks and enable them to live longer autonomously in their homes, help disabled people in their environments, or keep patients engaged during the rehabilitation process," Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, the study's lead author, said in a press statement. "A common problem is that a new technology is exciting at the beginning, but this effect wears off especially when it comes to tasks like boring and repetitive exercise in rehabilitation. The development and implementation of uniquely humanlike abilities in robots like theory of mind, emotion and empathy is considered to have the potential to solve this dilemma."

In one previous long-term study, two out of six elderly participants appeared to develop emotional attachments with a companion robot-giving it a name, speaking to it and at times even smiling at it-while the other four did not.Further exploring our empathy for robots and figuring out just which of their characteristics (whether physical, such as having a human-like face, or behavioral, such as smiling or walking on two legs) lead more people to feel for them could help engineers design robotic devices that elicit more empathy over the long-term-and devices that people can readily connect with on an emotional level might make more effective rehab coaches and home companions over the long-term.

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About Joseph Stromberg

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Neuroscience Explores Why Humans Feel Empathy for Robots

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smithsonian.com If, while watching , your heart broke just a little bit when you saw the title character desperately travel across outer space in search of true love, it doesn't mean you're crazy. Sure, WALL-E is a robot. But its cute, anthropomorphized look and all too human desire to end its loneliness made us subconsciously forget that it is not human.

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"We may not like the fact that we are wired such that our well-being depends on our connections with others, but the facts are the facts."
- Gareth Cook

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When we experience social pain - a snub, a cruel word - the feeling is as real as physical pain. That finding is among those in a new book, , and it is part of scientist Matthew Lieberman's case that our need to connect is as fundamental as our need for food and water. He answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

You argue that our need to connect socially is "powerful." But just how powerful is it?

Different cultures have different beliefs about how important social connection and interdependence are to our lives. In the West, we like to think of ourselves as relatively immune to sway of those around us while we each pursue our personal destiny. But I think this is a story we like to tell ourselves rather than what really happens.

Across many studies of mammals, from the smallest rodents all the way to us humans, the data suggests that we are profoundly shaped by our social environment and that we suffer greatly when our social bonds are threatened or severed. When this happens in childhood it can lead to long-term health and educational problems. We may not like the fact that we are wired such that our well-being depends on our connections with others, but the facts are the facts.

What is the connection between physical pain and social pain? Why is this insight important?

Languages around the world use pain language to express social pain ("she broke my heart", "he hurt my feelings"), but this could have all just have been a metaphor. As it turns out it is more than a metaphor - social pain is real pain.

With respect to understanding human nature, I think this finding is pretty significant. The things that cause us to feel pain are things that are evolutionary recognized as threats to our survival and the existence of social pain is a sign that evolution has treated social connection like a necessity, not a luxury. It also alters our motivational landscape. We tend to assume that people's behavior is narrowly self-interested, focused on getting more material benefits for themselves and avoiding physical threats and the exertion of effort. But because of how social pain and pleasure are wired into our operating system, these are motivational ends in and of themselves. We don't focus on being connected solely in order to extract money and other resources from people - being connected needs no ulterior motive.

This has major consequences for how we think about structuring our organizations and institutions. At businesses worldwide, pay for performance is just about the only incentive used to motivate employees. However, praise and an environment free from social threats are also powerful motivators. Because social pain and pleasure haven't been a part of our theory of "who we are" we tend not to use these social motivators as much as we could.

You devote a section of your book to what you call "mindreading." What do you mean by this, and why do you see it as so essential?

First off, I'm not referring to the ESP kind of mindreading. I mean the everyday variety that each of us use in most social interactions. We have a profound proclivity towards trying to understand the thoughts and feelings bouncing around inside the skulls of people we interact with, characters on television, and even animated shapes moving around a computer screen. Although we are far from perfect at gleaning the actual mental states of others, the fact that we can do this at all gives us an unparalleled ability to cooperate and collaborate with others - using their goals to help drive our own behavior.

The funny thing is that thinking about others' thoughts doesn't feel particularly different from most kinds of analytical thinking we do. Yet, fMRI research shows that there are two distinct networks that support social and non-social thinking and that as one network increases its activity the other tends to quiet down - kind of like a neural seesaw. Here's the really fascinating thing. Whenever we finish doing some kind of non-social thinking, the network for social thinking comes back on like a reflex - almost instantly.

Why would the brain be set up to do this? We have recently found that this reflex prepares us to walk into the next moment of our lives focused on the minds behind the actions that we see from others. Evolution has placed a bet that the best thing for our brain to do in any spare moment is to get ready to see the world socially. I think that makes a major statement about the extent to which we are built to be social creatures.

One of the long-standing mysteries of psychology is the question of where the "self" comes from, and what the "self" even means. Does your research shed any light on this question?

Social psychologists have long speculated that the self is a much more social phenomenon then it intuitively feels like from the inside. There have certainly been studies over the years that are consistent with this idea, however neuroscience is bringing new data to bear that speaks directly to this idea.

There's a region of the brain called "medial prefrontal cortex" that essentially sits between your eyes. This region has been shown again and again to be activated the more a person is reflecting on themselves. It is the region that most clearly and unambiguously is associated with "self-processing." If you think about your favorite flavor of ice-cream, precious personal memories, or consider aspects of your personality (e.g. Are you generous? Are you messy?) you are likely to recruit this brain region.

Given that we tend to think of the self as the thing that separates us from others - that allows us to know how we are different and how to walk our own path - it would be surprising if this same medial prefrontal region was involved in allowing the beliefs of others to influence our own. But this is exactly what we have seen in several studies. The more active the medial prefrontal region is when someone is trying to persuade you of something (e.g. to wear sunscreen everyday) the more likely you'll be to change your tune and start using sunscreen regularly. Rather than being a hermetically sealed vault that separates us from others, our research suggests that the self is more of a Trojan horse, letting in the beliefs of others, under the cover of darkness and without us realizing it. This socially-influenced self helps to ensure that we'll have the same kind of beliefs and values as those of the people around us and this is a great catalyst for social harmony.

What does this research tell us about how we should be raising our children, and what does it mean for education?
I think the most important thing is to educate our children about what we are learning about the true role of our social nature in our happiness and success in life. Intellectually, I know all about these things, but if we don't learn them as children, I'm not sure they ever really get into our guts and guide our intuitive decision-making. I think kids would love learning about how the social world works and how their brain makes that possible.

The research on the social brain also leads to direct policy implications for education. The data are clear that children learn better when they learn in order to teach someone else than when they learn in order to take a test. Learning to teach someone else is prosocial and relies on the social networks of the brain. We had no idea these networks could promote memory but now we do. We ought to be doing much more peer learning, particularly age-staggered learning. My ideal situation would be a 14 year who has trouble in the classroom being assigned to teach a 12 year old. The teacher then becomes a coach helping to teach the 12 year old and the 14 year old will reap the benefits of prosocial learning.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and regular contributor to NewYorker.com. Gareth is also the series editor of Best American Infographics, and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

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Scientist Matthew Lieberman uncovers the neuroscience of human connections-and the broad implications for how we live our lives

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A pet and owner have an unbreakable bond

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how do the professionals do it?

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Pixar in a Box: Introduction to Storytelling

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sometimes we need patience along with empathy to make things better

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sesame street puts it simply

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"When you start to develop you powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you"
- Susan Sarandon (1946- )

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"If you're gonna make connections which are innovative... you have to not have the same bag of experience as everyone else does."
- Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

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Merriam Webster Definition

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Did you know?

Sympathy and empathy both refer to a caring response to the emotional state of another person, but a distinction between them is typically made: while sympathy is a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful, empathy involves actively sharing in the emotional experience of the other person.

Sympathy has been in use since the 16th century, and its greater age is reflected in its wider breadth of meanings, including "a feeling of loyalty" and "unity or harmony in action or effect." It comes ultimately from the Greek sympathēs, meaning "having common feelings, sympathetic," which was formed from syn- ("with, together with") and páthos, "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition." Empathy was modeled on sympathy; it was coined in the early 20th century as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). First applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology, empathy continues to have technical use in those fields that sympathy does not.

Did you know?

Compassion and empathy both refer to a caring response to someone else's distress. While empathy refers to an active sharing in the emotional experience of the other person, compassion adds to that emotional experience a desire to alleviate the person's distress.

... the story of Nellie Bly, the first female investigative reporter, who not only demanded justice from powerful institutions, but also insisted on dignity and compassion for the most vulnerable citizens. - The Christian Science Monitor, 17 Aug. 2022

Blonde clearly wants us to feel for Norma Jeane, but it dwells on her pain so obsessively ... that the movie's empathy feels like another form of exploitation. - Justin Chang, NPR, 23 Sept. 2022

The distinction between compassion and empathy is frequently a topic of exploration.

By empathy I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you're in pain and I feel your pain-I am feeling empathy toward you. If you're being anxious, I pick up your anxiety. If you're sad and I pick up your sadness, I'm being empathetic. And that's different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it. I care about you, but I don't necessarily pick up your feelings. ... [I]f I feel compassion for you, I'll be invigorated. I'll be happy and I'll try to make your life better. - Paul Bloom, quoted in Vox, 16 Jan. 2019

Compassion is a much older word; it's been part of the language since the 14th century, and comes ultimately from Latin com- and pati, meaning "to bear, suffer." Empathy is a 20th century coinage modeled on sympathy as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). It was first applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology and continues to have technical use in those fields.

Example Sentences

He felt great His months spent researching prison life gave him greater empathy with the poor. empathy towards convicts.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'empathy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Word History

Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion - more at pathos

1909, in the meaning defined at sense 2

The first known use of empathy was in 1909

Dictionary Entries Near empathy

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

Challenging Words You Should Know

Often used to describe "the march of time," what does inexorable mean?

Can you make 12 words with 7 letters?

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the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit... See the full definition

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It isn't just written words in a book, it's also music. American Authors are an American band whose genre consists of alternative rock and folk rock.