Causes of Empathy

Where the ability to feel for others comes from is much debated today. One of the biggest debates I have seen is that of nature versus nurture. Nature being the genetics behind who you are and nurture being the environmental factors. People who like the nature side say people are "born that way"; for example enlightenment theorist Thomas Hobbes wrote that people were born "brutish and selfish" in his Leviathon. Nurture supporters like John Locke think people were born "tabula rasa", or blank slate, and are affected by outside influences.

I tend to think it is somewhere in the middle. The book, The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Harris talks about different environmental factors can have a huge effect on the personality and disposition but does not explain all of the "variance for most traits (such as adult IQ and the Big Five personality traits)". I think that empathy is one of these things that is affected by environment but can still have a genetic component. There are lots of people who grow up in awful conditions, but don't become sociopaths and sociopaths who grew up in ok conditions, like Dahmer or Bundy.

But i guess more to the point of this assignment, empathy for others that comes out in volunteer work or helping others. Most people accept that intelligence is sometimes an inherited trait, and an article by Deborah Ruf in the Roeper Review called "How Personality and Gender May Relate to Individual Attitudes Toward Caring for and About Others" suggests "heightened global awareness and caring can be attributes of high intelligence". If intelligence can be inherited, empathy probably can be too.