The Age of Empathy

by Frans de Waal

  To have one ape act as a model for another, however, is easier said than done. I can tell a co-worker to demonstrate a particular action and to repeat it ten times in a row, but try telling that to an ape! We faced an uphill battle, and our eventual success owes much to a rather “chimpy” young woman from Scotland, Vicky Horner. Mind you, “chimpy” isn’t an insult for anyone who loves apes, and all I mean is that Vicky has the right body language (squatting down, no nervous movements, friendly disposition) and knows exactly which individuals act like divas, which ones demand respect, which just want to play and have fun, and which have eyes bigger than their bellies when there’s food around. She deals with each personality on its own quirky basis, so that all of them feel at ease. If Vicky’s rapport with apes was one weapon in our arsenal, the second was the rapport among the apes themselves. Most of our chimpanzees are either related or have grown up together, so they’re more than willing to pay attention to one another. Like a close human family, they’re one bickering and loving bunch, far more interested in one another than in us—the way apes ought to be.

  Vicky employs the so-called two-action method. The apes get a puzzle box that they can access in two ways. For example, one either pokes a stick into it, and food rolls out, or one uses the stick to lift a lever, and food rolls out. Both methods work equally well. First, we teach the poking technique to one member of the group, usually a high-ranking female, and let her demonstrate it. The whole group gathers around to see how she gets her M&Ms. Then we hand the box over to her group mates, who obviously—if there is any truth to apes being imitators—should now favor the poking technique, too. This is indeed what they do. Next, we repeat our experiment at the same field station on a second group, which lives out of sight of the first. Here we teach another female the lifting technique, and lo and behold, her entire group develops a preference for lifting. We thus artificially create two separate cultures: “lifters” and “pokers.”

  The beauty of this outcome is that if chimps were to learn things on their own, each group should show a mix of solutions, not a bias for one or the other technique. Clearly, the example given by one of their group mates makes a huge difference. In fact, when we gave naïve chimps the same box, without any demonstrations, none of them was able to get any food out of it!

  Next we tried a variation on the “telephone game” to see how information travels among multiple individuals. A new two-action box was built, one that could be opened by sliding a door to the side, or flipping the same door upward. We’d teach one individual to slide, after which another would watch the first, followed by a third watching the second, and so on. Even after six pairings, the last chimp still preferred sliding the door. Taking the same box to the other group, we produced an equally long chain that preferred the lifting solution.

  Following the same procedures with human children in Scotland, Andy obtained virtually identical results. I must admit to some jealousy, because with children such an experiment takes only a couple of days, whereas each time we set up a new experiment with our apes, we count on approximately a year to complete it. Our chimps live outdoors and participate on a volunteer basis. We call them by name, and just hope that they’ll come in for testing (in fact, they know not only their own names, but also the others’, which allows us to ask one chimp to fetch another). Adult males generally are too busy for our tests: Their power struggles and the need to keep an eye on one another’s sexual adventures have priority. Females, on the other hand, have their reproductive cycles and offspring. If they come in alone, they may be very upset by the separation, which doesn’t help our experiment, whereas if they do come with their youngest offspring, guess who will be playing with the box? That doesn’t do us much good, either. If females are sexually attractive—sporting their balloonlike genital swellings—they may be willing to participate, but there will be three males who want to join incessantly banging on the door, thus killing all concentration. Or it could be that two chimps in a paired test have, unbeknownst to us, had a spat in the morning and now refuse to even look at each other. “It’s always something,” as we say, which explains why scientists have traditionally preferred setups in which apes interact with a human experimenter. This way, at least one party is under control.

  Ape-to-ape testing is much harder but has huge payoffs. Allowed to imitate one another, apes entirely live up to their reputation. They’re literally in one another’s faces, leaning on one another, sometimes holding the model’s hand while she’s performing, or smelling her mouth when she’s chewing the goodies she has won. None of this would be possible with a human experimenter, who is usually kept at a safe distance. Adult apes are potentially dangerous, which is why close personal contact with humans is prohibited. In order to learn from others, though, contact makes all the difference. Our chimps watch their model’s every move, and often replicate the observed actions even before they’ve gained any rewards themselves. This means that they’ve learned purely from observation. This brings me back to the role of the body.

  How does one chimp imitate another? Is it because he identifies with the other and absorbs its body movements? Or could it be that he doesn’t need the other, and focuses on the box instead? Maybe all he needs to know is how the thing works. He may notice that the door slides to the side, or that something needs to be lifted up. The first kind of imitation involves reenactment of observed manipulations; the second merely requires technical know-how. Thanks to ingenious studies in which chimps were presented with a ghost box, we know which of these two explanations is correct. A ghost box derives its name from the fact that it magically opens and closes by itself so that no actor is needed. If technical know-how were all that mattered, such a box should suffice. But in fact, letting chimps watch a ghost box until they’re bored to death—with its various parts moving and producing rewards hundreds of times—doesn’t teach them anything.

  In order to learn from others, apes need to see actual fellow apes: Imitation requires identification with a body of flesh and blood. We’re beginning to realize how much human and animal cognition runs via the body. Instead of our brain being like a little computer that orders the body around, the body-brain relation is a two-way street. The body produces internal sensations and communicates with other bodies, out of which we construct social connections and an appreciation of the surrounding reality. Bodies insert themselves into everything we perceive or think. Did you know, for example, that physical condition colors perception? The same hill is assessed as steeper, just from looking at it, by a tired person than by a well-rested one. An outdoor target is judged as farther away than it really is by a person burdened with a heavy backpack than by one without it.

  Or ask a pianist to pick out his own performance from among others he’s listening to. Even if this is a new piece that the pianist has performed only once in silence (on an electronic piano without headphones on), he will be able to recognize his own play. While listening, he probably re-creates in his head the sort of bodily sensations that accompany an actual performance. He feels the closest match listening to himself, thus recognizing himself through his body as much as through his ears.

  The field of “embodied” cognition is still very much in its infancy but has profound implications for how we look at human relations. We involuntarily enter the bodies of those around us so that their movements and emotions echo within us as if they’re our own. This is what allows us, or other primates, to re-create what we have seen others do. Body-mapping is mostly hidden and unconscious but sometimes it “slips out,” such as when parents make chewing mouth movements while spoon-feeding their baby. They can’t help but act the way they feel their baby ought to. Similarly, parents watching a singing performance of their child often get completely into it, mouthing every word. I myself still remember as a boy standing on the sidelines of soccer games and involuntarily making kicking or jumping moves each time someone I was cheering for got the ball.

  Sultan (sitting) making an empathetic grasping mo
vement with his hand while watching Grande reach for bananas.

  The same can be seen in animals, as illustrated in an old black-and-white photograph of Wolfgang Köhler’s classic tool-use studies on chimpanzees. One ape, Grande, stands on top of wooden boxes that she has stacked up to reach bananas hung from the ceiling, while Sultan watches intently. Even though Sultan sits at a distance, he raises his arm in precise synchrony with Grande’s grasping movement. Another example comes from a chimpanzee filmed while using a heavy rock as a hammer to crack nuts. The actor is being observed by a younger ape, who swings his own (empty) hand down in sync every time the first one strikes the nut. Body-mapping provides a great shortcut to imitation.

  Identification is even more striking at moments of high emotion. I once saw a chimpanzee birth in the middle of the day. This is unusual: Our chimps tend to give birth at night or at least when there are no humans around, such as during a lunch break. From my observation window I saw a crowd gather around Mai—quickly and silently, as if drawn by some secret signal. Standing half upright with her legs slightly apart, Mai cupped an open hand underneath of her, ready to catch the baby when it would pop out. An older female, Atlanta, stood next to her in similar posture and made exactly the same hand movement, but between her own legs, where it served no purpose. When, after about ten minutes, the baby emerged—a healthy son—the crowd stirred. One chimpanzee screamed, and some embraced, showing how much everyone had been caught up in the process. Atlanta likely identified with Mai because she’d had many babies of her own. As a close friend, she groomed the new mother almost continuously in the following weeks.

  Similar empathy was described by Katy Payne, an American zoologist, for elephants:

  Once I saw an elephant mother do a subtle trunk-and-foot dance as she, without advancing, watched her son chase a fleeing wildebeest. I have danced like that myself while watching my children’s performances—and one of my children, I can’t resist telling you, is a circus acrobat.

  Not only do we mimic those with whom we identify, but mimicry in turn strengthens the bond. Human mothers and children play games of clapping hands either against each other or together in the same rhythm. These are games of synchronization. And what do lovers do when they first meet? They stroll long distances side by side, eat together, laugh together, dance together. Being in sync has a bonding effect. Think about dancing. Partners complement each other’s moves, anticipate them, or guide each other through their own movements. Dancing screams “We’re in synchrony!” which is the way animals have been bonding for millions of years.

  When a human experimenter imitates a young child’s movements (such as banging a toy on a table or jumping up and down exactly like the child), he elicits more smiles and attention than if he shows the same infantile behavior independently of the child. In romantic situations, people feel better about dates who lean back when they lean back, cross their legs when they do, pick up their glass when they do, and so on. The attraction to mimicry even translates into money. The Dutch may be notoriously stingy, but tips at restaurants are twice as high for waitresses who repeat their clients’ orders (“You asked for a salad without onions”) rather than just exclaim “My favorite!” or “Coming up!” Humans love the sound of their own echo.

  When I see synchrony and mimicry—whether it concerns yawning, laughing, dancing, or aping—I see social connection and bonding. I see an old herd instinct that has been taken up a notch. It goes beyond the tendency of a mass of individuals galloping in the same direction, crossing the river at the same time. The new level requires that one pay better attention to what others do and absorb how they do it. For example, I knew an old monkey matriarch with a curious drinking style. Instead of the typical slurping with her lips from the surface, she’d dip her entire underarm in the water, then lick the hair on her arm. Her children started doing the same, and then her grandchildren. The entire family was easy to recognize.

  There is also the case of a male chimpanzee who had injured his fingers in a fight and hobbled around leaning on a bent wrist instead of his knuckles. Soon all of the young chimpanzees in the colony were walking the same way in single file behind the unlucky male. Like chameleons changing their color to match the environment, primates automatically copy their surroundings.

  When I was a boy, my friends in the south of the Netherlands always ridiculed me when I came home from vacations in the north, where I played with boys from Amsterdam. They told me that I talked funny. Unconsciously, I’d return speaking a poor imitation of the harsh northern accent. The way our bodies—including voice, mood, posture, and so on—are influenced by surrounding bodies is one of the mysteries of human existence, but one that provides the glue that holds entire societies together. It’s also one of the most underestimated phenomena, especially in disciplines that view humans as rational decision makers. Instead of each individual independently weighing the pros and cons of his or her own actions, we occupy nodes within a tight network that connects all of us in both body and mind.

  This connectedness is no secret. We explicitly emphasize it in an art form that is literally universal. Just as there are no human cultures without language, there are none that lack music. Music engulfs us and affects our mood so that, if listened to by many people at once, the inevitable outcome is mood convergence. The entire audience gets uplifted, melancholic, reflective, and so on. Music seems designed for this purpose. I’m not necessarily thinking here of what music has become in Western concert halls with their stuffy, dressed-up audiences who aren’t even tapping their feet lest they be considered undignified. But even these audiences experience mood convergence: Mozart’s Requiem obviously affects a crowd differently than does a Strauss waltz. I’m thinking mostly of pop concerts at which thousands sing along with their idol while waving candles or cell phones through the air, or blues festivals, marching bands, gospel choirs, jazz funerals, even families singing “Happy Birthday,” all of which permit a more visceral, bodily reaction to the music. At the end of a Christmas dinner in Atlanta, for instance, our whole table sang along melodramatically to Elvis’ Christmas Album. The combination of great food, wine, friendship, and chant was intoxicating in more than one sense: We swung and laughed together, and ended up in the same spirit.

  I once played piano in a band. It would be an understatement to say that we had little success, but I did learn that performing together requires role-taking, generosity, and being in tune—literally—to a degree found in few other endeavors. Our favorite song was “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, which we tried to invest with as much drama as we could. We felt the song’s doom and gloom without knowing exactly what kind of house we were singing about, which I figured out only years later. What stuck with me, though, was the unifying effect of playing together.

  Animal examples are not hard to come by, and here I don’t just mean a howling pack of wolves, male chimpanzees hooting together to impress their neighbors, or the well-known dawn choruses of howler monkeys—said to be the loudest mammals on earth. I am referring to siamangs, which I heard for the first time in the jungles of Sumatra. Siamangs are large black gibbons who sing high up in the trees when the forest starts to heat up. It’s a happy, melodious sound that touched me at a much deeper level than birdsong, probably because it is produced by a mammal. Siamang song is more full-bodied than that of any bird.

  Their song usually starts with a few loud whoops, which gradually build into ever louder and more elaborate sequences amplified by their balloonlike throat sacs. Their sound carries for miles. At some point, the human listener correctly decides that a single animal can’t be producing it. For many animals, it’s the male’s job to keep intruders out, but with siamangs—which live in small family groups—both sexes work toward this end. The female produces high-pitched barks, whereas the male often utters piercing screams that at short range will put every hair on your body on end. Their wild and raucous songs grow in perfect unison into what has been called “the most complicated opus
sung by a land vertebrate other than man.” At the same time that the duet communicates “Stay out!” to other members of their species, it also proclaims “We’re one.”

  Like cart-pulling horses that work against each other before they work together, it takes time for siamangs to sing in harmony, and harmony may be critical to hold on to a partner or territory. Other siamangs can hear how close a pair is, and will move in if they discern discord. This is why German primatologist Thomas Geissmann noted: “Leaving a partner doesn’t appear to be very attractive because the duets of fresh couples are noticeably poor.” He found that couples that sang together a lot also spent more time together and synchronized their activities better.

  One can literally tell a good siamang marriage by its song.

  A Feeling Brain

  When Katy Payne offered us the image of a human mother resonating with her acrobat child, she unwittingly used the same example as the German psychologist responsible for the modern concept of empathy. We’re in suspense watching a high-wire artist, said Theodor Lipps (1851—1914), because we vicariously enter his body and thus share his experience. We’re on the rope with him. The German language elegantly captures this process in a single noun: Einfühlung (feeling into). Later, Lipps offered empatheia as its Greek equivalent, which means experiencing strong affection or passion. British and American psychologists embraced the latter term, which became “empathy.”