The Age of Empathy

by Frans de Waal

  It’s impossible to watch chimps and not notice their smarts. Menzel told me that he sometimes speculates on how much more evidence there might be hidden in the many pages of handwritten notes he took during his experiments (I suggested, of course, that now that he’s retired, nothing should keep him from going back to those notes, but his shrug told me not to hold my breath). He strongly believed in watching over and over and thinking through what his observations might mean, even if he’d seen a certain behavior only once. He objected to calling single observations mere “anecdotes,” adding with a mischievous smile, “My definition of an anecdote is somebody else’s observation.” If you have seen something yourself, and followed the entire dynamic, there usually is no doubt in your mind of what to make of it. But others may be skeptical and need convincing.

  This is an important point, because the most striking examples of empathic perspective-taking, both in humans and animals, concern single incidents. One day, such an incident happened while I stood admiring water lilies in a large pond in Balboa Park, San Diego. The pond lacked any protection and was next to a path with people. A small child, perhaps three years old, raced through the crowd straight into the pond. I was surprised how quickly he sank: One moment we heard the splash, the next he was gone. But before anyone could take action, his mother jumped in, too. She emerged soon with her son in her arms. She must have been running after him, knowing what might happen, and without any hesitation, obviously fully dressed, followed him into the pond. If she hadn’t done so, who knows how long it might have taken to find the child, as the water was very murky.

  Here we see alertness to another’s situation at a level that’s impossible to mimic in the lab. We can ask people what they will do under certain circumstances, and we can test them under mildly upsetting conditions, but no one is going to reenact the near drowning of a child to see how its parents react. Yet this sort of situation, which is essentially untestable, produces by far the most interesting altruism and the most relevant to survival. The same applies to animals: We can explore how they react to hidden objects, we may even test their perception of distress calls, but who will set up experiments in which a friend or relative is being strangled by a rope around their neck? Not me, and not most other scientists. All we can go by is the occasional report of how apes respond to such calamities.

  For humans, anecdotes appear in the daily newspaper. For example, New Yorkers who escaped from the World Trade Center on 9/11 describe the brave firefighters who walked past them, burdened with lifesaving gear. The firefighters were going up as the people were coming down. People were beginning to panic, but the firefighters acted with great confidence, telling them to get out of the building, thus assuring an orderly exit while they themselves were walking toward their death.

  Or take Army Sergeant Tommy Rieman, who came under fire during a 2003 ambush in Iraq. Shielding his gunner from attack with his own body, he began returning fire. He suffered several bullet and shrapnel wounds, yet refused medical attention until the wounded had been extracted from the scene. Every natural calamity produces its heroes, who run into burning houses or dive into icy rivers to save total strangers. During the German occupation of Europe, scores of people risked their lives shielding Jews, such as Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. During famines, farmers commonly share precious food with hungry city-dwellers. The 2008 earthquake in central China even produced a national “Mother Number One,” a policewoman who breastfed a number of orphaned babies on the scene. The mother of an infant herself, Jiang Xiaojuan felt that she had milk to spare.

  None of this would happen without our capacity for empathy. There are, in fact, so many stories of human self-sacrifice that we rightly consider such behavior a characteristic of our species and are keen to recognize it in our ancestors. When the fossil of a completely toothless hominid was recently found in the Caucasus, scientists suggested that survival would have been impossible for this individual without extensive feeding and care. They concluded that these forebears must have been humanlike, even though they lived almost two million years ago, since they practiced compassion.

  But this assumes that compassion is restricted to our lineage. Some animals, too, feed those who have trouble feeding themselves. For example, in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, an old and sick female chimpanzee, named Madame Bee, had trouble climbing fruit trees, and sometimes depended on her daughters:

  She looked up at her daughters, then lay on the ground and watched as they moved about, searching for ripe fruits. After about ten minutes Little Bee climbed down. She carried one of the fruits by its stem in her mouth and had a second in one hand. As she reached the ground, Madame Bee gave a few soft grunts. Little Bee approached, also grunting, and placed the fruit from her hand on the ground beside her mother. She then sat nearby as the two females ate together.

  There is in fact so much evidence for altruism in apes that I will pick just a handful of stories to drive home my point. Some incidents, such as the one above, concern related individuals, but similar behavior occurs between unrelated ones. At our primate center, we have an old female, Peony, who spends her days with other chimpanzees in a large outdoor enclosure. On bad days, when her arthritis is flaring up, she has great trouble walking and climbing. But other females help her out. For example, Peony is huffing and puffing to get up into the climbing frame in which several apes have gathered for a grooming session. An unrelated younger female moves behind her, places both hands on her ample behind, and pushes her up with quite a bit of effort, until Peony has joined the rest.

  We have also seen Peony get up and very slowly move toward the water spigot, which is at quite a distance. Younger females would sometimes run ahead of her, take in some water, then return to Peony and give it to her. At first we had no idea what was going on, since all we saw was one female placing her mouth close to Peony’s, but after a while the pattern became clear: Peony would open her mouth wide and the younger female would spit a jet of water into it.

  Chimp Haven, an organization dedicated to the retirement of laboratory chimpanzees onto large forested islands, adopts many chimps without outdoor experience and hence with no knowledge of grass, bushes, and trees. One naïve female, Sheila, had formed a bond with an unrelated younger one, Sara, who did know trees and was not afraid to climb into them. Before Sheila learned to do the same from watching her friend, Sara would occasionally break out a leafy branch that she’d bring down specifically for Sheila to nibble on.

  Sara also once saved Sheila from a snake. Sara saw the snake first and sounded the alarm by barking loudly, whereupon Sheila approached to take a look. Sara held her friend back by her arm, vigorously pushing her backward. Sara was poking the snake with a stick and getting closer while continuing to hold Sheila back. It was later determined that the snake was poisonous.

  One might argue that none of these acts compares to running into a burning building: None are terribly risky or costly. In fact, I once heard an eminent psychologist tell an audience that altruism could indeed be found in other animals, but that they invariably gave priority to their own survival. “An ape will never jump into a lake to save another,” he declared with great aplomb. As soon as these words had left his mouth, however, I began racking my brain for contradictory information, sure that I’d heard otherwise. Apes and water are in fact a dangerous mix, much more so than humans and water, because apes can’t swim. Chimpanzees have been known to panic and drown in knee-deep water. They sometimes learn to overcome this fear, but for an ape to enter water takes extraordinary courage.

  Zoos often keep apes on islands surrounded by water-filled moats, and there indeed exist reports of them trying to save companions, sometimes with a fatal outcome for both rescuers and victims. One male lost his life when he waded into water to reach an infant who had been dropped by an incompetent mother. At another zoo, an infant chimpanzee hit an electric wire and panicked, jumping off his mother into the water, whereupon mother and son drowned together when she tried to sa
ve him. And when Washoe, the world’s first language-trained chimp, heard another female scream and hit the water, she raced across two electric wires that normally contained the apes to reach the victim, who was wildly thrashing about. Washoe waded into the slippery mud at the edge of the moat to grab one of the female’s flailing arms, and pulled her to safety.

  Obviously, hydrophobia cannot be overcome without an overwhelming motivation. Explanations in terms of mental calculations (“If I help her now, she will help me in the future”) don’t cut it: Why would anyone risk life and limb for such a shaky prediction? Only immediate emotions can make one abandon all caution. Such heroism is common in chimpanzee social life. For example, when a female reacts to the screams of her associate by defending her against a dominant male, she endangers herself on behalf of another. I have often seen female chimps take a serious beating for their friends. In the wild, even more risky rescues have been observed when chimpanzees rally in response to the screams of one among them to a leopard attack. In dense forest, the others usually can’t see what’s happening, but screams come in many intensities, and the apes recognize the extreme alarm in the victim’s voice. The forest immediately fills with angry calls and barks by all chimps within earshot, who quickly converge on the danger and rout the leopard, who is eager to escape such a mob.

  Commitment to others, emotional sensitivity to their situation, and understanding what kind of help might be effective is such a human combination that we often refer to it as being humane. I do believe that our species is special in the degree to which it puts itself into another’s shoes. We grasp how others feel and what they might need more fully than any other animal. Yet our species is not the first or only one to help others insightfully. Behaviorally speaking, the difference between a human and an ape jumping into water to save another isn’t that great. Motivationally speaking, the difference can’t be that great, either.

  Little Red Riding Hood

  How foolish of Little Red Riding Hood to think she was visiting Grandma! As every child knows, the bed was occupied by a big bad wolf.

  But does every child understand that Little Red Riding Hood was in fact unafraid? Obviously, if the girl knew what we know, she should be very afraid. But since she was ignorant, what was there to worry about? Asked about her state of mind, the correct answer is that she had no fear. Most children, however, give the wrong answer: They can’t help but project their own anxiety onto the story’s character.

  Psychologists count this as a failure: It shows an inability to take someone else’s perspective. But I see it differently. Children do in fact take Little Red Riding Hood’s viewpoint in a way that suits an emotionally charged situation. They put themselves in her place, imagining themselves standing in front of Grandma’s bed with their basket, but armed with their own knowledge. Naturally, they’re scared to death. Psychologists may want a rational evaluation, but children have a hard time extracting themselves from a confrontation with a salivating predator. Only by the age of seven or eight do they manage such distance—and we applaud them for understanding that Little Red Riding Hood actually isn’t afraid—but the real lesson here is the overwhelming power of emotional identification.

  Instead of staying neutral, children tend toward empathy. This primal connection automatically takes over if anyone they feel close to gets into trouble, and it applies equally to adults. Horror movies play to this tendency. They hit us below the belt, so to speak, relying on a far more visceral identification with the onscreen characters than, say, an Ingmar Bergman movie does. When our favorite character approaches the ax murderer hiding behind the shower curtain, we don’t worry too much about what she knows or doesn’t know.

  The child’s capacity to emotionally enter another’s shoes and guess what he or she feels has been tested. For example, a child watches an adult open a gift box. The child is not allowed to peek inside, but if the person happily exclaims “Oh boy!” the child guesses that there must be something good inside, such as candies. If the experimenter looks disappointed, on the other hand, saying “Oh no!” the child understands that the box must contain something distasteful, like broccoli. Their reaction is not that different from Menzel’s apes, who recognized if one among them had spotted hidden food or danger.

  Children read “hearts” well before they read minds. At a very young age, they already understand that other people have wants and needs, and that not everybody necessarily wants or needs the same. They recognize, for example, that a child looking for his rabbit will be happy to find it, whereas a child searching for his dog will be largely indifferent to finding a rabbit.

  We take such abilities for granted, but have you ever noticed that not everyone takes advantage of them? I’m talking about adults here, such as the two kinds of gift givers we’re all familiar with. Some friends will go out of their way to find you a gift that you might like. Knowing that I love opera or play the amateur baker at home, they buy me a CD of the latest Anna Netrebko performance or the best rye flour in town. I always feel that the amount of money spent is secondary to the thought, and these people are clearly intent on pleasing me. The other kind of gift giver arrives with what they like. They’ve never noticed that we don’t have a single blue item in the house, but since they love blue, they bestow an expensive blue vase upon us. People who fail to look beyond their own preferences ignore millions of years of evolution that have pushed our species to ever better perspective-taking.

  Every day, humans are prepared to improve the lives of others, including complete strangers, provided it isn’t too much trouble. Strictly speaking, this isn’t altruism, because altruism requires an effort. No, I am talking here of a situation that doesn’t set you back one bit. An example is what happened during a hike my wife and I once took in Canada. This was during our early days in North America, when every distance seemed ten times longer than we’d ever imagined. We were trying to escape from a lakeshore where giant mosquitoes were eating us alive and had decided to walk to the nearest town. We walked and walked over a never-ending dirt road under a bright sun. A large station wagon with a Canadian family slowed down next to us and the driver nonchalantly leaned out, asking “Do you need a ride?” When he told us how far the town still was, we were more than happy to accept. I still feel grateful.

  Low-cost assistance is common in humans, such as one tennis player helping up another.

  This is so-called low-cost altruism, when one isn’t going much out of the way for someone else but still offers substantial help. We do it all the time. If someone at the airport drops his boarding pass and I alert him to it, it costs me very little, but saves my fellow passenger much grief. We also customarily hold the door that we just went through for someone who comes after us, slide aside on a park bench for someone who wants to sit, hold back an unknown child who’s about to run onto the street at the wrong moment, or help an older person lift a heavy piece of luggage. Humans are great at this sort of assistance, at least under relatively comfortable circumstances, because the behavior vanishes as soon as the Titanic starts foundering. Under hardship, the cost of civility goes up.

  To be considerate, even in small ways, one needs empathic perspective-taking. One needs to understand the effect of one’s behavior on others. As I search for possible animal parallels, a curious behavior comes to mind that I saw among wild chimpanzees while standing in an almost dry river bed in the Mahale Mountains in Tanzania. The chimps were relaxing on large boulders, grooming one another. I had read about their so-called social scratch, but never seen it firsthand.

  Social scratching occurs when one ape walks up to another, vigorously scratches the other’s back a few times with his fingernails, then settles down to groom the other. More back-scratching may follow during the grooming session. The behavior itself cannot be hard to learn for an animal that commonly scratches itself, but here’s the rub: When one scratches oneself, this is usually in order to relieve itching (try not to scratch yourself for an hour, and you’ll appreciate its imp
ortance). But scratching someone else’s back is something else entirely: It doesn’t do any good for the scratcher himself.

  Unlike grooming, the social scratch is unlikely to be innate. We know this, because curiously only the Mahale chimps show this behavior. It hasn’t been documented in any other chimpanzee community. Anthropologists and primatologists call such group-specific behavior a “custom.” Customs are habits that are passed on within a community and are unique to that community. Eating with knife and fork is a human custom in the West, and eating with chopsticks a custom in the East. By itself, finding customs in chimpanzees is not that special, because these animals have lots of them, more than any species apart from ourselves. The real puzzle is how members of the Mahale community came to adopt a custom that favors others more than themselves.

  How did the Mahale chimpanzees develop an other-serving custom? The middle individual scratches another’s back with long strokes.

  How do we learn to hold a door open for others? You might say that we have been told to do so by our parents, which is undoubtedly true, but later on such habits are reinforced by experiencing them and appreciating the favor. From this we figure it might be nice to do the same for others. Could this be how the social scratch spread among the Mahale chimps? Imagine that one ape was accidentally scratched by another, and it felt so good that he decided to offer the same experience to a third, perhaps one whom he wanted to ingratiate himself with, such as the boss. This is entirely possible, but would imply perspective-taking. The scratcher would need to translate a bodily experience into an action that re-creates the same experience in somebody else. He’d need to realize that others feel what he feels.