Born for Love

Empathy, the Brain, and Human Connections

by Maia Szalavitz and Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Friends (and Family) Are the Best Medicine

That's one reason abuse can be so damaging: it can actually wire in a response in which abuse is associated with stress relief. Read More

The Internet's Long Memory and Empathy

Research shows that it is easier to act inhumane when you dehumanize your opponent: the internet eases this because you can't see your victims' face. Read More

Shocker: Empathy Dropped 40% in College Students Since 2000

You wind up with a society that teaches kids that "you're on your own" and that helping others is for suckers. A country where the mystical new age "Secret" is that the rich deserve their wealth and got it by being positive and good--while the poor, too, get what's coming to them because they didn't try hard enough. Read More

Cocaine, Bad Boys, Nerds... and Twitter

Will this be the push that delivers a fine hit of recognition and praise -- or will I instead feel like the nerd on the edge of the playground? Read More

Save a Mom's Life-- And Learn How to Get People To Give

Irene Katrandjian, a 52-year-old mother of three, never thought she might need a stem cell transplant herself someday when she joined a donor registry several years back. "I heard that a little boy needed stem cells. I thought, 'Why wouldn't you help?' To me, it was a no-brainer."

Now, her children and others are conducting a stem cell blood drive to save Katrandjian's life. Read More

The Joy of Empathy: Why It Matters & How to Teach It to Your Kids

We all have the natural capacity (in the absence of some brain disorders) for empathy. However, like language, empathy requires particular experiences to promote learning. The 'words" and "grammar" of empathy are taught first via early nurturing experiences. Read More

The Dark Side of 'The Secret': Empathy and Inequality

We have a natural sense of fairness and a natural distaste for extreme inequality. However, we also have many ways to rationalize these empathic traits away. Read More

Touching Empathy

If kids don't get healthy touch, they are more vulnerable to predators who will ultimately harm them. Indeed, some cross-cultural research suggests that cultures which lavish more affection on infants and children are less violent and less prone to crime. Read More

Chronic Pain and Empathy

Unless you want to believe that granddad decided to try coke when he realized how great Oxy was and went off to find a connection, prior history of drug problems is a better explanation for most patients' drug problems than addiction caused by pain treatment. Read More

Empathy and the Economy

If you can trust others, you are also likely to be healthier-- the more connected people are and the safer they feel, the more creative they can be and the less stressful their lives are. Less stress means lower rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes. Read More

Tough Love or Tough Luck?

Some parents-like those of Laura Franklin who appear on ABC -take a tough approach that helps their child get into treatment. But when George McGovern and Robert "Woody" Johnson and their wives, cut off all contact with and support for their daughters, the daughters wound up dead. Read More

Want Empathetic Children? Take Joy in Empathy

We tend to think of empathy as something that comes from “knowing what it’s like” to feel pain—but the origins of empathy are in shared nurture.
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Liberals, Conservatives, Spanking and the NY Times

While there are genetic tendencies that affect these systems, they are also highly responsive to early life experience. If that experience is nurturing and empathetic, the system will wire up one way; if it is harsh and frightening, the same genes will produce a very different wiring. Read More

Born for Love: Welcome

In Born for Love, we present the argument that empathy is a natural human quality like language—one that relies on specific early experiences to develop properly. We argue that when these experiences of nurture and human contact are present for children, families, cultures and economies tend to flourish. When these early experiences are absent, however—and this is increasingly the case in the environments inhabited by today’s children—creative thought, progress and economic growth are threatened. Read More

Born for Love Bloggers

Bruce D. Perry MD, PhD is a world-renowned child psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is the Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University.

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Maia Szalavitz has published five books and has written for the New York Times, Time Magazine online, Elle, New Scientist, Psychology Today, and other major publications.

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