Live fast, die shallow?

Interesting research about how humans develop a sense of morality has come out of the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute this spring. 

A study issued in April found that feelings of admiration and compassion, two prerequisites for a functioning moral compass, develop only with time and reflection -  the very process our hyperpaced digital culture discourages. Apparently, the human brain can quickly register information about other people’s physical pain without it having much emotional impact, but to absorb and appreciate another person’s virtues or social pain  requires a few more seconds. The effect lasts longer, too. 

The implication is that, the more we get our information from the stream of  news briefs on TV and the internet, the less likely we are to completely experience the emotions we need to feel in order to develop moral principles and make sound moral choices.

This sounds like corroboration of the suspicion many of us have had that, when heavily used, electronic media distance us emotionally from one another – one,  because we directly interact with each other less, and two, because those media expose us to a torrent of intense information about physical pain (crime news, true-life and fictional violence, accidents and disasters) that eventually numbs our ability to empathize with suffering. 

Read more about the study here.