#EmotionalConditioning

A pioneering study shows empathy can be trained. Researchers used emotional conditioning to link another person’s happiness with personal rewards. The work, published in Psychological Science, suggests empathy is malleable and can lead to lasting acts of kindness beyond reward cues.

In Thailand, where kreng jai and social harmony are central, these findings arrive at a timely moment. Educators, employers, and community leaders seek practical methods to strengthen cooperation and mutual understanding. The study’s insights offer a framework for nurturing empathetic behavior across schools, workplaces, and families while respecting Thai cultural values.

A groundbreaking new study has found that empathy—a capacity long assumed to be innate or difficult to cultivate—can actually be trained by associating another person’s happiness with personal emotional rewards. This discovery, published in Psychological Science by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, indicates that emotional conditioning can strengthen empathy and encourage genuine acts of kindness, even in the absence of ongoing rewards (Neuroscience News).

Groundbreaking neuroscientific research has revealed that empathy—long considered an immutable personality trait—can be systematically enhanced through sophisticated emotional conditioning techniques that associate another person’s happiness with personal emotional rewards. This transformative discovery, published in Psychological Science by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, demonstrates that empathy represents a trainable capacity capable of generating genuine kindness behaviors that persist even after reward systems cease, offering profound implications for Thai society’s emphasis on social harmony and collective wellbeing.