Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Empathy for another’s physical pain has been demonstrated in humans [1] and mice [2]; in both species, empathy is stronger between familiars. Stress levels in stranger dyads are higher than in cagemate dyads or isolated mice [2, 3], suggesting that stress might be responsible for the absence of empathy for the pain of strangers. We show here that blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or receptors for adrenal stress hormones elicits the expression of emotional contagion (a form of empathy) in strangers of both species. Mice and undergraduates were tested for sensitivity to noxious stimulation alone and/or together (dyads). In familiar, but not stranger, pairs, dyadic testing was associated with increased pain behaviors or ratings compared to isolated testing. Pharmacological blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors enabled the expression of emotional contagion of pain in mouse and human stranger dyads, as did a shared gaming experience (the video game Rock Band) in human strangers. Our results demonstrate that emotional contagion is prevented, in an evolutionarily conserved manner, by the stress of a social interaction with an unfamiliar conspecific and can be evoked by blocking the endocrine stress response

Critique of Urban Violence: Bismarckian Transformations in Managua, Nicaragua

Urban contexts are widely conceived as inherently violent due to their putatively disorderly nature. Such a conception of violence effectively conceives it as singular and fundamentally destructive, neither of which necessarily hold universally true. Drawing on Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and the life history of Bismarck, a former gang member turned drug dealer turned property entrepreneur living in a poor neighbourhood in Managua, Nicaragua, this article highlights how different forms of urban violence interrelate with each other over time, and how they shape an individual’s urban experience and environment. In doing so, it underscores how urban violence is not a singular phenomenon, how it intertwines with a range of urban social processes, and how it is often socially constitutive rather than destructive. Seen from this perspective, the key question to ask is less to what extent violence is a hallmark of urban contexts but rather how different articulations of violence emerge in cities, and why it is that they can play such contrasting roles in the constitution of urban life