Emile Bruneau: Tweaking the Empathy Gap


Emile Bruneau, a postdoctoral associate in Rebecca Saxe’s lab at the McGovern Institute, is interested in the psychology of human conflict. He is working with Saxe to figure out why empathy — the ability to feel compassion for another person’s suffering — often fails between members of opposing conflict groups. Bruneau is also trying to locate patterns of brain activity that correlate with empathy, in hopes of eventually using such measures to determine how well people respond to reconciliation programs aimed at boosting empathy between groups in conflict.

Read more about Emile Bruneau’s work in the New York Times magazine.