IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revaec/v25y2012i4p299-313.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mirror neuron research and Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy: Three points of correspondence

Author

Listed:
  • L. Kiesling

Abstract

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith asserts that humans have an innate interest in the fortunes of other people and desire for sympathy with others. In Smith’s theory, sympathy is an imperfectly reflected combination of emotion and judgment when one observes someone (the agent) in a particular situation, and imagines being that person in that situation. That imagination produces a degree of interconnectedness among individuals. Recent neuroscience research on mirror neurons provides evidence consistent with Smith’s assertion, suggesting that humans have an innate capability to understand the mental states of others at a neural level. A mirror neuron fires both when an agent acts and when an agent observes that action being performed by another; the name derives from the “mirroring” of the action in the brain of the observer. This neural network and the capabilities arising from it have three points of correspondence with important aspects of the Smithian sympathetic process: an agent’s situation as a stimulus or connection between two similar but separate agents, an external perspective on the actions of others, and an innate imaginative capacity that enables an observer to imagine herself as the agent, in the agent’s situation. Both this sympathetic process and the mirror neuron system predispose individuals toward coordination of the expression of their emotions and of their actions. In Smith’s model this decentralized coordination leads to the emergence of social order, bolstered and reinforced by the emergence and evolution of informal and formal institutions grounded in the sympathetic process. Social order grounded in this sympathetic process relies on a sense of interconnectedness and on shared meanings of actions, and the mirror neuron system predisposes humans toward such interconnection. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Suggested Citation

  • L. Kiesling, 2012. "Mirror neuron research and Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy: Three points of correspondence," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 299-313, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:25:y:2012:i:4:p:299-313
    DOI: 10.1007/s11138-012-0175-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11138-012-0175-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11138-012-0175-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonidas Montes, 2004. "Adam Smith in Context," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-50440-0, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khalil, Elias, 2022. "Does Friendship Stem from Altruism? Adam Smith and the Distinction between Love-based and Interest-based Preferences," OSF Preprints ygpmq, Center for Open Science.
    2. Michele Bernasconi & Enrico Longo & Valeria Maggian, 2023. "When merit breeds luck (or not): an experimental study on distributive justice," Working Papers 2023:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    3. Khalil, Elias L., 2017. "Socialized view of man vs. rational choice theory: What does smith’s sympathy have to say?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 223-240.
    4. Walter G. Castro & Rafael E. Beltramino, 2018. "Moral markets: A marginalistic interpretation of Adam Smith," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 419-437, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meacci, Ferdinando, 2020. "The Link Between Capital Accumulation And Increasing Wages In An Updated Version Of Smith’S Theory Of Population," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 385-400, September.
    2. Laurie Bréban, 2014. "Smith on happiness: towards a gravitational theory," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 359-391, June.
    3. Sheila Dow, 2010. "The Psychology of Financial Markets: Keynes, Minsky and Emotional Finance," Chapters, in: Dimitri B. Papadimitriou & L. Randall Wray (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Hyman Minsky, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Laurie Bréban, 2017. "An Investigation into the Smithian System of Sympathy: from Cognition to Emotion," Working Papers hal-01467340, HAL.
    5. Carlos Rodríguez Braun, 2021. "Adam Smith’s liberalism," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 465-478, December.
    6. Schliesser, Eric, 2011. "Reading Adam Smith after Darwin: On the evolution of propensities, institutions, and sentiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 14-22, January.
    7. Ballandonne, Matthieu & Cersosimo, Igor, 2022. "Towards a “Text as Data” Approach in the History of Economics: An Application to Adam Smith’s Classics," OSF Preprints mg3zb, Center for Open Science.
    8. Jimena Hurtado, 2016. "Adam Smith's Impartial Spectator: Autonomy and Extended Selves," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 13(2), pages 298–305-2, May.
    9. Elias Khalil, 2006. "Weakness Of Will," Monash Economics Working Papers 06/06, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    10. Stuart Holland & Teresa Carla Oliveira, 2013. "Missing Links: Hume, Smith, Kant and Economic Methodology," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, vol. 2(2), pages 1-46, October.
    11. Jan Toporowski, 2013. "The Elgar Companion to Hyman Minsky," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 175-177, January.
    12. Simon Glaze, 2015. "Schools Out: Adam Smith and Pre-disciplinary International Political Economy," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(5), pages 679-701, October.
    13. Ryan Patrick Hanley, 2008. "Enlightened Nation Building: The “Science of the Legislator” in Adam Smith and Rousseau," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 219-234, April.
    14. Iara Vigo de Lima & Danielle Guizzo, 2015. "An Archaeology of Adam Smith's Epistemic Context," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 585-605, October.
    15. Elias L. Khalil, 2010. "Adam Smith’S Concept Of Self‐Command As A Solution To Dynamic Inconsistency And The Commitment Problem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 177-191, January.
    16. Pilar Piqué, 2019. "The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Ethics, jurisprudence and political economy throughout the intellectual history of Adam Smith," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 12(2), pages 75-96, May.
    17. Ivan Sternick, 2022. "To be and to appear to be: Adam Smith’s response to Mandeville and Rousseau on the problem of the moral status of self-love," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG 643, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
    18. Eric Schliesser, 2010. "Reading Adam Smith after Darwin: On the Evolution of Propensities, Institutions, and Sentiments," Post-Print hal-00921187, HAL.
    19. Lisa Herzog, 2011. "Higher and lower virtues in commercial society," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 10(4), pages 370-395, November.
    20. Vitantonio Gioia, 2020. "From “prudent man” to homo oeconomicus: Does historicity matter for the category of individualism?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 67(1), pages 47-67, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:25:y:2012:i:4:p:299-313. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.