Ability to show empathy is mostly due to nurture, not nature

 Empathetic people are made, not born, new research suggests.

The largest ever study into the genetic basis of empathy suggests that just 10 per cent of the variation between people’s compassion and understanding is down to genes.

The vast majority of a person’s ability to recognise and respond appropriately to the needs and feelings of others appears to be based on social factors such as upbringing and environment.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge also confirmed previous studies suggesting that women are more empathetic than men, but found no genetic basis for the difference.

The study, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, discovered that genetic variants associated with lower empathy are also associated with higher risk for autism.

Varun Warrier, a Cambridge doctoral student who led the study. said: “This is an important step towards understanding the small but important role that genetics plays in empathy. But keep in mind that only a tenth of individual differences in empathy in the population are due to genetics. It will be equally important to understand the non-genetic factors that explain the other 90 per cent.”

The Cambridge team worked with 23andme, a personal genomics company, which took DNA samples from 46,000 customers and asked them to complete a questionnaire which measured their levels of empathy.

Professor Simon Baron-cohen said: “Finding that even a fraction of why we differ in empathy is due to genetic factors helps us understand people such as those with autism who struggle to imagine another person’s thoughts and feelings.”