Abigail Marsh

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Abigail Marsh (born 1976) is an American psychologist and neuroscientist who works as a professor at Georgetown University's Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, where she is the director of the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Marsh was born in 1976 [2] [3] and is from Tacoma, Washington. [4]

She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1999 with a bachelor of arts in psychology. [5] She received her PhD in social psychology from Harvard University in 2004, where she previously earned an MA in the same discipline in 2001. [6] [7]

Career

After graduating from Harvard, Marsh worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health until 2008. [8] [9] She then began to work at Georgetown University, and in October 2013, she became tenured. [10]

Marsh is the director of the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience at Georgetown, which conducts research on empathy, altruism, and other related topics through various methods, such as brain imaging and pharmacology. [9] Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. [6] [11] She is on the advisory board of Donor to Donor, an organization that promotes living kidney donation. [12] [13]

Marsh has written articles for Slate , [14] Psychology Today , [15] Business Insider , [16] The Guardian , [17] NPR, [18] The Wall Street Journal , [2] The Chronicle of Higher Education , [19] and other publications. In September 2016, she presented her story and work in a TED talk in Banff, Canada. [20] [21]

Research

Much of Marsh's work pertains to the study of altruism and why people may help others at their own cost. [22] More generally, she researches in the field of social and affective neuroscience and psychology. [20] On the topic of altruism, Marsh's research has yielded more information about the amygdala, showing that in altruists, the amygdalae tend to be larger, and in psychopaths it tends to be smaller. The amygdala is the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and fear. [3] In 2014, Marsh published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that concluded a spectrum existed with extreme altruists on one end and psychopaths at the other. [23] She has also published multiple studies that show that, when altruists watch someone else feel pain, they have levels of activity in similar regions of their brain as when they feel pain themselves, concluding that altruists are better at recognizing the fear of others. [24] Marsh leads work at Georgetown with altruistic donors, particularly those who have donated kidneys to strangers. [25]

Her work with children and adolescents has been used to show how different neural workings can lead to behavioral problems. [3] [26]

In 2019, Marsh did research on altruism in kidney donors and stem cell donors using behavioral investigations and brain imaging, as well as using those methods to study the causes of conduct problems in children and adolescents. [27] In the same year, she led a study that found, among other conclusions, that Americans are surprisingly successful at distinguishing other Americans from Australians by visual cues, like walking, waving one's hand, or smiling. [28]

Books

Good for Nothing

In 2017, Marsh published the book Good for Nothing, on the topic of altruists and psychopaths. [26]

The Fear Factor

Marsh's second book, The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between, which also came out in 2017, covers her research on aggression, altruism, and empathy in the context of neuroscience. [29] [30]

Awards and recognition

Marsh is a recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health's 2007 Richard J Wyatt Memorial Award for translational research. [6] In 2014, she received the Cozzarelli Prize for work on altruism she had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America|Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research she coauthored studied "extraordinary altruists", focusing on people who donated kidneys to strangers. [31] In 2016, Marsh was named a fellow in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. [3] In 2017, the S&R Foundation awarded her their Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good. [8] In 2018, Marsh was awarded the Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology for her 2017 book The Fear Factor. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Altruism</span> Principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others

Altruism is the principle and practice of concern for the well-being and/or happiness of other humans or animals above oneself. While objects of altruistic concern vary, it is an important moral value in many cultures and religions. It may be considered a synonym of selflessness, the opposite of selfishness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empathy</span> Capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing

Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form.

C. Daniel Batson is an American social psychologist. He has two doctoral degrees, in theology and psychology. Batson obtained his doctorate under John Darley and taught at the University of Kansas. He retired in 2006 and now is an emeritus professor in the psychology department of the University of Tennessee. He is best known for his contributions to the social psychology of altruism, empathic concern, and psychology of religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Feldman Barrett</span> American psychological scientist and neuroscientist

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a Canadian-American psychologist. She is a University Distinguished Professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where she focuses on affective science. She is a director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. Along with James Russell, she is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion Review. Along with James Gross, she founded the Society for Affective Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Decety</span> American neuroscientist

Jean Decety is an American–French neuroscientist specializing in developmental neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly social decision-making, empathy, moral reasoning, altruism, pro-social behavior, and more generally interpersonal relationships. He is Irving B. Harris Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

Empathy-altruism is a form of altruism based on moral emotions or feelings for others.

Prosocial behavior, or intent to benefit others, is a social behavior that "benefit[s] other people or society as a whole", "such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering". Obeying the rules and conforming to socially accepted behaviors are also regarded as prosocial behaviors. These actions may be motivated by culturally influenced value systems; empathy and concern about the welfare and rights of others; egoistic or practical concerns, such as one's social status or reputation, hope for direct or indirect reciprocity, or adherence to one's perceived system of fairness; or altruism, though the existence of pure altruism is somewhat disputed, and some have argued that this falls into the philosophical rather than psychological realm of debate. Evidence suggests that prosociality is central to the well-being of social groups across a range of scales, including schools. Prosocial behavior in the classroom can have a significant impact on a student's motivation for learning and contributions to the classroom and larger community. In the workplace, prosocial behaviour can have a significant impact on team psychological safety, as well as positive indirect effects on employee's helping behaviors and task performance. Empathy is a strong motive in eliciting prosocial behavior, and has deep evolutionary roots.

Empathic concern refers to other-oriented emotions elicited by, and congruent with the perceived welfare of, someone in need. These other-oriented emotions include feelings of tenderness, sympathy, compassion and soft-heartedness.

In psychology, empathic accuracy is a measure of how accurately one person can infer the thoughts and feelings of another person.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tania Singer</span> German social neuroscientist (1969-)

Tania Singer is a German psychologist and social neuroscientist and the scientific director of the Max Planck Society's Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin, Germany. Between 2007 and 2010, she became the inaugural chair of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich and was the co-director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research in Zurich. Her research focuses on the developmental, neuronal, and hormonal mechanisms underlying human social behavior and social emotions such as compassion and empathy. She is founder and principal investigator of the ReSource project, one of the largest longitudinal studies on the effects of mental training on brain plasticity as well as mental and physical health, co-funded by the European Research Council. She also collaborates with the macro-economist Dennis Snower on research on caring economics. Singer's Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama was published in 2015. She is the daughter of the neuroscientist Wolf Singer.

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Neuromorality is an emerging field of neuroscience that studies the connection between morality and neuronal function. Scientists use fMRI and psychological assessment together to investigate the neural basis of moral cognition and behavior. Evidence shows that the central hub of morality is the prefrontal cortex guiding activity to other nodes of the neuromoral network. A spectrum of functional characteristics within this network to give rise to both altruistic and psychopathological behavior. Evidence from the investigation of neuromorality has applications in both clinical neuropsychiatry and forensic neuropsychiatry.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science | SPSP". spsp.org.
  2. 1 2 "Author Abigail Marsh on the Black Eyed Peas". wsj.com. January 3, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Dec 2017, Teresa Wiltz '83 | Nov-. "What Makes Nice People Nice?". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ "How Fear Makes You Do Good or Evil". National Geographic News. January 3, 2018. Archived from the original on April 1, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Georgetown University Faculty Directory". gufaculty360.georgetown.edu.
  6. 1 2 3 "The S&R Kuno Award Winners | S&R Foundation". sandrfoundation.org. Archived from the original on August 5, 2020. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Researchers | Prospective Psychology". prospectivepsych.org.
  8. 1 2 "The Altruistic Brain: Making the Choice to Help". Boston College Events.
  9. 1 2 "Abigail Marsh – Roots of Empathy".[ permanent dead link ]
  10. ↑ "11 Faculty Receive Tenure". October 18, 2013.
  11. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1729406 – Neural and cognitive bases of costly altruism toward strangers". nsf.gov.
  12. ↑ "Abigail Marsh". Donor to Donor. Archived from the original on August 29, 2019. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  13. ↑ Strub, Chris. "Donor-to-Donor Kidney Chains Personify American Selflessness, Save Lives". Forbes.
  14. ↑ Marsh, Abigail (March 14, 2019). "Less Guilty by Reason of Neurological Defect" – via Slate.
  15. ↑ "Does Taking Pleasure in Giving to Others Make Us Selfish?". Psychology Today.
  16. ↑ Marsh, Abigail. "I studied children with psychopathic traits, and they all have trouble recognizing an emotion that we all feel". Business Insider.
  17. ↑ Marsh, Abigail (October 22, 2017). "Brain unpicked: what makes a child psychopathic? | Abigail Marsh". The Guardian– via theguardian.com.
  18. ↑ "Could a More Individualistic World Also Be a More Altruistic One?". NPR.org.
  19. ↑ Marsh, Abigail (October 1, 2017). "Choosing Fear" – via The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  20. 1 2 Marsh, Abigail. "Abigail Marsh | Speaker | TED". ted.com.
  21. ↑ Marsh, Abigail (September 16, 2016). "Why some people are more altruistic than others" – via ted.com.
  22. ↑ "Impulses, intent, and the science of evil". Science | AAAS. July 31, 2019.
  23. ↑ "Right on!". The Economist.
  24. ↑ Luong, Lia Kantrowitz, Shayla Love, Tony (May 7, 2019). "This Doctor's Rare Condition Might Help Us Understand the Roots of Empathy".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ↑ "For the first time, a neural link between altruism and empathy toward strangers". ScienceDaily.
  26. 1 2 Carter, Claire (October 24, 2017). "Inside minds of child psychopaths – and surprising trait they inherit from mums". mirror.
  27. ↑ "Abigail Marsh". Center for Computation & Technology.
  28. ↑ Moffett, Mark W. (May 10, 2019). "The Social Secret That Humans Share With Ants" – via wsj.com.
  29. ↑ "Abigail Marsh".
  30. ↑ Murphy, Heather (April 24, 2018). "Why It Seems as if Everyone Is Always Angry with You". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  31. ↑ "Marsh Receives Cozzarelli Prize for Outstanding Research on Altruism". Association for Psychological Science - APS.
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