Sunday, October 17, 2010

Veg*ism and Empathy: a scientific connection?

During the last week of May, an interesting article entitled The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans was published by a group of European researchers.

Say wha?

The article discussed an experiment wherein them there scientists tried to find out if vegetarians and vegans demonstrated empathy in a significantly different way, in brain function terms, in situations that are not food related. Different than who? Than, well, everyone else - those who consume animal products without considering the ramifications. (The veg*ns in the readership are exclaiming answers right now, but just keep your pants on. The findings are quite interesting, I promise!)

Lucky for those of us who don't make a hobby of reading peer reviewed scientific journal articles, Psychology Today published a chipper little blog post discussing the original article and its findings.

So... read, learn, enjoy!

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