The Legacy of War: How Trauma Affects Empathy in Future Generations

Empathy towards out-groups is essential for maintaining peaceful and favourable relationships with other nations. The experience of war can damage the empathy between two nations. New developments in trauma studies reveal that the impacts of war can be inherited. This study investigated whether war experiences impact future generations' ability to empathize with out-groups with negative experiences. In this fMRI study, 30 healthy participants (15 individuals with a family history of trauma from the Iran and Iraq wars and 15 controls) viewed video clips of Iraqi, Afghan, and Iranian patients displaying facial expressions of pain. Next, they were asked to rate the level of distress shown. Participants from families not affected by war exhibit more empathy-related brain activity when watching videos of Iraqi patients. The affected regions are the corpus callosum, limbic and hippocampal areas, and, partially, the prefrontal lobe. Participants from the main group showed increased activity in the occipital lobe when watching Iraqi pain and insula regions when viewing video clips of the suffering of Irani patients, indicating a stronger response to unpleasant images and a preference for their group. The research found that war trauma negatively affects the next generation's empathetic feelings toward hostile ethnic groups.