Psychedelic Therapy: Boosting Emotional Empathy, But What About Cognitive Empathy?

Psychedelic therapy has been making a comeback in recent years, with more and more people curious about how substances like psilocybin (the magic in magic mushrooms), LSD, and ayahuasca can help improve mental health. One key area of interest is empathy—how we understand and connect with other people’s feelings and thoughts. Can psychedelics make us more empathetic? A new study says yes… but with a twist. Let’s dive into the details.

What’s the Deal with Empathy?

Before we dive into the psychedelic stuff, let’s talk about what empathy really means. There are two main kinds of empathy:

1. Emotional empathy: This is when you can feel what another person is feeling. It’s like when your friend is sad, and you instantly feel a pang of sadness, too. You’re emotionally “tuned in” to them.

2. Cognitive empathy: This one is more about understanding what another person is thinking or how they might see the world. It’s less about feeling and more about intellectually grasping their perspective.

The exciting part is that both of these skills are essential for good relationships, emotional well-being, and even thriving in psychotherapy. So, naturally, the question arises: Do psychedelics make us better at either (or both) kinds of empathy?

The Study That Sheds Light on Empathy and Psychedelics

A recent study published in BMC Neuroscience took a closer look at this very question. The researchers gave participants a dose of psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and then measured their ability to empathize. They were specifically curious about whether psilocybin could improve both emotional and cognitive empathy.

The results? Drumroll, please… emotional empathy showed a significant improvement, but cognitive empathy didn’t budge much.

Emotional Empathy Gets a Boost

The study found that after taking psilocybin, participants were better able to feel and share in the emotions of others. They were more in tune with the emotional states of people around them—whether it was joy, sadness, or even frustration. So, if you’ve ever wondered if psychedelics could make you more compassionate or understanding when it comes to others’ feelings, the answer seems to be “Yes!” They seem to open up your emotional awareness and make you more sensitive to what’s going on with the people around you.

This might explain why many people report feeling more connected to others when they take psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. For instance, patients undergoing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy often talk about feeling like they “get” their therapist on a deeper level or feeling more emotionally connected to themselves and others.

But there’s a catch—let’s talk about cognitive empathy.

Cognitive Empathy? Not So Much

Now, while emotional empathy got a nice little boost, cognitive empathy didn’t show the same kind of improvement. Cognitive empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes—thinking through their thought processes, beliefs, and perspectives. It’s a more intellectual kind of understanding. And according to this study, psilocybin didn’t seem to improve this type of empathy very much.

Why is that? Well, it could be that psilocybin isn’t necessarily geared toward improving how we think about others, but rather how we feel about them. The experience of being “one with everything” and feeling emotionally connected to others might be very different from the intellectual exercise of understanding someone’s thought patterns or life experiences.

Think of it this way: if emotional empathy is like feeling what someone else feels (like a shared tear at a sad movie), cognitive empathy would be more like understanding why someone feels that way—without necessarily feeling it yourself. Psychedelics, especially classical ones like psilocybin, seem to shine more in the emotional realm than in the cognitive one.

So, What Does This Mean for Psychedelic Psychotherapy?

This study’s findings give us some interesting insights into how psychedelic therapy might work. Therapies that involve psychedelics, like those using psilocybin for depression or anxiety, often involve a lot of emotional exploration. The enhanced emotional empathy shown in the study could be one of the reasons why people undergoing psychedelic therapy often report feeling a deeper emotional connection to themselves and their experiences. It’s like psychedelics might help break down emotional barriers, allowing people to face their feelings more directly and with greater understanding.

However, if you're looking for psychedelics to boost your ability to intellectually understand someone else's point of view (like in debates or negotiations), you might be a bit disappointed. Psychedelics might not turn you into the next emotional genius of perspective-taking. But they do seem to give you a leg up when it comes to feeling empathy on a gut level.

A Little Humor to Round It Out

So, if you’re hoping that a trip on mushrooms will make you the most emotionally enlightened, super-smart empath who always knows exactly what someone is thinking, you might need to set your expectations a little lower. Psychedelics can definitely make you feel more attuned to others, but if you need to win a debate or negotiate a peace treaty, you might want to rely on your regular old brainpower (and maybe some reading on psychology).

But hey, who says you can’t be both? A little emotional empathy to connect with others + cognitive empathy to understand them—now that’s the dream combo.

Conclusion: The Psychedelic Empathy Effect

The bottom line is that psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, seem to enhance emotional empathy, helping people feel more connected to the emotions of others. This could be incredibly helpful in therapeutic settings where emotional healing is the goal. However, when it comes to cognitive empathy—understanding the thoughts and perspectives of others—there’s not much of an effect. So, if you're hoping to ace your next social science exam with a psychedelic-enhanced brain, you might need to do a little more studying. But if you’re looking to connect with others on a deeper emotional level, psychedelics could be a fascinating tool to explore.