COMUNICATO STAMPA
L’empatia influisce sulle reazioni emotive scaturite da decisioni difficili, ma non determina tali decisioni
Una ricerca SISSA ridimensiona la componente emotiva nelle decisioni morali

L’empatia e la capacità di comprendere e rendere esplicite le emozioni che proviamo non influiscono sulle nostre decisioni morali. Questo è quanto suggerisce un nuovo studio pubblicato sulla rivista Social Neuroscience e guidato dalla neuroscienziata della SISSA Marilena Aiello. Le nostre scelte non dipendono dalla nostra empatia. Quello che cambia, invece, è il coinvolgimento emotivo, più marcato nelle persone più empatiche. Soprattutto se si sceglie di prendere delle decisioni scomode pur di massimizzare il benessere comune.

An image taken from the Minor Planet Centre’s web applet (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net) showing the orbit of Minor Planet Bernardbowen

A minor planet in the Solar System will officially be known as Bernardbowen from today after Australian citizen science project theSkyNet won a competition to name the celestial body.

The minor planet was named by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in honour of their founding chairman Dr Bernard Bowen. Bernardbowen sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and takes 3.26 Earth years to orbit the Sun. The minor planet was discovered on October 28, 1991, and until now has been known as (6196) 1991 UO4. Based at ICRAR, theSkyNet has been running since 2011 and sees citizen scientists donating their spare computing power to help Australian astronomers uncover the mysteries of the Universe. Its 50,000-odd volunteers entered an International Astronomical Union (IAU) contest to name planets beyond our Solar System.
Project founders ICRAR also won the right to name a minor planet within our Solar System. Bernardbowen was one of 17 minor planets to be christened today.