[anonymouskimmer]

https://neurosciencenews.com/empathy-human-robots-psychology...

> They performed electroencephalography (EEG) in 15 healthy adults who were observing pictures of either a human or robotic hand in painful or non-painful situations, such as a finger being cut by a knife. Event-related brain potentials for empathy toward humanoid robots in perceived pain were similar to those for empathy toward humans in pain. However, the beginning of the top-down process of empathy was weaker in empathy toward robots than toward humans.

So basically it seems we potentiate empathy toward similar kinds of beings and then maybe pattern-recognize that they are not similar to clamp down on the potentiated empathetic response?