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What should I know about the genetics of empathy especially in regards to racial differences and the development of nations? If empathy is genetic, should this be as important as a metric to look at as IQ?
There is a fundamental difference between empathy induced by direct stimulus + perceived closeness vs empathy induced by "aBsTrAcT" thoughts
Besides those two categories, the third component is that empathy can be also purely semantic, devoid of emotion.
See e.g. this partial example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_death
Gender studies have also found a consistent deficit of empathy from both men and women towards men
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
As for the pharmacology of empathy I am not well versed. Oxytocin has complex and paradoxical and hormesistic effects IIRC.
Some neurosteroids are relevant too and therefore maybe etifoxine.
As for the neural basis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron are the most famous component but only? apply for the first category of empathy I defined. I don't know what are the others.
Also there is a whole class of recreational drugs called empathogens, such as GHB and MDMA and therefore serotonin and VGCC channels are relevant.
The thing is most people stereotypically seen as good empaths are from the first category, which is often useless. People are extremely defficient in the two latters categories and that explain why most humans are locally behaving as psychopaths.
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