Cortical Empathy
In a study, 100% of adults correctly recognized fear on the face of a subject, while only 50% of teens recognized fear. If seeing the results of the study alone, I would have speculated that this is simply because teens are less likely to feel fear themselves (and do adults misinterpret other emotions, like anger or surprise, as fear?). However, the brain scans seem to show that there is something different going on in the brains — adults use more cortex. I am still rather skeptical, since I suspect that adults use more cortex for everything (cortex doesn’t really fully develop until adulthood). And it proves, IMO, that ability to calibrate other people’s emotions is something that can be learned. But it would be interesting to see more data, with different emotions and different situations.