When we see a happy face (or an angry one), it subtly generates the corresponding emotion in us. To the degree we take on the pace, posture, and facial expression of another person, we start to inhabit their emotional space; as our body mimics the other’s, we begin to experience emotional matching. Our nervous system is automatically set to engage in this emotional empathy. But how well we use this capacity is largely a learned ability. Animals－and people－who have been raised in extreme social isolation are poor at reading emotional cues in those around them not because they lack the basic circuitry for empathy but because, lacking emotional tutors, they have never learned to pay attention to these messages and so haven’t practiced this skill.