The Power Of Empathy
What I watched: How to Keep Your Empathy Switched On with Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Science Director at Greater Good Science Center, filmed in 2019 at The Science of Happiness: A Greater Good Gathering. Posted January 12, 2022.
Many of us have been exposed to the concept of empathy. We read and hear that empathy is good. We need more of it in our lives. On its face, it’s a rather obvious truth.
Merriam-Webster defines empathy in part this way.
the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
That’s a good definition, but this one from Macmillan Dictionary I find more accessible.
the ability to understand how someone feels because you can imagine what it is like to be them
The reason I like the second definition best is that it fits nicely into the “put yourself in the other person’s shoes” suggestion most of us have heard at some point. That’s an immediately comprehendible definition that can be applied to our lives easily.
You encounter a situation. You stop to reflect. “I wonder how they feel right now? I wonder what circumstances they’re dealing with right now?” We can quickly put into practice fostering empathy to create a better interaction or understanding of an opinion or situation.
One of the things I love about Simon-Thomas’s presentation is that she points out that empathy is not just about reacting to the negative, but also to the positive. While it’s certainly important to demonstrate empathy with negative or contentious situations, it’s also important to do the same for positive, joyful situations too. Empathy should permeate everything we do and experience, the good and the bad.
Simon-Thomas more robustly defines empathy this way, breaking it into two separate but related definitions.
Affective Empathy: experiencing sensations within oneself in response to other people’s expressions or experiences.
Cognitive Empathy: recognizing and making sense of other people’s emotional expressions and situations.
I still like the Macmillan definition that parrots the putting ourselves in another’s shoes idea. I think both the affective and cognitive definitions are contained within that concept.
It’s pointed out that one of the ways the ability to have empathy is generated is by mimicking or mirroring another’s behavior. This is important because if we want to see more empathy in the world, we need to demonstrate it ourselves so others can replicate it, consciously or unconsciously.
Empathy has this formative role in guiding us to understand other people by feeling something ourselves.
Empathy is powerful. Fostering empathy in ourselves and others will always be of benefit to the situation or relationship. One of the words Simon-Thomas uses as a kissing cousin of empathy is compassion. My brilliant friend, Business Development Specialist, Speaker, and Leader, Beatrice Stonebanks, often mentions managing or collaborating with others from a place of compassion. I think Beatrice would agree empathy is a component of such compassion.
Affective and cognitive empathy are somewhat different, but for the purposes of my own understanding and usage of empathy it serves me best to think of it as a type of role reversal. That role reversal can be with another person I’m close to, someone I don’t know well or at all, or even a group of people.
Case in point is the current state of politics. While it’s no secret I’m an avowed liberal and have no use for the conservative right’s perspective, I also know, at least intellectually if not quite viscerally, that having empathy for those with opposing views can only benefit everyone.
Empathy is not the same as tolerating a person, view, action, or law that seeks to crush others under the weight of misguided ideology. But empathy still helps. If I can have empathy for a Republican voter who is voting as a reaction to some serious life struggles or unfortunate circumstances, it makes me better. It makes my own political stance stronger because I stand by it while having compassion for the other side.
That said, this is so difficult for me! I want to figuratively grab a former guy supporter and shake sense into them, screaming at the top of my lungs how could they support, as I see it, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and a host of otherings that seem to form the foundation of the right-wing’s mindset.
But what use is that really? It’s much more likely I will change a mind or arrive at a reasonable compromise if I utilize empathy. I’m sure I’ll violate this self-directive of engaging people and ideas with empathy, but I’m going to keep working on it. I think we all should.
Simon-Thomas talks about how we humans have evolved to provide each other with support. After primates fight and engage in conflict with one of them ending up the loser, rather than cast them out the other members of the group console the loser and bring them back into the tribe. Wanting to help each other is an innate drive. I believe this to be true. Apart from the most lost and misguided of human beings, I think we all want to help each other. When someone sees a lost traveler in their city or town, most people come to their aid with directions and guidance. Sure, some pass them by, but I think most of us are wired to help each other.
The details of the biological basis for empathy are discussed in the video and I’m going to leave the video to explain that to you. But it’s quite interesting.
Empathy matters. It’s beneficial to us individually and collectively. Simon-Thomas elaborates beautifully on the key benefits of empathy, and they’re concisely summarized as follows.
Key Benefits
Social competence: successful interaction, cooperation, and long term, supportive bonds
Resilience to stress
Benefits to others, e.g. relationship satisfaction, academic/professional success, patient health outcomes
A force for moral good
On benefit number 4, Simon-Thomas highlights what I get most excited about regarding empathy. Yes, I’m excited because it engenders better social interactions, closer bonds, resilience, and so on, but it’s that it’s a force for moral good that really excites me.
When we empathize with other people’s experiences, we’re more finely attuned to the opportunity to serve moral goodness. We understand that people are in pain. We can think about and imagine ways that we can behave in the world that commit our energies and dedicate ourselves to helping others.
The video then explains the influences that generate empathy in a given situation. One of the ideas she explains is that when we’re part of an “in” group we’re more likely to organically feel empathy because of our shared group similarities. Perhaps this is why we form affinity and tight social groups in the first place. We feel we’re like others in the group and they feel the same about us and it heightens the levels of empathy possible. When others outside of our inner sphere are perceived as significantly different than us, we can see them as a threat. That leads to our safety networks becoming depressed and we’re less amenable to empathize.
Let me return to political differences as a stark example of this. I hang out with fellow liberals, LGBTQ people, or environmentalists and I’m much more likely to feel empathy for them. When I encounter someone with a diametrically opposed political stance, perhaps someone who sees me as a gay man not deserving of any civil rights, I quite understandably perceive them as a threat.
However, I contend, at least intellectually, that those are the situations in which empathy is even more necessary. How am I going to bring someone around to my way of thinking or accepting me if I don’t on some level empathize with what’s going on inside them? As the video mentions, it’s by interacting with people who are outside of our usual groups that we chip away at the mutual feeling of threat or danger.
I’ve often said that I’d love to organize a project where us liberals from all walks of the more left or left of center political spectrum get on buses in large groups and travel the country meeting people in the conservative heartland. Sit down and talk to them. Share a meal. Have a drink together. Even argue, but civilly from a place of compassion. Maybe this national mess we’re in might resolve a bit if we did that.
The perceived social hierarchy can influence our levels of empathy. If we feel someone “deserves” their lot in life, we tend to be far less empathetic than if we feel someone’s situation is beyond their control. Of course, our perception of someone deserving something or not are acculturated into us from birth. Poor people are poor because of something they did or didn’t do. Gay men engage in sexual acts that might make them less than human to a right-wing conservative and therefore not deserving of equal rights. And so on.
But the truth is few people are where they are except through fate. The wealthy typically had a leg up getting there. Poverty is something that is systemic and self-perpetuating through no fault of that poor person. A drug addict is seen as somehow doing that to themselves with the judgmental person not seeing a host of circumstances and innate predilections that led to that addiction. Religion often sets up an othering, the believer and non-believer, with each camp feeling the other is either misguided or fallen from grace.
Simon-Thomas mentions ways we attempt to escape empathy that I found incredibly useful. One of the ways she suggests we can counter such resistance to empathy is to simply be there, be present with the person or situation. There are times when I just have to sit with someone for a while with whom I don’t immediately have empathy in order to begin to create at least some semblance of empathy.
I’ll leave you with ways Simon-Thomas says we can foster empathy.
Fostering Expansive, Sustained Empathy
Adopt an empathy-positive mindset (e.g. affirm values of egalitarianism, shared humanity, and trust)
Attune to others (put your devices away, look up)
Listen (without thinking about what to say or interrupting)
Channel your inner hero (you are a valuable resource to others)
Savor the enduring benefits of engaging and dismiss the short term appeal of avoiding imagined costs
The presenter concludes with this.
I’ll finish with a study that has shown that when we ask people to practice perspective taking, when we tell people read about another person’s story, and then we look at levels of prejudice and we look at levels of attitudes either positive or negative towards someone from an out group, that practice of perspective taking actually leads to less stereotypical attitudes, less prejudice, and more positive attitudes toward each other.
President Obama’s and President Biden’s Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, explained empathy this way and I think it’s beautifully stated.
Empathy is choosing to see ourselves in another despite our differences. It’s recognizing that the same humanity – the same desire for meaning, fulfillment and security – exists in each of us, even if it’s expressed uniquely.
We’re all unique. All of us. But we all want the same basic things in life. Let’s try to acknowledge that and live our lives with more empathy.
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