Empathy is Everything

The Google memo calls for less empathy because emotions are bad for work. This one paragraph pretty much sums up his whole message. I don’t agree with a word of it, but I still won’t deny him my empathy.

The Case for Empathy

This lack of empathy is not unique to America or to American politics. But it’s particularly potent this election year. There surely are many different reasons for this. When people are angry, or frightened, or frustrated, they lash out at those they blame for their woes. And Trump and company did a masterful job during the campaign of playing to that anger, fear, and frustration by telling voters whom to blame; immigrants, police protesters, and all the usual other suspects, for example. Indeed, one of the pillars of the white supremacist movement now corroding political power in America is the denigration, the dehumanization really, of those who look or pray or think differently.

Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self

Press your right index finger to the top of your right ear, where it meets your head. Now move up an inch and back an inch. You’re now pointing at your right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). This area has long been linked to empathy and selflessness. But Soutschek, by using magnetic fields to briefly shut down the rTPJ, has shown that it’s also involved in self-control. 

Which makes perfect sense. Empathy depends on your ability to overcome your own perspective, appreciate someone else’s, and step into their shoes. Self-control is essentially the same skill, except that those other shoes belong to your future self—a removed and hypothetical entity who might as well be a different person. So think of self-control as a kind of temporal selflessness. It’s Present You taking a hit to help out Future You.

Many people became aware of how emotional intelligence plays a role in a person’s success, both socially and professionally, with the publication of Dr. Daniel Goleman’s landmark book, "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ," in 1995. Since then, organizations like CASEL (co-founded by Dr. Goleman and Timothy Shriver) and the Developmental Studies Center (founded by Dr. Eric Shaps) have conducted research on social and emotional learning programs and the positive effects these programs have on student achievement. The Novo Foundation, the 1440 Foundation, and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust have invested in evidence-based social and emotional learning programs that promote, among other things, pro-social skills development, empathy-consciousness within schools, equity-based opportunities for disenfranchised youth, and self-regulation and mindfulness practices. 

“Stereotypes shape our perceptions of competence. We hold women to a higher standard in evaluations, and women also tend to evaluate themselves to a higher bar,” says Caroline Simard, director of research at the Clayman Institute. Such hidden biases could ultimately lead to “cumulative disadvantage over a woman’s career over time, resulting in lower access to key leadership positions and stretch assignments, advancement and pay,” she says.

For the first time, scientists have found evidence of specific and long-lasting changes in the brains of pregnant women. The changes were measured in brain areas that are responsible for social cognition and the ability to understand the thoughts and intentions of others, suggesting that they may intensify maternal bonding with a newborn.

Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy

The emphasis on empathy here and in schools nationwide is the latest front in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence. Many urban districts have found empathy workshops and curriculums help curb fighting and other misbehavior. In Scarsdale, a wealthy, high-performing district with few discipline problems to start with, educators see the lessons as grooming children to be better citizens and leaders by making them think twice before engaging in the name-calling, gossip and other forms of social humiliation that usually go unpunished.

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At Public School 114 in the South Bronx, where David A. Levine, author of “Teaching Empathy,” has been running workshops since 2006, the principal, Olivia Francis-Webber said that the number of fights had dropped to fewer than three a month — from one to three a week — and disciplinary referrals were down to about five a month from nearly 20.

Before, she said, teachers would “immediately admonish the child for bad behavior and send them to the office,” but since the empathy training began, they more often are “sitting down with students and finding out what’s wrong.”

Here in Scarsdale, the middle school has also seen an effect on behavior: Administrators have received three complaints about bullying or harassment on buses this year, compared with an average of two or three a month last year. Counselors have handed out fewer detentions for minor infractions such as chronic tardiness to class or running in the hallways.

Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy. We’ve gotten used to being connected all the time, but we have found ways around conversation — at least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable. But it is in this type of conversation — where we learn to make eye contact, to become aware of another person’s posture and tone, to comfort one another and respectfully challenge one another — that empathy and intimacy flourish. In these conversations, we learn who we are. 

Of course, we can find empathic conversations today, but the trend line is clear. It’s not only that we turn away from talking face to face to chat online. It’s that we don’t allow these conversations to happen in the first place because we keep our phones in the landscape.

If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. — Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s

Stressed males tend to become more self-centered and less able to distinguish their own emotions and intentions from those of other people. For women the exact opposite is true. Stress, this problem that haunts us every day, could be undermining not only our health but also our relationships with other people, especially for men. Stressed women, however, become more “prosocial,” according to new research. 

These are the main findings of a study carried out with the collaboration of Giorgia Silani, from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste. The study was coordinated by the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Unit of the University of Vienna and saw the participation of the University of Freiburg. This is the main finding of a study just published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, carried out with the collaboration of SISSA in Trieste. 

"There's a subtle boundary between the ability to identify with others and take on their perspective -- and therefore be empathic -- and the inability to distinguish between self and other, thus acting egocentrically" explains Silani. "To be truly empathic and behave prosocially it's important to maintain the ability to distinguish between self and other, and stress appears to play an important role in this." 

Stress is a psycho-biological mechanism that may have a positive function: it enables the individual to recruit additional resources when faced with a particularly demanding situation. The individual can cope with stress in one of two ways: by trying to reduce the internal load of "extra" resources being used, or, more simply, by seeking external support. "Our starting hypothesis was that stressed individuals tend to become more egocentric. Taking a self-centered perspective in fact reduces the emotional/cognitive load. We therefore expected that in the experimental conditions people would be less empathic" explains Claus Lamm, from the University of Vienna and one of the authors of the paper.

Empathy: Overrated?

Be kind, show understanding, do good—but, some scientists say, don’t try to feel others’ pain.

Empathy is a documented psychological phenomenon: If you see someone else poked in the hand, Bloom said, your own pain centers in the brain will light up. And scientists have demonstrated that you’re more likely to help someone whose pain you feel. The problem, as Bloom sees it, is that “because of its focusing properties, [empathy] can be innumerate, parochial, bigoted.” People are often more empathetic toward individuals who resemble themselves, a fact that can exacerbate already-existing social inequalities. And empathy can cause people to choose to embrace smaller goods at the expense of greater ones. "It's because of the zooming effect of empathy that the whole world cares more about a little girl stuck in a well than they do about the possible deaths of millions and millions due to climate change,” Bloom said.

Facebook has also found that people in the Middle East consume more video per person than any other region in the world. But, many people there also have "typical" smartphones (Srivinivasan says that Facebook doesn't call them "low-end"), so the company helps advertisers make sure that their videos will be easy to understand and to view no matter the screen size or resolution. 

The company's "empathy room" comes in handy there, too. 

Facebook has a dedicated room in its HQ filled with low-end Android smartphones and old flip phones. The room simulates the sluggish wireless connections that many experience abroad, so employees like Srivinivasan and her team can test out what viewing Facebook and ads would really be like for someone in Kenya or India. 

Facebook officially makes more than half of its advertising revenue overseas, so the empathy room and the work that Srivinivasan and the Creative Accelerator team do is more important than ever. 

Think It Up, a celebrity-studded production, is being broadcast across four major national television networks to raise money for our schools that major donors will match. Along with initiatives dedicated to improving STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education, it will highlight the work of Start Empathy, which prioritizes changemaking and empathy skills in school curricula and culture.This is a fast-growing movement, with an emerging Changemaker Schools network in the United States and worldwide.  Tucson’s Changemaker High School is featured in the broadcast.

Why changemaking, and why empathy? Because the game for young people has changed, and so have the rules. For generations, society had a distinctive organizational design characterized by a few people at the top of the system telling everyone else to repeat their specialized skills harmoniously, faster and faster. American education was therefore oriented toward turning out the company clerks and factory workers that our hierarchical, repetitive system required. 

But students today are growing up in a world where hierarchies are falling, silos are collapsing, and technology is lowering the barriers to active participation and innovation in virtually every aspect of society. We now carry with us devices packed with tools once available to only a few. Personal networks, collaboration platforms, printing presses, and media distribution channels — these are now at our fingertips ready to be applied to any problem or opportunity. 

This level of individual empowerment is producing unprecedented, accelerating, omnidirectional change in society. Evolutionary change has always been with us, but this transition from a world defined by continual repetition to one defined by continual change is as dramatic as shifting from a flat world to a round one. Once you understand this fact, you see the imperative for a new roadmap and a new learning framework to match the new landscape.

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That’s why we must place a premium on the foundational skill of empathy. Contributing to and succeeding in today’s world depends on open, fluid collaboration. It requires the capacity to value and integrate the contributions of everyone on the team. Static rules won’t ultimately keep up with the fire hose of societal and technological change around us, so cognitive empathy-based ethics is essential in everyday leadership and decision-making.

Education’s core mission of preparing students to succeed in life hinges particularly on the mastery of empathy.  K-12 education will have to reorient to the everyone-a-changemaker world and teach the empathy-based skills that are critical for success and contribution. Cognitive empathy-based ethics must be elevated as a foundational skill on a par with reading and math. Schools’ success or failure will be increasingly tied to children in the primarily grades grasping empathy, and teens in middle and high school self-identifying as changemakers and practicing core skills of changemaking.

'Buddy Benches' at Mount Pearl primary schools encourage empathy

The Buddy Bench has a simple concept: it teaches students how to be a friend.

"It's an ordinary park bench that's placed on the school playground and our students are taught that if you're looking for a playmate, you can sit on the bench," said Stanford. 

"It actually becomes a teaching tool. We're hoping it teaches students to be empathetic, and to be inclusive — and it also teaches students how to show kindness to others. If you're looking for a playmate, this lets other students know." 

Stanford told CBC's CrossTalk Tuesday the program is geared toward children in kindergarten to Grade 3. 

"We believe it's important to start at a young age … to teach children how to be empathetic," she said. 

"We do know that empathy is one of the most important parts of a child's education because it's part of social education — and teaching students empathy can go a long way towards eliminating anti-social behaviours, like leaving students out or even bullying."