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so lately I've been thinking an enormous
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amount about a puzzle concerning how
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empathy works but before describing I
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should make sure that we're on the same
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page about what empathy is to me empathy
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is a useful umbrella term that captures
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at least three distinct but related
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processes through which one person
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responds to another person's emotions so
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let's say that I run into you and you
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were highly distressed a bunch of things
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might happen to me one I might catch
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your emotion and vicariously take on the
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same state that I see in you that's what
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I would call experience sharing too I
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might think about how you feel and why
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you feel the way you do and that type of
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explicit consideration of the world as
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someone else sees it is what I would
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call mentalizing and three I might
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develop some concern for your state and
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I might feel motivated to help you feel
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better that is what people these days
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called compassion also often known as
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empathic concern you know often seems
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like these processes sharing someone's
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emotions thinking about their emotions
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and wanting to improve their emotional
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state should always go together but in
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fact they split apart in all sorts of
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really interesting ways so for instance
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people with psychopathy oftentimes are
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perfectly able to understand what you
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feel but they feel no concern for your
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emotions and best they can leverage
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their understanding to manipulate and
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even harm you so I spent several years
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early in my career thinking about these
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emotional and empathic processes and how
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they interact with each other but in the
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last couple of years I've zoomed out and
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stopped thinking as much about the
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pieces that make up empathy and started
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thinking about why and when people
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empathize in the first place and this is
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where the puzzle comes in because there
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are two different narratives that you
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might hear about how empathy works
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they're both really compelling and very
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well supported and they're pretty much
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entirely contradictory with each other
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at least at first blush so the first
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narrative here
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is that empathy is automatic and this
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goes all the way back to Adam Smith who
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to me generated the first modern account
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of empathy in his beautiful book the
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Theory of Moral Sentiments so Smith
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described what he called the fellow
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feeling through which people take on
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each other states very similar to what I
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would call experience sharing his most
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famous example of this is a crowd
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watching a tightrope walker he said that
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this crowd without being able to help it
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would become nervous watching this
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person wobble over a precipice in their
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palms would start to sweat and they'd
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kind of balance and move their own
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bodies as though they were trying to
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survive a tightrope even though they
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were on relatively solid ground
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Smith was adamant that this was
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something that people could not control
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it just happened to them and I think
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that view dominates current theory about
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empathy and not without reason I mean I
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think that certainly jives with our
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intuition that we can't control our
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feeling of empathy like if I were to ask
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you to imagine watching someone suffer a
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horrendous sports injury you probably
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don't think well I had to figure out how
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much empathy I want to feel in this
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moment you probably feel as though a
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wave of discomfort and empathy would
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just wash over you and there's lots of
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evidence that that indeed is what
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happens for instance people take on each
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other's facial expressions within a
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fraction of a second of seeing someone
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else pose an expression and even if
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they're not aware that they're doing it
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this type of imitation happens quite
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early in development so babies in the
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first weeks of their lives will cry when
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they hear another infant crying and it's
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probably evolutionarily old as well so
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mice who we probably don't think have
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the same cognitive firepower that we do
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nonetheless appear to take on each other
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States my lab has been interested in
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another kind of signature of empathy
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which is what we call neural resonance
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this is the idea something that you can
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capture using techniques like fMRI that
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when I see you experience some state say
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make them
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movement or feel pain or exhibit some
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emotion my brain generates a pattern of
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activity consistent with what you're
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experiencing not with what I'm
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experiencing is it's as though my brain
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rehearses your experience for me so that
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I can understand it implicitly we and
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lots of other folks have demonstrated
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that this happens even absent any
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instruction to empathize and even when
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you distract people this suggests again
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that even this sort of neural signature
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of empathy might be occurring outside of
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our awareness or control so that's one
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narrative that empathy is totally
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automatic and again compelling backed by
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lots of evidence but if you believe that
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empathy always occurs automatically you
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run into a freight train of evidence to
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the contrary because as many of us know
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there are lots and lots of instances in
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which people could feel empathy but
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don't the kind of prototype case here is
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intergroup settings so people who are /
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a war or a political issue or even a
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sports rivalry often experience a
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collapse of their empathy in many cases
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these folks feel apathy for others on
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the other side of a group boundary so
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they fail to share or think about or
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feel concerned for those other people's
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emotions in other cases it gets even
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worse and people feel over antipathy
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towards others for instance taking
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pleasure when some misfortune befalls
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someone on the other side of a group
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boundary what's interesting to me is
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that this occurs not even only for group
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boundaries that are meaningful like say
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ethnicity or religion but even totally
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arbitrary groups such that if I were to
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divide us into a red and blue team
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without that taking on any more
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significance you would be more likely to
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experience empathy for fellow red team
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members than for me if apparently I'm on
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Team blue today and another interesting
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feature of this sort of group
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boundedness of empathy is that it
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doesn't just affect the amount of
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empathy we feel it also appears
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affect whether we feel empathy
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automatically or not
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so people have used EEG for instance to
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demonstrate that folks exhibit less
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neural resonance for the pain of
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out-group as compared to in group
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members and that difference happens
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within 200 milliseconds so it's not that
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you experience automatic empathy and
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tamp it down if you're in an intergroup
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setting it feels like in those settings
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empathy doesn't occur at all in the
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first place so you've got these two
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narratives on the one hand empathy
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appears automatic on the other hand it
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shifts diminishing and expanding with
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features of your situation how can we
00:07:17
square these two accounts well that's
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what I've been thinking about and asking
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myself a lot these days and I feel as
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though I've arrived at least
00:07:24
preliminarily at an answer which is that
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you can pretty much powerfully resolve
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the tension between those narratives if
00:07:32
you let go of some assumptions about how
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empathy works and in particular the idea
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that empathy is out of our control
00:07:39
lately I've enjoyed thinking about
00:07:42
empathy not as something that happens to
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us but rather as a choice that we make
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constantly even if we're not aware we're
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making it I feel like we often make an
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implicit or explicit decision as to
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whether we want to engage with someone's
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emotions or not based on the motives we
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might have for doing so so let me try to
00:08:03
unpack this I'll give you an example
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let's say that you're watching TV and
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you learn that the next thing coming on
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the station that you're watching is a
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telethon meant to raise awareness of
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leukemia and this will include kids who
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are suffering from leukemia telling
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their story I bet you would predict and
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I bet you'd be right that watching this
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telethon would cause lots of empathy to
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bubble up within you so the question is
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do you stick to the channel and watch it
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or do you turn away well I think there
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are lots of motives you might have for
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watching for one you might be curious
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about the plight of folks living with
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leukemia you might even feel that it's
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your moral responsibility to find out
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more about this group you might also
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imagine that you'll be inspired to
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donate money to this cause and that that
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would make you
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as though you're living in accordance
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with your virtue with with your virtues
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and principles there might also be
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reasons that you don't want to watch
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this telethon for one it might hurt it
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will probably be heart-wrenching to hear
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these stories it might also make you
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experience guilt especially if after
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watching this you choose not to donate
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right if you're strapped for cash
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you might feel as though you're placed
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in a double bind where you have to
00:09:18
choose between your wallet on the one
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hand and your conscience on the other
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hand and those might be situations you
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want to avoid and one way to help you
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avoid those situations would be by
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avoiding empathy in the first place so I
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call these motives respectively empathic
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approach motives and empathic avoidance
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motives sort of people's drives that
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push them towards and away from other
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people's emotions and connecting with
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those emotions I feel like people carry
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those motives out in lots of different
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ways so for instance if I don't want to
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empathize with you one strategy is I can
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just avoid you altogether and people
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often avoid situations that they think
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will inspire empathy in them I can also
00:10:01
simply not pay attention to your
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emotions or decide through some
00:10:05
appraisal process that your emotions are
00:10:08
not important or at least less important
00:10:10
than my own so over the last couple of
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years I've gathered lots of evidence in
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support of a motivated view of empathy
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so for instance when it comes to
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avoiding empathy we can go to the
00:10:23
example I just mentioned you might be
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worried that empathy will cause you to
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feel guilty or morally obliged to part
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with some of your money it might be a
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costly emotion so it turns out that Dan
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Batson about 20 years ago ran a
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beautiful study in which he demonstrated
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this in a really simple experiment he
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told some people that they'd have a
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chance to donate to a homeless person
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and he told other people that they'd
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have no such opportunity he then asked
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people which of two appeals they wanted
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to hear one very objective story about
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this person's life and another that was
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really emotionally evocative
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well it turns out that people who
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thought they'd have a chance to donate
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tended to choose the emotionally neutral
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version of the story consistent with the
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idea that they want to avoid
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experiencing empathy another reason you
00:11:15
might not want to experience empathy is
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if you're in the position where you have
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to harm somebody so let's say that
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you're a linebacker for instance and you
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have to deliver a vicious tackle to a
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running back it probably would behoove
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you to not feel everything that that
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person is feeling and think a lot about
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their emotions or the pain you're
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causing them
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this happens in much darker contexts of
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course in war soldiers are explicitly
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encouraged to dehumanize their enemy
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likely to make it less guilt inducing
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when they have to to harm those people
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this is what my colleague al bandura
00:11:54
would call moral disengagement and Alan
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is colleagues a few years ago
00:11:58
demonstrated this in a very interesting
00:12:01
and to me troubling way they found that
00:12:04
prison guards and especially
00:12:06
executioner's tended to downplay the
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suffering of death row inmates
00:12:11
consistent with their motive to do so
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and avoid guilt at their at their own
00:12:16
actions if you see this all the time in
00:12:18
modern warfare drone strikes for
00:12:21
instance are a great way to avoid
00:12:23
empathizing with the targets of an
00:12:26
attack like I said people are not just
00:12:29
motivated to avoid empathy there's lots
00:12:32
of evidence that people approach empathy
00:12:34
as well so one example of this is
00:12:37
loneliness people who are lonely feel a
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deep desire to connect with others and
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in many cases they do so by ramping up
00:12:45
their empathy and focusing more on other
00:12:48
people's minds and experiences so Jon
00:12:52
Manor and Adam Waits and others have
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demonstrated that if you induce someone
00:12:57
to be lonely they'll pay more attention
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to other people's minds connect more
00:13:02
with their emotions and they'll even pay
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attention to minds that are not there
00:13:05
for instance anthropomorphizing objects
00:13:08
like robots I think we see this to an
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extreme degree in the movie castaway
00:13:12
where
00:13:13
hangsen so lonely that he
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anthropomorphize is and empathizes with
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a volleyball wilson right and sort of
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thinks a lot and interacts a lot with a
00:13:22
mind that he imagines to be there that
00:13:25
it's actually not another reason you
00:13:28
might want to empathize is when it's
00:13:30
socially desirable to do so so if you
00:13:33
learn that people around you really
00:13:35
value empathy well then you might be
00:13:38
encouraged to experience empathy
00:13:40
yourself one of my favorite studies on
00:13:42
this works over the concept of gender
00:13:45
roles in empathy so Thomas and mayo
00:13:48
these psychologists probably seven or
00:13:51
eight years ago ran a study in which
00:13:53
they first started out by demonstrating
00:13:55
that on a standard empathy test
00:13:57
heterosexual men shared a little bit
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worse than women so this of course plays
00:14:02
into the stereotype that women are more
00:14:04
empathic than men but the reason that
00:14:06
like this study so much is because
00:14:08
Thomas and Mayo demonstrated this is not
00:14:10
a constitutional difference in the
00:14:12
abilities of men and women but probably
00:14:16
instead represents a difference in their
00:14:17
motivation how do they demonstrate this
00:14:20
through a really clever technique in a
00:14:22
second study these scientists convinced
00:14:26
again heterosexual men that women find
00:14:29
sensitive guys really attractive it
00:14:32
turns out that this motivation
00:14:34
eliminated the gender gap in empathy
00:14:36
performance so straight men who believed
00:14:40
that being empathic would make them
00:14:42
attractive were became more empathic
00:14:44
their their empathy increased again
00:14:46
consistent with this motivated account
00:14:49
of people choosing empathy or choosing
00:14:52
to not empathize depending on their
00:14:54
goals in a given situation so what is
00:14:56
empathy and where does it come from in
00:14:59
our intellectual landscape
00:15:01
oddly enough empathy a term generated by
00:15:05
a German art philosopher and aesthetic
00:15:08
philosopher used to describe I think the
00:15:12
term in German and I'll butcher is I in
00:15:14
Phoolan which is sort of when you feel
00:15:17
yourself into an art object so this is
00:15:20
Theodore lips who believe that it is
00:15:23
following Robert Fischer who is another
00:15:26
aesthetic philosopher they both believe
00:15:28
that the way that we make contact with
00:15:30
art is not by assessing its qualities in
00:15:34
an objective sense but rather by again
00:15:36
feeling into it by it sort of projecting
00:15:38
ourselves emotionally into a work that
00:15:41
was translated into English what 105
00:15:46
years ago by a teacher
00:15:47
into the word empathy now it's funny if
00:15:50
you look at Google Google Ngram right
00:15:52
and you look at the use of the term
00:15:54
empathy it feels like it's got a
00:15:56
hydraulic relationship with another word
00:15:58
sympathy sympathy used to be much more
00:16:01
popular and has declined in popularity
00:16:03
and empathy has risen in popularity at
00:16:07
the same time and I think it's a really
00:16:10
meaningful distinction between these two
00:16:12
things because to my mind sympathy is a
00:16:14
more detached form of pity that you
00:16:17
might have for someone suffering
00:16:19
whereas empathy requires a lot more
00:16:21
emotional investment I think empathy is
00:16:24
really expensive psychologically it
00:16:27
costs a lot to empathize with someone
00:16:29
and there are many cases in which you
00:16:31
might not want to do so so scarcity is
00:16:35
one thing that drives empathy down
00:16:38
stress is another so I think this is why
00:16:41
you know they say that virtues are
00:16:43
easier to abide on a full stomach
00:16:45
I think empathy is as well if you are
00:16:47
worried about survival and the
00:16:51
well-being of yourself and your closest
00:16:54
kin your family I think it's much harder
00:16:56
to extend the circumference or a
00:16:59
diameter of your empathy to larger
00:17:02
social groups I think Steve Pinker talks
00:17:05
about this in the better angels of our
00:17:07
nature the way that we've and Peter
00:17:10
Singer also of course talks about this
00:17:12
in his expanding circle the idea that
00:17:14
maybe we can sort of again expand the
00:17:17
diameter of our concern for others and
00:17:19
maybe we have over the last decades but
00:17:22
I think that even within one person's
00:17:24
life within a moment in time there are
00:17:26
many factors that might drive you to
00:17:29
feel empathy or not
00:17:31
so the costs of empathy include when
00:17:35
it's painful but also the responsibility
00:17:38
that it places on people right i mean if
00:17:40
you empathize with someone it's really
00:17:43
hard to compete with them if you
00:17:44
empathize with non-human animals it's
00:17:46
really difficult to consume them there's
00:17:49
again a moral responsibility that comes
00:17:52
with an experience of empathy especially
00:17:55
if you want to continue being an
00:17:56
emotionally authentic person it does
00:17:58
seem as though the social norms
00:18:01
surrounding empathy have shifted I think
00:18:04
that's really important because if you
00:18:06
view empathy not as a fixed quality of
00:18:10
who we are something that just happens
00:18:12
automatically but instead view it as
00:18:13
something that we choose well then the
00:18:15
cultural landscape should shape our
00:18:18
individual emotional landscapes I feel
00:18:20
like we live in a more empathy positive
00:18:22
time than the past people really value
00:18:25
sort of warmth towards others
00:18:28
and care for others as part of what it
00:18:31
means to be a good person now more than
00:18:33
ever and I think that actually can make
00:18:36
big changes in the way that people
00:18:38
experience empathy one of my friends and
00:18:41
colleagues Erik Nick and I and and our
00:18:44
colleagues ran a study recently where we
00:18:46
saw whether conformity can generate
00:18:49
empathy and people if you believe that
00:18:51
others around you value empathy are you
00:18:53
more likely to evaluate yourself and we
00:18:55
found that indeed people were so if we
00:18:57
convinced folks that their peers
00:19:00
experienced lots of empathy then our
00:19:03
participants themselves reported more
00:19:05
empathy and acted more timely towards
00:19:08
strangers even if those strangers
00:19:10
belonged to stigmatized out groups right
00:19:13
so we think that the changing tide in
00:19:16
our culture can change the way that
00:19:18
people choose to engage with empathy
00:19:20
themselves Obama is probably the most
00:19:23
empty focused president that that I've
00:19:26
seen at least the guy who uses the term
00:19:28
the most out of presidents in my
00:19:30
lifetime he often talks about there
00:19:32
being an empathy deficit and says that
00:19:35
one of the ways that we need to improve
00:19:37
our society and the fabric of our
00:19:39
society
00:19:40
by increasing our empathy I bet there a
00:19:42
lot of people who would disagree with
00:19:45
that as a policy for running a state in
00:19:49
fact there are lots of psychologists who
00:19:50
would disagree with it but there are
00:19:51
certainly many politicians who disagree
00:19:53
with it you saw this when Obama
00:19:55
appointed Sotomayor as a Supreme Court
00:19:57
justice and said this is a woman who has
00:19:59
great empathy for the plight of many
00:20:02
people
00:20:03
well that statement was vilified I mean
00:20:07
whose pilloried for saying that and
00:20:09
people felt as though empathy is one of
00:20:11
the worst features that she could select
00:20:14
for when thinking about policy when
00:20:17
thinking about law or thinking about
00:20:18
government because empathy is an emotion
00:20:21
and subject to all sorts of irrational
00:20:24
biases justice should be blind and
00:20:27
presumably emotionally neutral and you
00:20:30
actually see this a lot in some in a
00:20:33
movement that's taken hold recently so
00:20:35
Paul bloom and a set of other
00:20:38
psychologists have made what I think is
00:20:40
a really great and super interesting
00:20:42
case that empathy is overrated
00:20:45
especially as a moral compass their view
00:20:48
is that is that empathy generates nice
00:20:51
and kind and moral behaviors but in
00:20:54
fundamentally skewed ways for instance
00:20:56
again only towards members of your own
00:20:58
group not in ways that maximize
00:21:01
well-being across the largest number of
00:21:03
people so on this account empathy is
00:21:07
kind of like a dumb inflexible emotional
00:21:09
engine for driving moral behavior and if
00:21:12
you really want to do the right thing
00:21:13
you should focus on sort of more
00:21:16
objective principles to guide your
00:21:19
decision-making I think that's a really
00:21:22
great argument it's not one that I agree
00:21:24
with I think it it follows from somewhat
00:21:27
of an incomplete view of what empathy is
00:21:29
right I mean if you believe that empathy
00:21:31
is automatic and either just happens to
00:21:33
you or doesn't then sure the biases that
00:21:36
characterize empathy are inescapable and
00:21:38
will always govern empathic
00:21:41
decision-making but if you instead view
00:21:43
empathy is something that people can
00:21:45
control then I think people can control
00:21:48
their empathy to make it align more with
00:21:50
their values and again to broaden their
00:21:53
kin
00:21:54
I think that empathy has a long
00:21:58
tradition in lots of different fields I
00:22:00
mean in philosophy
00:22:02
you've got Edith Stein for instance a
00:22:04
nun who wrote beautifully about empathy
00:22:08
also Martin Buber I and thou is a
00:22:12
beautiful book about how people connect
00:22:14
with each other and share each other's
00:22:15
experience within psychology the study
00:22:19
of empathy has an equally long history
00:22:22
and one that's got a lot of players in
00:22:24
it I mean I would say for my money the
00:22:27
most powerful research on empathy in the
00:22:29
twentieth century comes from Dan Batson
00:22:31
he's for decades demonstrated the power
00:22:35
of emotional connection to drive people
00:22:38
to helping each other so again thinking
00:22:41
about empathy as a as an engine for
00:22:44
promoting cooperation and altruism the
00:22:46
APA of course recently discovered that a
00:22:50
set of psychologists had aided and
00:22:54
abetted in a program of enhanced
00:22:57
interrogation hugely controversial an
00:23:00
enormous ly problematic I think it's so
00:23:04
horrific to think about psychology being
00:23:06
used in this way but you can imagine how
00:23:09
that works I mentioned earlier that
00:23:11
individuals with psychopathy can
00:23:14
understand what people feel but they use
00:23:17
that understanding not to improve other
00:23:19
people's states but sometimes to worse
00:23:22
in their states
00:23:23
I mean in a perverse way the torturer
00:23:26
needs to engage with at least some forms
00:23:28
of empathy in order to do their job
00:23:30
effectively they need to know how to
00:23:33
push someone's buttons how to generate
00:23:36
as much distress as they can I think
00:23:38
this is the dark side of empathy and I
00:23:40
think there really is a dark side of
00:23:41
empathy especially when you experience
00:23:44
one piece of empathy without the others
00:23:47
it's understanding someone having
00:23:49
emotional intelligence might just make
00:23:51
you a better manipulator if you are so
00:23:53
inclined so I think viewing empathy as a
00:23:58
choice helps us understand the basic
00:24:00
nature of empathy why and when people
00:24:03
empathize and
00:24:04
and when they don't I think it is more
00:24:06
powerful than that because I think it
00:24:08
can also help us address what meaneth
00:24:11
Chikara and I have called empathic
00:24:13
failures cases in which people don't
00:24:15
empathize and that generates some
00:24:17
problem down the line so I mentioned
00:24:20
this already with respect to intergroup
00:24:21
conflicts but empathic failures happen
00:24:23
in lots of other settings so for
00:24:26
instance when adolescents bully each
00:24:28
other or when physicians fail to
00:24:31
emotionally connect or understand the
00:24:33
suffering of their patients those are
00:24:35
empathic failures there are lots of
00:24:38
interventionists doing really hard and
00:24:40
important work to try to mitigate the
00:24:43
effects of empathic failures this type
00:24:47
of intervention tends to take on one of
00:24:49
two flavors either teaching people
00:24:51
empathic skills like how to recognize
00:24:54
other people's emotions well we're
00:24:56
giving them opportunities to empathize
00:24:58
for instance taking groups of people
00:25:00
were in conflict and having them spend
00:25:01
time together I think this is a great
00:25:04
approach but viewing empathy as a
00:25:07
motivated phenomenon encourages us to
00:25:10
take another approach as well not just
00:25:12
teaching people how to empathize but
00:25:15
getting them to want to empathize in the
00:25:17
first place right so not just training
00:25:19
skills but also building motives in
00:25:21
people to empathize and so that is what
00:25:24
my lab has been up to for the last
00:25:25
couple of years we've been generating
00:25:28
and testing a whole bunch of social
00:25:29
psychological nudges that might
00:25:32
encourage people to want to empathize
00:25:33
and we're really excited to bring this
00:25:35
into a bunch of spheres including
00:25:37
testing whether we can reduce bullying
00:25:39
in adolescents and help physicians again
00:25:43
be more effective in treating their
00:25:45
patients
00:25:46
there is huge disparities in how people
00:25:51
feel about empathy and what they think
00:25:53
it is depending on where they fall on
00:25:57
political and social landscapes right so
00:26:00
I think that both more conservative and
00:26:04
more liberal people can be extremely
00:26:08
important empathic the question is
00:26:12
empathy for whom I think that folks on
00:26:15
the right end of the political spectrum
00:26:16
tend to be more empathic with members of
00:26:20
their group they're oriented towards
00:26:22
tradition and towards establishing
00:26:24
connections with people who are part of
00:26:28
those traditions I think that the at
00:26:31
least the cultural morei for
00:26:33
progressives is to be more
00:26:34
indiscriminate and to value in some
00:26:38
egalitarian way the emotions of
00:26:40
everybody I think also there are
00:26:43
shifting cultural norms surrounding who
00:26:46
should be empathic and who should not be
00:26:48
empathic so men and women for instance
00:26:52
are stereotyped into roles that drive
00:26:55
them towards being more and less
00:26:57
empathic respectively I wonder whether
00:27:01
that is a holdover from previous
00:27:04
generations I to my mind these kind of
00:27:08
constructions of empathy as a Republican
00:27:11
or a democratic thing or a male or a
00:27:13
female thing our historical more than
00:27:16
they're embedded in the structure of who
00:27:18
we are and one of the things that's
00:27:20
curious to me is how empathy changes
00:27:23
over time so a very famous and quite
00:27:27
controversial study that came out a few
00:27:28
years ago by Sarah Conrad and their
00:27:31
colleagues at Michigan found that
00:27:33
college students report being much less
00:27:36
empathic now than they did thirty years
00:27:38
ago and that there's a drop-off in
00:27:41
empathy that's pretty steady across that
00:27:43
thirty-year period but especially
00:27:45
pronounced in the last ten years people
00:27:48
have jumped on the idea that this has to
00:27:50
do with electronic forms of
00:27:52
communication people losing out on
00:27:55
face-to-face contact in favor of contact
00:27:59
that's mediated by some some electronic
00:28:02
device okay I think that's an
00:28:04
interesting assertion to my mind it's an
00:28:07
easy conclusion to draw I would be just
00:28:11
as likely to believe that people are not
00:28:14
necessarily more or less empathic but
00:28:17
rather that they feel that empathy is
00:28:19
something different and they might not
00:28:20
be they might not be as drawn to impe
00:28:23
as a construct they might not feel that
00:28:25
it's as desirable as it was 30 years ago
00:28:28
this of course is interested because 30
00:28:30
years ago is the middle of the 80s which
00:28:32
people probably don't consider the most
00:28:34
impacted decade on record but
00:28:36
nonetheless I think that when we see
00:28:38
changes in people's empathic experience
00:28:40
across cultural lines across time across
00:28:43
gender it might reflect not only who
00:28:47
people are but who they want to be I
00:28:49
mean my hope for for this work for this
00:28:54
line of thinking is that it can teach
00:28:58
people about empathy but also teach
00:29:01
people how to work with their own
00:29:03
empathy I feel like this is one of those
00:29:05
cases where education and intervention
00:29:08
kind of overlap it are the same thing I
00:29:11
feel like if you believe that you can
00:29:14
harness your empathy and make choices
00:29:16
about when to experience it and when not
00:29:18
to it adds a layer of responsibility to
00:29:21
you to choose how to engage with other
00:29:24
people if you feel like you're powerless
00:29:26
to control your empathy well then you
00:29:28
might just be satisfied with whatever
00:29:30
biases and limits you have on it you
00:29:33
might be okay with not caring about
00:29:35
someone just because they're different
00:29:36
from you if you just accept that as a
00:29:38
part of who you are and and a limit on
00:29:41
your emotional life I want people to not
00:29:44
feel safe empathizing in the way that
00:29:48
they always have I want them to
00:29:49
understand that they're doing something
00:29:51
deliberate when they connect with
00:29:53
someone and I want them to own that
00:29:54
responsibility I think it's really easy
00:29:57
to overdose on empathy and empathy can
00:30:01
be a really dangerous thing for an
00:30:03
individual as well being it can cause
00:30:05
you to burnout there's something known
00:30:08
as compassion fatigue for hospice nurses
00:30:11
and physicians working in hospices these
00:30:13
are people who really overload
00:30:16
themselves on other people suffering to
00:30:18
the point that they can't take care of
00:30:19
themselves anymore I think there are
00:30:22
many cases in which empathy is really
00:30:24
great for an individual's well-being and
00:30:26
makes you feel more connected to other
00:30:28
people there are other cases in which it
00:30:30
exhausts you the idea that you can
00:30:32
control empathy is not just mad
00:30:35
so that everyone can turn their empathy
00:30:37
up to 11 all the time I think it's just
00:30:40
as important to know when to turn down
00:30:42
ones empathy especially if you need to
00:30:44
engage in self-care right if you need to
00:30:46
take care of yourself sometimes it's
00:30:48
important to not empathize my wife is a
00:30:51
therapist and she says you know the last
00:30:54
thing that any of her patients need if
00:30:55
they're depressed is for her to be
00:30:57
depressed as well so she needs to
00:30:59
modulate her empathy online in order to
00:31:02
be able to guide those people towards
00:31:05
something that will help them not just
00:31:07
showing them that she feels the same
00:31:09
thing as them but being a source of
00:31:10
comfort for them and that requires
00:31:12
knowing not just how to turn up empathy
00:31:14
but also how to turn it down sometimes
00:31:16
there are cases in which people can use
00:31:19
other people's empathy to take advantage
00:31:22
of them or manipulate them advertisers
00:31:24
do this all the time politicians do this
00:31:26
all the time people try to narrative
00:31:29
eyes their ideas and turn them into
00:31:31
stories about people suffering so that
00:31:35
you will feel more connected at them in
00:31:36
any ad for Save the Children starts with
00:31:39
an example of child who's an horrible
00:31:44
dire straights and the only way that
00:31:46
this child will survive is if you help
00:31:48
them I mean this is explicitly meant to
00:31:51
tug on people's heartstrings in a very
00:31:54
particular way I don't think that
00:31:56
empathy is a necessarily always a
00:31:59
morally positive or negative thing I
00:32:02
think it's somewhat value neutral and
00:32:04
it's really in the way that you use it
