Empathy Isn’t the Problem - Enmeshment Is
What the author called “empathy” is something very different, something psychologist Murray Bowen described decades ago as enmeshment.

Enmeshment is the emotional fusion that happens when two people lose sight of where one person’s emotional life ends and the other’s begins. It’s not connection—it’s collapse. The self collapses into the other. Boundaries disappear. The relationship starts operating from a rigid, unhealthy script: one person must feel a certain way, act a certain way, uphold a certain emotional role—for the sake of the other.

In a world that feels sharper and more self-centered than ever, empathy seems to be disappearing, especially online. Political turbulence, social media culture, and a growing focus on self-preservation have created an environment where kindness is scarce, and disagreement feels like a battle. I explore how this leads to nonproductive arguing, and why practicing empathy, even in small ways, is more important than ever. 

I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that the world feels a little meaner now than it did four or five years ago. Scrolling through the comment section of any news article feels like entering a battlefield of opposing opinions and people trying to one-up each other with the harshest take — a place where empathy rarely survives. Anyone who’s as chronically online as me has probably noticed how contrasting this feels compared to the online climate of 2020, when there seemed to be more openness and tolerance. Now, everyone feels more narcissistic, and it makes me wonder: What happened to empathy? Especially among young people? 

1. BRIDGE THE CULTURES—DON’T BULLDOZE THEM 
The first step was recognizing that we were merging two strong cultures, not replacing one with another. We approached it with humility and respect for the expertise already on the factory floor. We listened, observed, and spent time in each other’s spaces—our HQ team getting hands-on experience in the manufacturing environment, and our manufacturing team visiting HQ to see the broader mission in action. 

That physical time together mattered. Culture isn’t built over Zoom; it’s built through shared meals, laughter, and the simple act of showing up. 

Zero-positive empathy, according to Simon Baron-Cohen, is a structured empathy rooted in rules, not resonance. For autistic people, this framing has been both validating and limiting. Some have embraced the idea, finding clarity in the distinction between emotional intuition and ethical principle. Others feel flattened by it: misread, misunderstood, miscast. Many autistic individuals experience a deep, often overwhelming emotional attunement that defies diagnostic expectations.

Empathy is essential in healthcare, allowing clinicians to communicate successfully with patients and understand their needs, and research has linked clinician empathy with higher patient satisfaction, better health outcomes, and fewer medical errors. Unfortunately, studies also show that empathy tends to decrease during medical school, as fact-based learning and high-stakes testing drive students’ attention away from patients’ subjective experiences. “You’re just in survival mode,” explains Riham Alieldin, a physician and medical educator at the University of Rochester.

Can artificial intelligence offer mental health support without compromising the uniquely human traits of empathy and understanding? This is the question that drives Zainab Iftikhar, a Brown University Ph.D. student known for combining technological innovation with deep compassion. Her journey merges psychology and computer science, aiming to answer one of the most pressing questions of our time: can AI enhance mental health care without replacing the irreplaceable?

A Journey Bridging Psychology and Technology
Growing up in Pakistan, Iftikhar’s curiosity about how people connect led her to study computer science at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences in Lahore. Her early career spanned software engineering roles in renewable energy and research at a top management sciences university. This distinctive blend of experience inspired her to pursue technology-driven solutions for psychological well-being.

Special thanks to our speakers Gregory Depow, María Monroy, and Judith Kotiuga as well as our guest moderators Patty Van Cappellen and Kunalan Manokara for sharing their expertise with our community.

0:00 Introduction to The Love Consortium
5:30 Gregory Depow, University of California San Diego, “Receiving empathy and perceived partner responsiveness”
23:58 María Monroy, Yale University, “Affective correlates of empathy”
42:00 Judith Kotiuga, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, “Empathic accuracy in couples”
1:00:20 Group Discussion with Patty Van Kappellen and Kunalan Manokara

Empathy is one of four values that the institute has identified as exemplified by Raoul Wallenberg, and upon which the Wallenberg Institute is built, along with tolerance, courage, and leadership. Respectful and informed communication across differences, said Veidlinger, plays a crucial role in building empathy and is central to the institute’s mission of continuing Raoul Wallenberg’s legacy by combating discrimination, antisemitism, and divisiveness.

The Center for Empathy and Technology (TECH Center) promotes empathy and compassion in the development and applications of rapidly emerging health innovations. Our programming advances best practices at the intersection of empathy, compassion, and healthcare technology in an effort to support shared learning opportunities with health professional trainees, K-12 students, and community partners.  

The Center is dedicated to understanding how emerging technologies promote or undermine empathy, compassion, and wellbeing. Through our research, education, and community engagement initiatives, we seek to fulfill our center mission and to provide leadership on the empathic design and use of new health innovations.

. Empathy begins with attentiveness.
Anxiety grows in the silence. It thrives when we stop listening to one another, when leaders pull back, and when compassion gives way to fatigue.

The first act of empathy is simple, though not always easy: Pay attention. Listen deeply enough to hear the need beneath the noise. Notice the fear behind someone’s frustration, or the exhaustion behind their anger. Ask what people need, don’t just assume you know what they need.

A closer look at the research on empathy and gender reveals a more nuanced story shaped by socialization and stereotypes rather than biology.

At a time when social trust feels increasingly fragile, leadership grounded in integrity, empathy, and consistency is critical. This webinar features leaders who have successfully built trust by prioritizing “learning from listening” and centering empathetic communication within their communities.

Join us for a conversation with leaders who are putting trust into practice. We’ll explore how they’ve built strong, credible reputations; how they foster trust at both individual and community levels; what larger institutions can learn from these grassroots strategies; and how locally grounded approaches can be adapted to strengthen trust at scale.

Moderator: Pearce Godwin, Founder, Listen First Project & Listen First Coalition; Senior Director, Urban Rural Action
 

Enter Empathetic AI Policy
Empathetic AI Policy—the emerging discipline that insists human impact must be designed, measured, and governed as rigorously as performance—exists precisely because of these failures. It’s not about making machines emotional, but about making human decision-makers accountable. It means recognizing that every model has moral weight, every dataset represents real lives, and every automated decision carries consequences that ripple through families, institutions, and society. In short, empathy is not a soft constraint—it’s the structure that keeps AI aligned with humanity.

The irony of modern AI is that it often reflects the very flaws it was meant to transcend: bias, carelessness, and moral blindness. The industry’s most infamous collapses—from racist chatbots to wrongful prosecutions and mass surveillance—share a single root cause: empathy was ignored, underestimated, or engineered out of the process. These are not merely “bugs in the system.” They are symptoms of a worldview that treats technology as neutral, when in reality, it always encodes human priorities.

Education today stands at a crossroads. As artificial intelligence transforms how we learn and live, the very essence of education is being reimagined. Are we preparing young people merely to compete, or to connect? To master technology, or to master themselves?

Educators and policymakers everywhere are rediscovering a timeless truth: intelligence opens doors, but empathy keeps them open. Emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions, to lead with compassion, and to act with integrity is emerging as the most critical skill of the 21st century. It bridges knowledge and wisdom, between information and understanding, between success and significance.

by Michael Wiederman

Research has revealed that with increasing power comes decreasing likelihood of empathy.

This is an inherent human bias, so it is a true blind spot.
Leaders who fail to take other peoples' perspectives are at a disadvantage.

Try the strategies described here to work around the power-empathy bias.

Have you ever noticed someone in power who seems rather indifferent to the opinions of others? Perhaps you’ve witnessed a leader who doesn’t seem tuned in to the experiences of the people they lead.

by Alison Jane Martingano
Research shows that empathy training programs can increase empathy.

Empathy training programs that include practice and feedback tend to be most effective.

Experiences such as travel, learning sign language, and pet ownership may also train empathy.

There are no empathy "quick fixes." Improvements require effort and practice.

Many people treat empathy the way they treat height or eye color; in other words, as something baked in from birth. We hear this in everyday phrases like “she’s such a good kid” or “he’s just not very sensitive,” as if empathy were an inborn trait rather than something shaped over time. In our survey, more than a third of respondents were skeptical that empathy could be improved. Yet decades of research across psychology, education, and neuroscience tell a very different story. Empathy, it turns out, is more like your biceps than your hair color. Sure, you're born with them, but their size and strength are a result of hard work.

The Empathic AI Challenge
Your shifting emotional states are fundamental to how you live and engage with the world. They are influenced by—and in turn apply influence to—your behavior, decisions, thoughts, and relationships. Thus, any technology you encounter that can predict mood or simulate emotion has the potential to impinge on the outcomes of your life and the lives of those around you.

The development of an ethics standard for empathic AI is an exploration into uncharted territory. The underlying science of affect and emotion remains controversial, with disagreement on some of the most fundamental aspects, such as what an emotion is in the first place. What’s more, the technical field of affective computing, emotion recognition, and empathic AI – the world has yet to agree on a name for it – is relatively new and changing fast. On top of that, the alignment of standardization and ethics is itself a nascent and knotty challenge.

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly reshaping human experiences & in 2025 it is no longer limited to efficiency or automation - it is becoming a tool for building deeper connections.

But technology without empathy risks alienating people, making interactions transactional instead of meaningful. The true test of innovation lies in how well AI can understand, respect & respond to human emotions.

Designing humane technology means aligning intelligence with compassion, ensuring AI supports not only productivity but also human well-being. But as AI grows smarter, faster & more efficient, a deeper question arises - Can AI be empathetic?

Empathy is the most undervalued KPI in business.

We track clicks, conversions and churn, but not the emotional intelligence that drives them. And today, as businesses rush to capture AI’s productivity dividend, automating decisions, speeding responses, optimising every interaction, the risk is that we erode the very human understanding that makes those interactions meaningful.

But there’s a bigger opportunity too: to use this moment to rewire the interface between brands and consumers. To build systems that are not just faster and cheaper, but more attuned, more responsive, more empathetic. Systems that are engineered to understand and respond to human emotions, needs and context, making interactions feel more natural and respectful. Offering a kind of functional empathy that picks up on cues like tone or intent and shapes outcomes that are timely, relevant, and personal.

Where AI shined stood out for empathy
Across nine separate studies spanning cancer care, thyroid disease, mental health, autism, and general medical questions, ChatGPT-4 routinely outscored licensed clinicians. 

On thyroid surgery questions, the AI’s empathy ratings sat 1.42 standard deviations above human surgeons. On mental health queries, 0.97 standard deviations higher than credentialed professionals.

When responding to patient complaints routed through hospital departments, the gap widened dramatically: 2.08 standard deviations in favor of the AI over patient-relations staff.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between pet attachment and social support, as well as the chain mediating role of emotion regulation and empathy in a sample of young adult cat owners. A total of 319 participants completed the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), The Chinese Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI-C) and The Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS). The results indicated that

(1) Pet attachment, reappraisal in emotion regulation, empathy and social support are positively correlated with one another;

(2) Pet attachment not only has a direct effect on social support among young adults, but also influences it indirectly through three pathways: the mediating role of reappraisal, the mediating role of empathy, and a chain mediating role involving both reappraisal and empathy.

These findings provide a theoretical foundation for the common phenomenon of young adults keeping pet cats, reveal the psychological mechanism by which pet attachment influences social support, extend attachment theory, and enrich research on pet attachment and social support.