Empathy has little to do with rallies, reports, celebrities or anti-defamation league banners. Empathy is a quiet, powerful work. Empathy is the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings, or in simple colloquialism “walking in someone else’s shoes.”
Empathy is about “connecting.” Bullying, conversely, is about “disconnection.”
To develop a community ethos of empathy we must start with modeling kindness, compassion and acceptance. If we want empathy and inclusion in schools then parents must model empathy within the family, because the “demonstration” of empathy has a greater impact than “instruction.”
The last few rounds of conversations surrounded empathy for addicts and these conversations may have fundamentally changed the way I view people’s capacity for empathy.
Many conversations online started with “I have empathy for addicts until…” and you can fill in the blank with whatever you want, until they steal drugs from a hospital or patient.
...Until they endanger someone else’s life. ...Until they’re ungodly mean to someone who’s been nothing but good to them. What people are saying is, “I have empathy for addicts until they start acting too much like an addict.”
When Woolfalk first conceptualized her Empathics, she was addressing a society already struggling with meaningful connection. Her exhibition has the fortune, good or bad, of opening at a moment when empathy has supposedly been ‘weaponized.’ The good news is that the artist convincingly – with tenderness, skepticism, and humor – evokes a kinder world, and visitors find themselves in the presence of that rare body of artwork that even evokes the sacred.
‘It was a very different art world’ when she started, the artist said in a recent walkthrough of the show. ‘My work is made thinking about conversations in the contemporary art world. There weren’t that many artists of color being represented in the mainstream art media, so I started thinking about how I could integrate stories that related to me and my community into this larger art world.’
A community empowered to lead with empathy. Our inaugural chief wellness officer and the director of our campuswide Scarlet Well initiative to fund grassroots wellness projects, train staff peer supporters and create an interdisciplinary minor in holistic wellness. We host an annual summit that brings together more than 125 community organizations. With donor support, we are building a community behavioral treatment center and retreat for adolescents and young adults.
It’s a provocative idea: that empathy — that is, putting yourself in another person’s proverbial shoes, and feeling what they feel — is a sin.
The Bible contains repeated invocations from Jesus to show deep empathy and compassion for others, including complete strangers. He’s very clear on this point. Moreover, Christianity is built around a fundamental act of empathy so radical — Jesus dying for our sins — that it’s difficult to spin as harmful.
Yet as stunning as it may sound, “empathy is a sin” is a claim that’s been growing in recent years across the Christian right. It was first articulated six years ago by controversial pastor and theologian Joe Rigney, now author of the recently published book, The Sin of Empathy, which has drawn plenty of debate among religious commentators.
In this construction, empathy is a cudgel that progressives and liberals use to berate and/or guilt-trip Christians into showing empathy to the “wrong” people.
EMPATHY is not the same as kindness or compassion: it is our capacity to understand another person’s experience and feel it. If we feel, if we understand, we might show care for them.
The word is relatively new in English. Modelled on the older “sympathy” (the ancient Greek word for compassion), it is a reworking of the German expression Einfühlung (“in-feeling”). Originally applied to aesthetics, “empathy” refers to the way in which a viewer might experience a work of art as if they were inside it, living and feeling it vicariously as somebody else. Later, it was adopted by psychologists, with the same idea of deep integration of feeling and connection between one person and another.
That, we argue, is where empathy comes in. Through experiential simulation of another’s feelings, empathy affords us a rich grasp of the distress that others feel. The upshot is that empathy isn’t just a subjective sensation. It affords us a more accurate understanding of others’ experiences and emotions.
Empathy is thus a form of knowledge that can be hard to bear, just as pain can be hard to bear. But that’s precisely why empathy, properly cultivated, is a strength. As one of us has argued, it takes courage to empathically engage with others, just as it takes courage to see and recognize problems around us. Conversely, an unwillingness to empathize can stem from a familiar weakness: a fear of knowledge.
So, when deciding complex policy questions, say, about immigration, resisting empathy impairs our decision-making. It keeps us from understanding what’s at stake. That is why it is vital to ask ourselves what policies we would favor if we were empathically acquainted with, and so fully informed of, the plight of others.
What Is Empathy, Anyway? Empathy is a broad term that can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. “The empathy we often think about is sharing in another person's feelings,” Daryl Cameron, PhD, says. “So if I see someone, or read about someone who's sad, I catch that sadness myself, and I'm in the same emotional place.”
Cameron is an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University whose research explores the psychology behind empathy and how it guides our decisions. He explains that empathy is sometimes conflated with sympathy, which is when you see that someone else is suffering and your instinct is to help them. It can also get mixed up with “perspective taking,” a theory that describes the human ability to understand what another person is going through without sharing their emotional response—like acknowledging why the fans of a rival sports team are sad because they lost, while also celebrating your own victory.
Maria Ross, an IU Kelley School of Business graduate and author, emphasizes the importance of empathy in both personal and professional settings as a key to thriving in a divided world.
Ross, known for her expertise in strengthening empathy at work, aims to help individuals practice healthy empathy in their personal lives. Her book, “The Empathy Dilemma,” outlines five pillars of effective empathy, offering guidance on understanding and compassion.
“Empathy is about being able to see, understand, and where appropriate feel another person’s perspective,” Ross explained. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re crying on the floor with your employees. It’s just a method of information gathering to try to understand where someone else is coming from.”
Empathy that connects, that builds, that heals requires a code of ethics. It requires restraint. It requires trust. It asks the empathizer not just to understand others but also to honor what that understanding unlocks. When empathy becomes unmoored from ethics, it becomes coercion with a smile.
We see this now with artificial intelligence, where systems are increasingly trained to simulate empathic responses. Your chatbot apologizes for your frustration, your virtual assistant offers saccharine encouragement, your mental health app listens without judgment. But none of these systems feel anything. They just know what to say. We’re entering a world where “empathetic” algorithms outperform our managers at recognizing distress but lack a moral compass to decide what to do with it. And if we aren’t careful, we’ll soon mistake performance for presence. In doing so, we outsource not just emotional labor but our emotional responsibility to one another.
Stanford law Professor Norm Spaulding shares six tips for understanding what your conversation partner is trying to convey, inspired by advice from the nonprofit organization Center for Creative Leadership.
1. Pay full attention
“Being able to give full attention is just an incredible gift to humanize the person you’re communicating with, and that alone can sometimes have a de-escalating effect,” Spaulding said. To show you are paying attention, nonverbal cues also matter. Some of the ways people can demonstrate they are engaged include nodding, maintaining eye contact, and removing distractions.
When I started the rigorous work of personal development in 2018, I stumbled upon the idea that empathy was the secret sauce.
The antidote to insecurity-driven compensations of personality, demeanor, and actions.During this period, a coach helped develop the “Empathy Spectrum.”
At one end was where I had lived and survived, the A-hole. At the other extreme, I saw people who excessively poured empathy on others, being overly compassionate, forgiving, sympathetic, etc., the Doormat.
Each acts with empathy. The A-hole has little empathy and fears that vulnerability and authenticity will be their demise. The doormat is fearful that if they don't let others walk all over them, use them, be enabled by them, or show them praise, the offender will dispense with them.
The United States is plagued with serious and deep-seated societal issues, and ranks behind over 20 other nations in happiness and quality of life. In The Empathy Evolution, Dr. Ronald Goldman delivers a profound and timely exploration of our ongoing struggles with violence, racism, political corruption, and mental illness. Filled with insightful analysis, practical solutions, and a call for societal transformation, the book has recently become a #1 Amazon Bestseller.
Based on compelling evidence from the human development sciences, The Empathy Evolution delves into the actual origins of these problems. Their roots lie with commonly repeated, yet overlooked, early life experiences. Improving these early childhood experiences is the key to improving both personal and societal welfare and quality of life.
Dr. Goldman’s book challenges readers to rethink cultural assumptions and take action to create a more compassionate and unified nation. By embracing the concepts of empathy, readers are empowered to improve the quality of their own lives while contributing to a larger societal transformation.
Allan Rohlfs is a seasoned psychotherapist, educator, and certified trainer in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) with over five decades of experience in empathic listening and interpersonal communication. His extensive career includes teaching at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago for 30 years, where he focused on pastoral care and listening skills. When I Listen People Speak and Come Alive, is the culmination of author Allan Rohlfs five decades long work of practicing listening and teaching.
Edwin Rutsch and Alan Rolfs discuss the evolution and impact of empathic listening, emphasizing its transformative power in personal and societal interactions. Rolfs, a psychotherapist and author, highlights his journey with Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin and the development of his book on empathic listening. They explore the challenges of scaling empathic practices, such as the Empathy Circle and Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and the need for a cultural shift towards empathy. Rolfs suggests that empathic listening leads to deeper connections and personal growth, advocating for a broader dissemination of these practices to foster a culture of empathy.
What Empathy Actually Means (Beyond the Buzzwords) Let’s be honest—“empathy” has become one of those words that gets thrown around in every corporate presentation, right alongside “synergy” and “disruption.” But strip away the consultant-speak, and empathy is actually pretty simple.
It’s asking yourself this: If I were the person on the receiving end of this system, how would I want to be treated?
When you’re looking for a job and get rejected, do you want a one-word email that says “No”? Or would you prefer something that actually acknowledges your humanity?
Artificial intelligence chatbots can draft empathetic responses to cancer questions, but how patients perceive chatbot empathy remains unclear. Here, we found that people with cancer rated chatbot responses as more empathetic than physician responses. However, differences between patient and physician perceptions of empathy highlight the need for further research to tailor clinical messaging to better meet patient needs. Chatbots may be effective in generating empathetic template responses to patient questions under clinician oversight.
Large language models (LLM) applications serve as promising artificial intelligence (AI) tools to address administrative burden and support clinical decision-making in medicine1. Conversational LLM chatbots can provide quality and empathetic responses to questions in general medicine2 and oncology3,4, as evaluated by clinicians. As chatbots are deployed in patient-facing roles, there remains debate about whether patients also perceive that chatbots can demonstrate empathy, a core competency in medicine5. Empathy, defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is central to establishing trustworthy patient-provider relationships which have been linked to improved patient outcomes6. However, patients, rather than clinicians, should serve as the benchmark for determining whether their experiences have been understood, shared, and addressed7.
A new study from Uganda's Budongo Forest draws on decades of data suggesting chimps understand the specific medicinal properties of certain plants and will go out of their way to treat the maladies of their peers.
Empathy is not just a nice-to-have quality in business. It’s a strategic advantage that directly impacts your bottom line. There’s a big debate in the leadership world. Some researchers say leaders should project strength and authority to inspire teams. Others believe in empathetic leadership, where vulnerability and connection take center stage. After decades of working with teams across the globe, I’ve identified three essential questions that help illuminate empathy’s role in business:
1. Is empathy something we activate, or something we are?
Elon Musk recently told podcaster Joe Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
Under normal circumstances, I would dismiss that as tech-bro hogwash. After all, anyone with a basic understanding of history, psychology or neuroscience knows why his position is absurd. But after studying the power of empathy for more than 15 years, I can’t ignore his words. And neither should you. n
Research from Wharton professor Rebecca (Becky) Schaumberg and PhD student Zhiying (Bella) Ren reveals how disagreement in a conversation is often mistaken for bad listening, regardless of how engaged the listener is. Schaumberg explains their findings.
It appears the world order is changing at a rapid clip. Shared values such as respect, honor, and truth-telling have been figuratively shredded in a wood chipper. Empathy is considered, by some powerful figures, to be an obstacle to success.
According to Buddhist teaching, to show compassion, the close cousin of empathy, is the purpose of life. Shared compassion lessens misery and suffering. When it comes to conducting sustainable business practices, having a compassionate conscience, despite what some billionaires might say, still matters.
Summary: While AI companions are marketed as a fix for loneliness, research shows that reading offers far more meaningful benefits. Reading fiction can foster social connection, reduce stress, enhance empathy, and even reshape brain activity linked to social cognition.
Shared reading and book clubs have been shown to reduce loneliness and improve mental health, especially among young adults and older populations. Unlike digital interactions, reading activates brain regions involved in understanding others, offering a powerful, low-tech solution to modern social isolation.
Key Facts:
Social Brain Boost: Reading fiction activates brain areas tied to empathy and connection. Mental Health Aid: Readers report less loneliness, better sleep, and lower stress. Protective Effect: Frequent reading is linked to a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline.
“Empathy has never started a war, never sought to take the dignity of others, and empathy teaches you that power is interchangeable with another word, responsibility.”
When adults pretended to be in pain, children as young as 9 months old comforted them, pushing back the earliest age when humans are known to display empathy
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