We need to cultivate empathy in all children, but gender stereotypes -- often reinforced in playrooms -- risk leaving boys, in particular, with a social deficit.
While parents, researchers, and educators decry the lack of STEM toys for girls — and rightly so — what often goes unnoticed is that assigning genders to toys harms boys, as well.
Too often children’s playrooms reinforce gender stereotypes that put boys at risk of failing to gain skills critical for success in life and work. The most important of these? Empathy.
Meg Bear, Group Vice President of Oracle’s Social Cloud, calls empathy “the critical 21st century skill.” She believes it’s the “difference between good and great” when it comes to personal and professional success. Researchers at Greater Good Science Center out of the University of California, Berkeley, echo Bear’s assertion. They define empathy as “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.
Soft skills like empathy and active listening may not be the first qualities associated with AI. Yet, companies are increasingly investing in AI tools to help train customer-facing employees, improving their interactions and preparing them for challenging situations.
"AI is not empathetic, but you can train it so ‘x-y-z’ means ’empathetic,’" says Anmol Agarwal, a consultant and an adjunct professor at George Washington University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "You can train AI to detect emotion. There are various AI tools that can help you determine, this customer is angry or their response has a negative connotation."
If empathy were a person, she would be in therapy for abuse.
After a life of virtue, empathy has been cast into the street by an array of detractors as varied as billionaires, psychologists and evangelicals.
The wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, has joined the assault against empathy: “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. … The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, … a bug in Western civilization which is the empathy response.”
So says the man who without an ounce of empathy fires thousands of civil service workers as a camouflaged attempt to uncover fraud in the federal government while actually increasing his own fortunes.
In a world obsessed with metrics, KPIs, and performance dashboards, there’s a quiet, transformational force reshaping the way we think about leadership. It’s not a strategy, a new AI tool, or the latest management trend. It’s connection. It’s empathy. And research consistently shows that these are the tools that will most transform your business.
As we celebrate Employee Appreciation Month, it’s time to rethink what truly drives engagement, loyalty, and innovation. The best leaders don’t just focus on authority and big decisions. They focus on people.
Elon Musk was partly right about the dangers of empathy. Speaking recently on the Joe Rogan Experience, he declared “the fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.” It had, said the richest man in the world and head of President Donald Trump’s effort to radically shrink the federal government, been “weaponized.”
Rogan and Musk had been talking about California giving free medical care to illegal aliens. He expressed concern for the average person, who would find getting medical care harder because the demand for doctors’ attention would rise so much. The elites wouldn’t be affected because they can afford better care.
I recently had a chance to sit down with Angela Baade, an exceptional leader whose approach to empathy and leadership offers valuable lessons for navigating challenges and fostering growth. It’s a fascinating conversation about how leaders can balance empathy with accountability,
This morning Anand talked about Senator Bernie Sanders’s national tour and the larger lessons that others in the pro-democracy movement might learn from it.
TL;DR: Connect the big forces and calamities at the top of American life to people’s lived pain; show empathy; be a fighter, because people want fighters right now.
Before we can access our humanity, we must first genuflect before the grandeur of earthworm and galaxy. From my empathy-ridden perspective sin is committed by refusing to notice the terrible beauty of it all and allow the worst among us to do all the talking and claim the world as their entitlement. A voice resounds within me: defy the lie; resist soullessness. Because we are mortal human beings, defeat will come — but choose to be wounded by beauty.
The researchers on this project are largely interested in the interplay between AI chatbots and mental health. As empathy has been studied by psychologists for decades, they brought in methods and lessons from that field into their study of human-computer interaction.
“When people are interacting directly with AI agents, it's very important to understand the gap between humans and AI in terms of empathy — how it can understand and later express empathy, and what are the main differences between humans and AI,” Roshanaei said.
Empathy is not an unchallenged good, however. Over the past few years there has been a growing movement opposing the privileged place the term enjoys in much Western psychology, ethics, and political thought. In his 2016 book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, psychology professor Paul Bloom questioned the supposed virtue, arguing that empathy dangerously distorts judgment and can even encourage cruelty toward those deemed to threaten its objects.
Following the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, for example, many people angrily tore down posters of the Israeli hostages, while others expressed their indignance at footage and reporting of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza: in war, empathy can be a zero-sum game, and as we respond in empathy to our favored side we can become calloused to suffering on the other.
Empathy—the ability to share and understand the emotions of others—is a cornerstone of human social interactions. When we witness someone in pain, we often experience a mirrored emotional response, a phenomenon known as affect sharing. While this ability is essential for social bonding and survival, the precise neural mechanisms behind empathy remain largely unknown.
"I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people," Musk said on Joe Rogan's podcast, "but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide."
The Modern Legacy: Empathy as a Political Liability
Though we like to think we’ve outgrown the medieval mindset, echoes of the sin of empathy still shape our world. Today, you don’t have to be a Crusader or an inquisitor to hear the argument that too much compassion is a problem.
Military conflicts: If you express concern for civilian casualties, you’re accused of being unpatriotic or weak.
Refugees and immigrants: If you advocate for humane treatment, you’re called naïve—or worse, a traitor.
Criminal justice reform: If you question harsh punishments, you must not care about victims.
Social welfare: If you want to help the poor, you’re encouraging laziness.
In every case, empathy is reframed as a failing—something irrational, something that threatens order, something that must be resisted in the name of justice, security, or economic stability.
In response to the insightful cover story, “‘A potent medicine’: In matters of pain and trust, empathy may make all the difference,” published in the Healio Rheumatology January 2025 issue, I would like to highlight the key data on empathy.
First, research over the past 25 years has shown that both the cognitive and affective empathy of most allopathic and osteopathic students declines as they progress through their undergraduate medical education, with declines on the osteopathic side less pronounced than those seen among allopathic students.
A common theme was the importance of empathy between science communicators and the public.
“The idea that disagreement is often seen as disrespect is insightful,” said MIT’s Ford Professor of Political Science Lily Tsai. “One way to communicate respect is genuine curiosity along with the willingness to change one’s mind. We’re often focused on the facts and evidence and saying, ‘Don’t you understand the facts?’ But the ideal conversation is more like, ‘You value ‘x.’ Tell me why you value ‘x’ and let’s see if we can connect on how the science and research helps you to fulfill those values, even if I don’t agree with them.’”
Empathy for pain refers to a simulation of pain experiences evoked when seeing others in pain. Empathy for pain (vicarious pain) responders make up 27% of the healthy population, and are divided into two subsets: Sensory/Localized responders who feel localized physical pain and Affective/General responders who experience diffuse emotional pain. Empathy for pain is linked to pro-social behavior but can increase mental health symptoms.
Empathy has been in the news lately after Elon Musk stated, during the Joe Rogan Podcast, "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." This quote has been taken out of context in the media. Musk was not condemning all empathy, and also said, “A future with more empathy would be wonderful, but this can only be done from a position of strength.
If the weak favor empathy, but the strong do not, the weak will be enslaved or killed." While there are still concerns about Musk’s understanding of empathy and its implications, the focus on this quote provides an opportunity for a deeper analysis of empathy in the public realm.
As a sin: Joe Rigney’s new book, “The Sin of Empathy,” released late last month, tells us that empathy “often leads to cowardice” and “frequently leads to brazen malice and cruelty.” Rigney is a Fellow of Theology at New St. Andrews College and an associate pastor under Doug Wilson at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. (Both Wilson and Christ Church have been in the news for, among other things, their advocacy of Christian nationalism.)
As a threat: In a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Elon Musk described empathy as the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization” and (like Rigney) expressed concern about “weaponized empathy” or, as he also describes it, “the empathy exploit.”
IN a recent interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, Elon Musk discussed his views on empathy within so-called Western Civilisation. He refers to what he calls the “exploitation of empathy" and qualifies his position with, “although empathy is inherently good, it can be manipulated or weaponised". He makes the philosophical argument that this weaponisation not only strips individuals of personal agency and accountability, but discourages them from being critical. His repeated mantra that “freedom of speech includes all speech that is not illegal" is part of his moral rebellion against this “armed empathy".
Elon Musk says empathy is threatening civilisation. He’s wrong. He is that threat. What’s worse though is that his threat is totally consistent with neoliberal economics. ABOUT RICHARD MURPHY Richard Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School. He is director of Tax Research LLP and the author of the Funding the Future blog. His best-known book is ‘The Joy of Tax’.
Exploring empathy’s crucial role in society, we navigate how it can e nhance our humanity but also threaten our civilization if misused. Discover the delicate balance between caring for others and safeguarding our societal integrity
I have spent the past 20 years studying empathy. The unconscious part of empathy, affective response, is definitely fast: We aren’t even aware of it happening. That is typically the first part of empathy—having a physical reaction, such as tearing up when seeing someone else cry. But all the next steps of empathy require slowing down.
We take stock of the situation:
Why is the other person crying?
Does it have something to do with me or is it the situation?
If I were in the other person’s shoes, what might I be feeling?
And while I am doing this empathic sensing, I also need to be aware of my own emotions, to not get swept away by the feelings of another. Rather, I should strive to gain understanding.
Empathy is hard; it takes awareness, and it takes understanding—and that can take time.
Empathy—the ability to share and understand the emotions of others—is a cornerstone of human social interactions. When we witness someone in pain, we often experience a mirrored emotional response, a phenomenon known as affect sharing. While this ability is essential for social bonding and survival, the precise neural mechanisms behind empathy remain largely unknown.
A research team led by Dr. KEUM Sehoon at the Center for Cognition and Sociality (CCS) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea has uncovered key insights into how the brain processes others’ distress. Using miniature endoscopic calcium imaging, the researchers identified specific neural ensembles in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that encode empathic freezing, a behavioral response in which an observer reacts with fear when witnessing distress in others.
If you're a facilitator working with groups, how can empathy support you in group work? How much empathy is too much empathy, and how much is too little?
When it comes to Skillset, I often point to four critical human abilities: Problem-Solving, Adaptability, Creativity, and Empathy (PACE). It turns out, though, that numerous human capacities are both Mindsets and Skillsets. And chief among these is Empathy.
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