Emily Green: At one point in your book you wrote, “Most feelings are mutual.” Can you explain to our readers what you were getting at with that statement?

Helen Riess: Empathy is partly about shared feelings, and the root of that word was originally sympathy, which means “same suffering.” It refers to the fact that when we are in the presence of someone who’s experiencing an emotion, we actually pick up on that because other people’s emotions and facial expressions and experiences of pain are actually mapped onto an observer’s brain, onto our own brains. That is why we feel sad when we’re in the presence of someone who’s very tearful or sorrowful, or why positive feelings like excitement are contagious. There’s actually a neurobiological grounding for saying that “most feelings are mutual.”

Reading changes our brains. Beyond allowing humans to gather and synthesize new information, research shows it is key to cultivating empathy in individuals, too. One study finds this to be particularly true for fictional stories, which allow readers to imagine themselves as other people, in other worlds, with different ideas and challenges.

The effects of reading on the brain are also strongly influenced by the medium through which we read. For a large part of human history, that has been print. And so as digital screens begin to take the place of print books in many classrooms and households, researchers are now looking at how that impacts our ability to process information—and empathize with others.

What's the key takeaway that you're hoping folks will come away with from your talk later today with?

Well, one of the biggest is to understand that empathy can change somebody's grades. That's a big deal. Most people don't know that when a kid is beginning to get empathy training or feel training in the few places where it's actually been tested, you see some extraordinary changes in grades, and it's simply because I think the safety issues are so settled.

Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design approaches, as applied to eLearning, focus on designing solutions that work for real learners in real workday situations. As such, empathy is an essential element in a Design Thinking approach to eLearning, and it is the first stage of any Design Thinking-based process.

Figure 1: The Design Thinking process starts with empathy

In a instructional design context, empathy requires understanding the pain points and the daily reality of your target audience; it also requires some knowledge of learners’ motivations and needs, which might not be obvious.

In some ways, this stage is similar to a conventional needs analysis: You’re defining your target audience and describing the problems the eLearning is meant to solve. You might come up with a profile of a typical learner—a persona—for whom you develop the training solution. You might brainstorm possible solutions—a conventional eLearning course, microlearning, a job aid—that could solve the learner's problem.

Empathy... feeling what others feel.. the supreme quality of a human being and the root of human social morality... the essence of religion, ethics, conception of good and evil, of what's good and what's bad... What if I told you it is not of human origin, and humans are not the only ones to share it?

1. Analysis: An Analysis Of The Organization's Goals, Learner Goals And The Problem Being Solved With Training

a. User Or Learner Personas
These are a visual representation of everything you know about your audience, from demographics to training goals. UX includes many categories outside of ID which I also find helpful when assessing what learners already know about the topic or what may prevent them from completing the training.

b. Empathy Mapping
It is another visualization exercise that captures research about your audience. Create an empathy map to highlight your learner's attitudes and behaviors about the training topic.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin says President's Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson both displayed great empathy. She says that helped make them great leaders in the White House. Goodwin speaks on new episode of "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations." 

Journey maps combine two powerful instruments—storytelling and visualization—in order to help teams understand and address customer needs.

Empathy Circle Facilitator Training: Session 1
Empathy Circles: What, Why, & How 

DATE Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 10 AM – 12 PM  PT
    (See time converter for your time zone)

TOPIC
In Collaboration with #Cut50,  #DayofEmpathy and the Empathy Network the topic is:
How do you feel about the high incarceration rates in the USA and what can be done about it?

And you can talk about whatever is alive for you or on your mind..

LOCATION
Zoom Meeting Room URL: https://zoom.us/j/9896109339
Click on the link to enter the Zoom video conferencing room.

Compassionate listening is a critical skill for a strong relationship, so that your partner feels cared for and understood. Here are six key elements of listening compassionately to your partner when he or she wants to share their feelings.

Don't try to fix the problem or give advice unless specifically asked. Sometimes we just want to be listened to and have our feelings heard. When we're hurting we need empathy, not advice. It's natural to want to help and offer instant solutions to someone we love, but advice might not be what that person needs at that moment. Men, especially, tend to be problem-solvers but should bear this in mind and just listen to the problem sometimes.

When participants felt a strong sense of empathy with the person in the picture, regions of the brain associated with emotion and emotional memory lit up. "It's almost like the brain is responding in a way that signals, 'this is important, pay attention,'" said Acevedo.

These areas of the brain—like the amygdala and ventral pallidum—have a particularly dense concentration of receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin, further implicating these neurotransmitters in empathy and altruism. What's more, individuals with genetic variations that made them more sensitive to these hormones exhibited stronger emotional responses across the board.

Empathy is undergoing a new evolution. In a global and interconnected culture, we can no longer afford to identify only with people who seem to be a part of our "tribe." As Dr. Helen Riess has learned, our capacity for empathy is not just an innate trait--it is also a skill that we can learn and expand.

With The Empathy Effect, Dr. Riess presents a definitive resource on empathy: the science behind how it works, new research on how empathy develops from birth to adulthood, and tools for building your capacity to create authentic emotional connection with others in any situation.

Helen Riess, MD, is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, HuffPost, JAMA, and more. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Eve Ekman is the director of training at the Greater Good Science Center.

Dr. Michele Borba will talk to our community and explain what parents and educators MUST do to combat the growing empathy crisis among children today—including a 9-step empathy-building program with tips to guide kids from birth through college, and beyond.

Teens today are forty percent less empathetic than they were thirty years ago. Why is a lack of empathy—which goes hand-in-hand with the self-absorption epidemic Dr. Michele Borba calls the Selfie Syndrome—so dangerous? Join her on February 20 to find out.

“We can’t lose track of the basics. Compassion. Empathy. That’s what we need more of,” says John Morrison, a local artist and photographer.


Last fall, Morrison was driving along Highway 1 to the Hillcrest Hotel outside Revelstoke.

“I noticed something. It looked like a leaf standing on the centre line.”

But it wasn’t. It was a small, injured squirrel. Blind and its fur had been ripped from its face.

“I can’t let things like that go. So I stopped with all the traffic passing. It was a miracle no one hit it.”

Research has shown that empathy can be analyzed and learned. Looking up to an empathetic role model — a role model who is empathetic toward this learning process itself — and debriefing about empathetic behavior has shown to be especially helpful.

As empathy becomes more prioritized in the workplace, training that focuses on emotional intelligence will become more commonplace, too. Perhaps most importantly, we should take time to put our devices away and engage in meaningful face-to-face interactions. It is a great way to practice active listening and empathy, and something we should make time for every single day.

Why you need empathy?
If business is all about people, then business is all about empathy. No transaction between two humans can succeed without a bit of empathy in the mix. Empathy, the ability to not only detect what others feel but also to experience that emotion yourself, is present in every aspect of our social life, even when we are doing business. It is what enables you to see something from someone else’s perspective, not just your own.

According to Roman Krznaric, empathy is “the art of imaginatively stepping into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions

The Impact of Organizational Empathy on Customer Service

An empathetic organization has many advantages over an emotionally detached company, especially when it comes to successful customer experiences. In the 2018 State of Workplace Empathy Report, Businessolver found that “87% of CEOs agree the company’s financial performance is tied to empathy.”

The report also found that “there’s a silent majority in U.S. workplaces who believe that empathy is lacking in their organizations and they’re willing to take action – even leave their jobs – to seek out employers who are more empathetic.” Employee retention is a top concern for the call center industry which, by nature, has high turnover.

It’s crucial for these organizations to cultivate empathy across the organization to obtain more engaged employees. Additionally, Forrester reported that “customer-obsessed companies report having happier employees, more loyal customers, and increased likelihood to exceed revenue growth expectations.”

A 5-step process for creating empathy maps that describe user characteristics at the start of a UX design process.

Date:  Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 10 AM – 12 PM PT

Topic:  How do you feel about the issue of climate change?

Location: Zoom Meeting Room URL: https://zoom.us/j/9896109339
Click on the link to enter the Zoom video conferencing room.

An Empathy Circle is a structured dialogue process.  The process supports meaningful and constructive dialogue. The basic process can be fairly easily learned in about 15 minutes.  It increases mutual understanding and connection by ensuring that each person feels fully heard to their satisfaction.   

A new study conducted by the Psychopharmacology and Addiction Research Centre (PARC) has found that MDMA users have more emotional empathy than other drug users who mainly use substances such as cocaine, cannabis and ketamine.

Over the past couple of years, scientists have made numerous breakthroughs that have shown us MDMA's potential usefulness for treating mental health problems such as PTSD and alcoholism. Between giving the drug to octopuses to examine the origins of social behavior and testing its ability to help people get over betrayal and build trust, the potential health benefits of this illegal party drug are becoming more clear with each passing study.

Long-term MDMA users have higher levels of empathy than cannabis and other drugs users, new research suggests.

University of Exeter scientists compared the empathy levels of 25 people who used multiple drugs including MDMA, 19 people who used multiple drugs not including MDMA and 23 people who used alcohol only.

Users of MDMA reported feeling much more empathy - and were better at identifying the emotions of others on a computer task - than people who took multiple drugs not including MDMA.The other drugs were cannabis, cocaine and ketamine.