Reactivating Healthcare Empathy via Transdisciplinary Research, Patient Perspectives, and Immersive Learning

The Healthcare EmpathyRx Lab conducts transdisciplinary research to develop healthcare education interventions that sustain empathy, cultural awareness, and health-related literacy challenges within health professions and across the health education and professional development journey.

We blend insights from neuroeducation, the art and science of nursing and medical education with innovative technologies to enhance healthcare practice. With the support of SDSU’s VITaL Research Center and the expertise of our industry advisors, we aim to nurture a more compassionate and competent healthcare future for all. Our advisors bring invaluable expertise and real-world perspectives, ensuring our interventions are both innovative and practical, meeting the evolving needs of the healthcare industry.

Empathic Leadership and Culture Change
The New Drivers of Patient Experience Excellence
Healthcare organizations are under growing pressure from workforce burnout, staffing shortages, rising patient expectations, technology overload, and increasing complexity across care delivery. In this timely panel discussion, leaders from across Mass General Brigham will explore why empathic leadership and culture transformation have become critical drivers of both workforce well-being and patient experience.

Moderated by empathy researcher Helen Riess, this panel brings together senior clinical, quality, patient experience, and operational leaders from Mass General Brigham to share practical lessons and measurable strategies for leading through today’s healthcare challenges. Attendees will leave with actionable insights to strengthen leadership communication, supporting clinical teams, and creating more sustainable cultures that improve both the workforce and patient experience.

Strengthen organizational resilience, trust, retention, and patient outcomes through empathic leadership

Address burnout, communication breakdowns, workforce fatigue, and technology burden across care environments

Implement culture change strategies drawn from real-world frontline experience and operational leadership

Connect patient experience, quality, safety, and workforce well-being as part of a unified organizational strategy

Build accountable, compassionate, and engaged cultures during periods of ongoing stress and transformation

Nowhere is this clearer than in Saad’s signature contribution to far-right discourse: “suicidal empathy,” his theory that Western civilization is engineering its own collapse by being too compassionate. It’s a concept with no basis in psychological research, evolutionary or otherwise. Saad has never conducted a study on it, and it appears nowhere in peer-reviewed literature.

That hasn’t stopped it from becoming the latest trend in far-right discourse. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) invoked it to describe a mother on trial for killing her children. Representative Randy Fine (R-Fla.) cited it to argue Americans must “deal with the barbarians inside the gates.” Elon Musk, one of Saad’s earliest and loudest boosters, put his own endorsement on the cover of Saad’s book. What started as a marketing professor’s pet theory is now providing an excuse for far-right influencers and politicians to justify anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hostility.

by Lu Liu

In the rush to adapt to artificial intelligence, higher education may overlook something critical in the process: the human capacities that technology cannot replace. In my experience as a designer, educator and academic leader, meaningful innovation does not begin with technology; it begins with empathy.

This is not always how universities approach innovation education. We often emphasise technical expertise, analytical rigour and productivity. Those qualities matter deeply. But innovation that improves human lives requires something more difficult – and profound: the ability to understand people whose experiences differ from our own. That ability deserves far greater attention in higher education.

Empathy allows us to ask better and deeper questions, recognise unmet needs and undiscovered aspirations, and create solutions that genuinely improve human experiences and quality of life.

Teaching: In this activity, students will discuss how responses of empathy are perceived when they originate from humans versus machines.

People increasingly turn to artificial intelligence for emotional support, with research showing that AI-generated responses are often rated as more empathetic than human responses in blind evaluations. However, a paradox emerges when the source is revealed: individuals rate the exact same messages as significantly less empathetic once they know an AI wrote them, driven by mistrust and the belief that machines lack genuine feelings. To address this, the article outlines classroom activities and discussions designed to help students critically evaluate both human-AI relational dynamics and the methodological limitations of current empathy research.

Empathy explained
This article is about empathy. But what do we actually mean when we talk about it? 

 Krijnen: 'Empathy is not always clearly defined. Does it mean understanding what other people think, do and feel? Or is it mainly about sharing in other people's emotions? Or does it refer to how you respond, for example when someone sitting next to you starts to cry?'

'The first two aspects are generally regarded as forms of empathy: understanding another person's thoughts and feelings is known as cognitive empathy, while sharing their emotions is referred to as affective empathy. How someone responds, in other words their social skills and behaviour, is sometimes included as part of empathy and sometimes considered a separate concept.'

Key Insights

• What is empathy and why does it matter for business performance?
• How does leader empathy directly affect employee retention and engagement?
• What does Dale Carnegie's global research reveal about the empathy gap in organizations today?
• How do generational differences shape the way employees perceive empathy at work?
• What eight practical actions can leaders take to build more empathy right now?
• How can organizations embed empathy into their culture, not just their training?
• Is someone else's emotional response your responsibility as a leader?

by Eugene Sepulveda 

Empathy as a source of inspiration. Empathy as a strategic asset. Empathy as toxic to our selfish ambitions.

It's been a long while since I've written more than a facebook posting for public consumption. I can get too much in my head and feel the need to cite all my sources when writing. Don't worry, I'll chill as I develop a regular cadence for these postings. Following last week's issue: Is empathy toxic?, a few readers wrote recommending other perspectives on empathy. 

When I think about empathy I remember the old adage about walking a mile in someone else's shoes. And, this reminds me of one of my chief tenets of interpersonal communication - you can't persuade or convince someone until they feel heard and understood. 

Why "Just Care More" Isn't the Fix

It's tempting to hear all this and conclude the answer is to do better; feel more, care more, in every interaction. It isn't. And the research on empathy is specific about why. Understanding someone else's experience while still knowing exactly where you end and they begin (what researchers call cognitive empathy) is different from a self-focused flooding where that boundary dissolves and their distress becomes indistinguishable from yours (personal distress). The second one isn't a deeper form of caring. Left unchecked, it produces compassion fatigue, withdrawal, and, over time, less empathy - not more.

So, the goal isn't maximum feeling. It's a specific, trainable skill: staying steady enough in your own

By Vriti Shah

Even through opposing opinions and conflicts, the way that we talk to one another is crucial for the nation to come together in making a difference. But change is not possible without actually listening to one another with empathy, understanding and solidarity, even during disagreement.

I urge you to have a conversation with your neighbors and listen to their perspectives with empathy — even if the subject ranges from best politician to best burger joint. Empathy drives us through hard and turbulent conversations; empathy drives humanity to progress to a better reality.

Join Monica Harris, John Wood, Jr. and Ilana Redstone as we discuss the need to develop emotional intelligence and perspective-taking skills and how deep listening strengthens democratic participation and community bonds. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to respectful civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum: https://manystoriesonenation.com/

 

by Gary Saul Morson

Empathy entails more than feeling sorry for someone; it entails putting yourself in that person’s place. While sympathy shows you care, it may imply a sense of superiority or a sort of noblesse oblige. Empathy implies that we gain a real sense of someone unlike ourselves. We grasp what another person experiences, in much the same way that readers identify with a fictional character. When the heroine suffers, we wince; when another person grieves, we vicariously experience his or her grief. 

Empathy can be intellectual as well as emotional: if someone holds beliefs differing from our own, we understand what makes those beliefs convincing to that specific person. We realize: had I had that person’s experiences, I might well have drawn the same conclusions. Those who disagree with me may have reasons as good as mine, and may be as concerned with the suffering of others as I am. Even if that is not always the case, it is a good rule of thumb to hold onto, especially because we are too ready to credit ourselves with good motives and suspect the motives of others. And sometimes we blind ourselves and conceal our own vindictiveness by representing it as goodness. Today, empathy with the opinions of others is in especially short supply.

AI therapy provides a kind of "pretend empathy." Millions of people find it genuinely helpful.

The most clinically rigorous AI therapy chatbot shut down in 2025. The unregulated ones are thriving.

Healing requires friction: mutual vulnerability, the risk of being misunderstood, and sustained presence.

A chatbot will never misunderstand you or ask for anything. That frictionlessness is the problem.

More power, less empathy
Powerful people are more likely to be self-centred in general, not just in romantic relationships. Research has shown that high-power individuals are less empathetic and compassionate, with some displaying less distress at the suffering of others.

In one of Galinsky’s studies, he showed that high-power individuals literally struggle to see the world from other people’s perspectives. He and his colleagues asked people to draw the letter E on their foreheads.

I can’t help but think this is a symptom of a broader “lack of empathy” in our society today, something we have heard about repeatedly over the last decade. Modern advertising often feels less empathetic because brands rely heavily on data algorithms and aggressive sales pitches rather than deep cultural understanding.

Research used to tell us that empathetic ads perform much better, yet fewer campaigns today successfully connect real human feeling with a winning creative strategy.

Recently, I listened to an episode of the podcast Speaking of Psychology titled «The Decline of Empathy and the Rise of Narcissism,» featuring Sara Konrath, PhD. In the episode, she discusses how concern and care for others’ feelings, virtues we strive to instill in our children, are sorely lacking among many American adults today.

Scientific research supports the idea that Americans are caring less about others and more about themselves. Dr. Konrath, an associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University and director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research, and she explores these shifts in depth.

Right-wing extremist ways of bringing religion and ethics into politics seem to be gaining ground. Reform's recent attempt to redefine empathy is a further example. They are all interlinked so this gambit is particularly dangerous. If they weren't connected, Catholic Social Teaching would be all good intentions and no action.

Gad Saad invented the term 'suicidal empathy'. He spent a decade in Concordia - formerly a Canadian Jesuit University - becoming Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences and Darwinian Consumption (be reassured Darwinian Consumption is not the fittest eating the unfit). Saad's expertise is in consumer behaviour and marketing, food for Reform. His book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind was published in May this year and provided the main fodder for attacking the value of empathy. Lebanese born, Jewish, atheist, and polemicist, he recently left Canada. He felt threatened by, and had himself experienced, antisemitism (6,800 incidents in 2025 up 9% on 2024). He didn't like their immigration policy, 'wokeism' and the tax system. Saad currently does research in one of the most conservative US States, at the University of Mississippi.

In the rush to adapt to artificial intelligence, higher education may overlook something critical in the process: the human capacities that technology cannot replace. In my experience as a designer, educator and academic leader, meaningful innovation does not begin with technology; it begins with empathy.

This is not always how universities approach innovation education. We often emphasise technical expertise, analytical rigour and productivity. Those qualities matter deeply. But innovation that improves human lives requires something more difficult – and profound: the ability to understand people whose experiences differ from our own. That ability deserves far greater attention in higher education.

A new report reveals that workplace empathy is crucial for successful AI adoption. Businessolver's 2026 State of Workplace Empathy AI Special Report found that nearly nine in ten employees in empathetic cultures feel adequately trained and positive about AI, a stark contrast to only 33% in toxic environments. This optimism extends to job security and agency.

The study emphasizes that AI adoption is less about technology and more about emotional intelligence and a high-empathy culture. Research suggests "perspective-getting"—directly asking employees about their concerns—is far more effective than leaders guessing. Managers are advised to implement a four-step strategy: privately guess fears, ask concrete questions, compare notes, and act quickly on feedback to build trust and address anxieties. This approach fosters an environment where employees feel heard, boosting AI integration.

Do you sometimes feel like you’ve run out of empathy? Is your empathy feeling more like a burden or an obligation but you’re not feeling it? Could there be such a thing as ‘empathy burnout’?

So many of my clients tell me that all the disasters and painful events they see on screens daily can be just too much and they start to tune out. Many also tell me they feel this way in their personal or professional lives, when they have been empathising with others and their troubles all day or over a lengthy period, and now they feel numb. Does this resonate with you? Have you ever felt empathy for a long time but eventually you find yourself feeling 'done'?

Cognitive empathy: understanding someone else's experience while still knowing exactly where you end and they begin. Personal distress: a self-focused flooding where that boundary dissolves, until their pain becomes indistinguishable from yours.

e same thing, and only one of them is sustainable.

by Leiden University

There is a widespread belief that people with autism are less empathetic. In other words, that they are less able to put themselves in someone else's shoes. But is that actually true? Autism researcher Dr. Lisa Krijnen is investigating this question. The research is published in the journal Autism.

Where does this idea come from?

Both research and popular opinion have long portrayed people with autism as being less empathetic. But why is this the case?

Krijnen explains, "Partly, it may stem from the way empathy has been measured in previous studies. It is often assessed using questionnaires in which people are asked to evaluate for themselves how well they understand or relate to what someone else is thinking or feeling. Autistic people regularly report finding these kinds of questions difficult to answer."