Research originating at Georgia State University’s Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) into empathic digital humans and human-centered artificial intelligence is continuing to evolve, with a new peer-reviewed publication, international research activity and professional recognition for Professor of Practice Jeasy Sehgal.

Sehgal’s latest paper, "Affective Scaffolding in Creative Learning: The Vivience Framework for Empathic Digital Humans as Collaborative Partners," was published Sept. 2 in the 2026 special issue of CogNexus, a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal. The publication builds on the Vivience AI research trajectory, extending work that began at CMII through the development of the digital human prototypes LightArch and Annelore and the subsequent formalization of Affective-Emotive Resonance (AER).

Cognitive empathy, understood as the ability to adopt another person's perspective, is a key socioemotional competence in health professions education and has been associated with psychological adjustment and lower levels of psychological distress. However, evidence on how cognitive empathy and psychological distress vary across disciplines and stages of training remains limited, particularly in large multidisciplinary samples.

The present study aimed to (1) analyze differences in cognitive empathy and psychological distress across Health Sciences degree programs and stages of training and (2) examine the relationship between cognitive empathy and psychological distress while controlling for relevant sociodemographic and academic variables.

By Sally Percy

Empathy is a crucial leadership skill, driving organizational success and employee engagement. Leaders can cultivate empathy by actively listening, demonstrating vulnerability and focusing on individual needs. Nurturing intergenerational teams and encouraging in-person interactions can further enhance empathy. Organizations should actively reward empathetic behaviors. Empathy is a learned trait that, when systematically encouraged, cannot be replicated by technology, making it indispensable for future leadership.

Several conservative public figures say misplaced empathy for hardened criminals and Islamist migrants has pushed Western society to the brink of collapse.

Vice President J.D. Vance, trillionaire Elon Musk, social researcher Gad Saad, Baptist podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey and Catholic media evangelist Bishop Robert Barron have argued that Americans have been kind to a fault with such people.

Most of them have close ties to the Trump administration, which has restricted illegal immigration, made deep cuts to social spending and deployed National Guard troops to police major cities. And all have used terms such as “toxic empathy,” “suicidal empathy” and “the sin of empathy” to justify such policies.

What made Robert Jenrick complain about “suicidal empathy” in a Telegraph article about benefit reform? The phrase barely existed until the end of last year, when it started to attract flutters of interest on Google search. 

Then, in May, a Canadian professor of marketing called Gad Saad published a book called Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind. Elon Musk wrote an admiring blurb, and the concept was fired straight into the far right lexicon.

“Suicidal empathy” has become a popular diagnosis of progressive excess: the idea that compassion can become so indiscriminate that it undermines the very people, institutions, and cultures it hopes to protect. In this episode, integral psychologist Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos take that critique seriously without accepting the Manichaean worldview often wrapped around it.

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.

Latin American Conference on Empathy in Healthcare: Education, evidence and practice
Virtual event – Friday 25th September 2026, from 9am to 5pm (CST)

Keynote lectures
Professor Jeremy Howick, Director, Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester, UK. With over 100 scientific publications in journals such as The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, Professor Howick is the founder of the Oxford Empathy Programme and the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network. His research demonstrates that empathetic care reduces pain, improves clinical outcomes, and protects the well-being of healthcare professionals.

Dr Mohammadreza Hojat, Research Professor & Director, Jefferson Longitudinal Study Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, USA. Dr Hojat is the creator of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy – the most widely used instrument worldwide to measure clinical empathy in health professions students and practitioners.

Registration information
For further information and to register go to https://empatiaenlasalud.online

Disclaimer: The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare and Global Empathy in Healthcare Network is promoting this event. We are not involved in the organisation, management, or delivery of the event and do not collect, process, or hold any attendee data. Any questions regarding registration, data protection, or privacy should be directed to the event organisers at the Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil.

We tend to think of empathy and compassion as traits we either have or don't. But research tells a different story. Empathy unfolds. It deepens layer by layer as we encounter, sit with, and genuinely engage a human story. Which means that every time we interrupt, assume, or finish someone's story, we don't just miss information—we short-circuit the empathy process itself.

This session draws on original research into empathy decline in healthcare and the conditions that reverse it. Using complexity theory as a lens, participants will explore why empathy erosion is a wicked problem that resists single solutions, and why storytelling, story listening, and intentional reflection and structured debrief protocols are among the most powerful micro-interventions available. Grounded in both science and practice, the session uses story as both subject and method.

Participants will leave with:
• A new mental model: empathy as a dynamic process grounded in story
• A practical, repeatable storytelling, listening, and reflection protocol for clinical settings
• One insight they can apply in their next patient encounter

We must teach students how to protect themselves
In medical education, we lionize empathy. It is all over our mission statements, student evaluations and admissions essays. But what we do not always acknowledge is this: empathy, in its rawest form, comes at a cost. If we ask students to feel everything without teaching them how to protect themselves, we set them up for compassion fatigue and burnout.

We often teach empathy as “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.” Official definitions label empathy as the act of understanding or being sensitive (even vicariously experiencing) the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others.

With AI we are entering a new era in which technology can tabulate information, recognize patterns, answer questions, and write reports at a phenomenal speed, and do tasks that would require a massive amount of human time and effort. This has huge implications for our future and what kind of skills are still important for humans to acquire. Being the smartest person in the room has little value if artificial intelligence can pull up more accurate information than the entire room has, and assess that information in moments.

Years ago, sitting across from a couple in my therapy office, I would stop them before they said a word to each other.

I'd hold my hands up, palms facing my own chest, and slowly move them outward, lifting something invisible off myself and setting it down beside me.

"Before you listen to your partner," I'd say, "take your issues, your concerns, your opinions, your judgments, lift them out of yourself, and place them over here. Not gone. Just set aside. So they don't get in the way of you actually hearing the person in front of you."

When empathy operates without discernment, people can enable dysfunction, confuse rescuing with caring, or mistake emotional immediacy for moral wisdom; this is where Trungpa's notion of idiot compassion becomes useful, pointing to care that avoids truth, limits, or necessary tension.

When discernment operates without empathy, people can become efficient, severe, and strategically correct while quietly dehumanizing the very people they claim to help.

Measuring medical outcomes based on doctor warmth and conveyed empathy.

Compassionate care as an effective medical treatment, it's not just bedside manner.

We can’t always guarantee empathetic doctors, but we can practice self-compassion ourselves.

In the last month, I’ve been absorbed in Meghan O'Rourke’s insightful book, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness. It examines the often dark and misconstrued world of long-term health conditions, specifically intangible illnesses that manage to slip under the diagnostic radar for many years. But she addresses all medical conditions that typically take a huge toll on our psychological well-being.

When we open a book, we don’t expect much more than to be entertained or to learn something about the world. We pick up a novel because we want to escape, to fall in love, to be frightened, to laugh or simply to spend a few hours somewhere that isn’t our own reality.

What we don’t always expect is to grow with every story.

Every character, every heartbreak, every unfamiliar life slowly builds something inside of us that we may not even realize is there: empathy

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.