Earlier this summer, Second Presbyterian Church set out to help children grow in empathy. In addition to exploring what the Bible says about God’s heart for immigrants, they invited guest speakers and created activities to help kids imagine life in someone else’s shoes. The results were remarkable—one boy even gave up his dream trip to Disney World to help others.
Empathy speaks fluently in every age In her book Reclaiming Conversation in a Digital Age, Sherry Turkle writes:
“We face a crisis of empathy. Our devices and online lives have left us less able to talk to one another, listen, and understand. Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do.”
This week of vacation bible school (VBS) proved her point: meaningful experiences can bring empathy to life in a way no screen ever could. Helping us to grow in empathy.
On Empathy “I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the [Nazi] defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Captain Gustav Mark Gilbert, a United States Psychologist who was assigned to attend and closely watch the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War identified a common personality trait among all those who testified: the lack of feelings of empathy.
As we understand in psychology, unless there is a developmental delay, infants demonstrate the rudimentary beginnings of empathy whenever they recognize that another is upset, and they show signs of being upset themselves. Very early in their lives, infants metaphorically develop the capacity to crawl in the diapers of others even though their own diapers do not need changing.
World-renowned hostage negotiator Chris Voss spoke with The New York Times’ David Marchese in a Saturday podcast interview, where he discussed how President Donald Trump demonstrates empathy.
Voss, a former longtime hostage negotiator for the FBI, was asked by Marchese whether he believes Trump and his administration “demonstrate empathy.”
“I think he has a highly evolved understanding of how other people see things,” he replied.
Empathy is often misunderstood in business. It's too easily dismissed as a “soft skill” or confused with sympathy. But I've found that for those of us responsible for both clients’ well-being and employees’ livelihoods—especially in service-driven sectors like healthcare—empathy is a hard skill with measurable impact.
I’ve led my company through workforce shortages, shifting demographics and intense competition. Through it all, one thing has been clear: Organizations that center empathy—not as a buzzword but as a daily operational mindset—often outperform those that don’t. And not only in retention or morale but also in margins, outcomes and long-term growth.
The Borders of Empathy in Children’s Fiction examines how children’s books engage readers in acts of feeling-with and feeling-for others, while also questioning the limits and politics of empathy. Through close readings of contemporary international children’s literature, the book explores how narratives, characters, and visual strategies invite readers to cross cultural, emotional, and ethical boundaries. Rather than celebrating empathy as an unproblematic moral force, the book critically analyses how children’s fiction negotiates difference, vulnerability, and relationality, often revealing tensions between inclusion and exclusion.
What we are cultivating in this work is more than a set of interpersonal skills, it is the foundation for a profound shift in how human beings relate to themselves, to one another, and to the systems they inhabit.
Self-empathy is the practice of building a warm, compassionate relationship with one’s own experience. It offers relief from the inner wars of criticism, self-doubt, and emotional reactivity. Through this practice, clients learn to greet each part of their inner landscape with acceptance, opening access to wiser discernment and more effective action. At its core, self-empathy is about taking responsibility for one’s experience - not as self-blame, but as the capacity to truly meet it.
Lately, empathy has gone from being a desirable trait to a politicized concept. We discuss what empathy means and the role it plays in interpersonal relationships—as well as in today's society. Can someone gain or lose the ability to be empathetic? Is feeling empathy a matter of choice?
Panelist: Daryl Cameron, associate professor of psychology and director of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, Penn State University
VIP Caller: Julie Quimby, licensed psychologist; founder/CEO, Psychology Specialists of Maine Nirav Shah, former principal deputy director, federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; former director Maine CDC; visiting professor, Colby College Steven Dyer, instructor of criminology & criminal justice, campus chaplain, Thomas College Cavenaugh Kelly, assistant professor, College of Health, Husson University
by Susan Krauss Whitbourne People high in psychopathy are assumed to lack empathy, especially when seen in forensic settings.
A new study examines the empirical evidence linking a wide range of empathy measures to psychopathy ratings.
It can be helpful to understand the limitations of our current knowledge about empathy in psychopaths.
When you think of a person who fits the definition of psychopath, you undoubtedly imagine someone who, in addition to lacking remorse, is incapable of ordinary human empathy. This assumption is so baked into the psychology literature, not to mention the popular imagination, that it’s rarely questioned. Yet, what does the evidence say?
For today's suggested topic lets consider Empathy Circles. I’m in the process of trying to involve community groups in hosting Empathy Circles. Beyond the fold I would like to share my outreach letter.
Anyone in the Bay Area that is interested in helping me please send me a Daily Kos message.
To Community Group,
On behalf of the Empathy Center, we invite your organization to consider using Empathy Circles as part of your community services outreach. Empathy Circles are a structured conversation between small groups of participants that are led by a facilitator. The circles by design encourage the values of mutuality, openness, and care. We have found that practicing these values in the circle setting lead to a deepening of our innate ability to empathize with ourselves, our families, and our community.
Anyone in the Bay Area that is interested in helping me please send me a Daily Kos message.
In this era of rapid transformation, the key to surviving and thriving is leaning into empathy to bring people along. Here are 3 things you can do to prepare.
3 Moves Leaders Can Make This Quarter
1. Implement Empathy Practices That Scale
Start every change sprint with a “context + care” brief: what’s changing, why it matters to customers, what it means for jobs, and where people can get help.
Make manager 1:1s non-negotiable (15 minutes, weekly) with two prompts: “What’s blocking you?” and “What’s one change I can make to help this week?”
I imagine that many Americans instinctively feel revulsion when witnessing official lawlessness and brutality. They feel empathy for the suffering of struggling and disrupted families. In other words, they feel empathy.
That’s not useful to Team Trump, so they tell their followers to reject those empathetic impulses.
That’s how we get the sickening spectacle of right-wing influencers warning against “toxic empathy” and MAGA-minded preachers declaring that empathy is a “sin” — a sin!
That’s a hard sell for this Christian. I see empathy at the core of the golden rule, and of the commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
I love the reaction I’ve seen appear on church message boards and hand-drawn protest signs: “If empathy is a sin, sin boldly.”
Not everyone experiences empathy in the same way or to the same degree. For some, tuning into other people’s feelings is almost automatic or natural, like a reflex. For others, it’s more like a skill that has to be consciously practiced and sometimes, it’s possible that it doesn’t develop much at all.
Even if empathy comes naturally to you, it can fade or be withheld in certain situations, often without you realizing it. In a 2025 study published in The Journal of Social Psychology, researchers set out to understand the reasons behind this paradox.
To explore this, participants were placed in situations where they had the opportunity to connect with others emotionally. The researchers then tracked how they approached or avoided these moments.
What happens when empathy is missing? Could a single act of altruism transform generations?
Empathy, once taken for granted as a virtue, is increasingly viewed through a divided lens. It is questioned, politicized, and sometimes dismissed as a weakness.
Yet research, history, and personal experience suggest a different possibility: Empathy is not a mere moral luxury but a vital force that helps hold human societies together.
This is even more relevant in an age marked by violence, conflict, and artificial intelligence (AI), where human connection and emotional understanding risk being overshadowed by algorithmic interactions.
In this article, I review some research and share a personal story that reveal why empathy may be essential for personal relationships and for sustaining the web of human interconnectedness.
Nadella’s philosophy, detailed in a Fast Company feature on leadership lessons from top executives, underscores how empathy enables leaders to navigate diverse teams in a post-pandemic world. He recounts transforming Microsoft’s culture by listening intently to internal voices, which led to breakthroughs in cloud computing and AI integration.
Right-wing beliefs are ultimately attempts to rationalise and justify selfishness. Fascism, ‘conservatism’, US Republicanism—call them what you will: the differences are essentially procedural. “My needs matter. Yours don’t”. But in order to explain much of what motivates those in the MAGA cult it’s necessary to understand the state which precedes selfishness. That is the primacy of the self devoid of empathy.
Members of the MAGA cult thrive on the stark clarity of its identity and their adherence to it… badges, merchandise, flags, clothing. This applies less to other (far right) systems imposed on majorities in most other polities and other shades of élite, hierarchical, coercive political opinion—notably the Democrats in the US. But they too take what’s useful in selfishness.
World-renowned relationship expert Dr. Les Parrott sits down with host Steve Cuss for a raw discussion about reclaiming your mind and soul. Parrott shreds toxic beliefs about empathy, parenting, and vulnerability that have infiltrated Christian culture, replacing them with a vision for emotional and spiritual health that actually works. Together, Steve and Dr. parrott dissect the razor-thin line between empathy and enmeshment, reveal how technology can fuel genuine human connection, and unpack why hearing God’s voice without shame is a game-changer.
In a previously published study, findings demonstrated that those who used the digital tele-emphathy device to simulate PD symptoms had significantly higher empathy scale scores compared with a control group that did not.1 These results suggest that the use of such technology could have practical and clinical implications for providing effective training to health care providers in the movement disorder field. Experiences such as these, whether through a digital device or a simulation, place greater emphasis on the patient’s perspective, helping clinicians better understand the challenges of living with PD.
by Shubhangi Chowdhury Treating empathy as optional could produce superintelligent systems with no loyalty to humanity. Just as children learn empathy through seeing and hearing others, like watching a parent comfort a sibling or hearing the tone of reassurance in a friend’s voice. AI could be taught compassion through multimodal learning. By perceiving the full spectrum of human expression and pairing that with embedded values of care, AI could grow into an agent that safeguards humanity rather than replaces it. It can augment our experience.
The confusion between empathy, sympathy, and compassion is costing us real connection.
Most of us are using the wrong emotional tool without even realizing it.
Science shows empathy isn’t just one thing—it splits into two very different powers.'
The secret to influence and connection isn’t more kindness, it’s precision.
If Joseph—a war hero, top-tier business leader, and lifelong problem-solver—could confuse empathy with sympathy or compassion, it’s no wonder the rest of us do too. But when we blur these lines, we risk using the wrong emotional tool for the moment in front of us. We might offer sympathy when empathy is needed, or act from compassion when understanding alone would have been more effective.
Why Empathy Is Important in a Relationship Healthy relationships don’t appear out of thin air (as much as we wish they did). Ultimately, they require dedication, effort, and lots of understanding. Every relationship will have disagreements, problems, and hardships—it’s natural. It’s also totally natural to have those “is this a rough patch or the right person” moments, too. But ultimately, empathy creates that safe and supportive space that gets a couple through those moments.
You’re no longer just coexisting; you’re showing up for each other in a way that actually means something. And instead of putting up walls and getting defensive, both you and your partner can feel understood, seen, and valued.
At the end of the day, it’s how you get through conflict that keeps the relationship afloat (or drowns it). You’re not avoiding conflict (because that’s also unhealthy)—you’re creating a relationship where it’s you two versus the problem, not the other way around.
Opening Statement: Launch of Towards Empathy After a long period of careful preparation and a defining series of conversations, the Goethe-Institut Myanmar is pleased to announce the launch of its year-long initiative, Towards Empathy, starting this August.
Inspired by the notion of a collapsed architecture of empathy—a poetic metaphor for the fragility of human connection—this project seeks to listen, to feel, and to rebuild, recover, and excavate in times when hardships and constraints push empathy toward oblivion: when we believe in it, yet struggle to embody it fully
Zety’s Empathetic Jobs Report identified 14 well-paying jobs safe from AI automation that blend purpose, emotional intelligence, and long-term job security.
Why Empathy Is the New Job Security While AI in the workplace continues to reshape white-collar and technical roles, careers grounded in emotional connection, caregiving, and interpersonal sensitivity remain firmly human. Many of the top-rated jobs that can’t be replaced by AI fall within healthcare, mental health, and education, where human presence is essential and tech can only augment—not replace—the work.
The Case for Empathy in Collections Empathy is no longer optional, it’s expected. In fact, 73% of consumers are more loyal to brands that show empathy during debt collection. That loyalty translates into better conversations, higher recovery rates, and stronger relationships.
As Tim Casey, CEO of Alliance One, puts it:
“To start being empathetic, you have to understand your customer better and ensure that information is easy to understand and accessible to the collection specialist making that outreach.”
Empathy helps agents move beyond scripts and into meaningful dialogue. It’s about listening, not lecturing. Supporting, not pressure.
Unlock the power of empathy in customer experience. Learn how to build stronger relationships and achieve measurable outcomes with SQM Group's expert guidance.
Empathy has long been considered a soft skill—a nice-to-have rather than a business imperative. But in today’s customer experience (CX) landscape, empathy is emerging as a powerful, result-driven strategy. Contact centers that prioritize empathy not only improve their service quality but also drive measurable business outcomes, from increased customer loyalty to improved First Call Resolution (FCR) and reduced churn.
Customers today are not simply seeking quick solutions. They want to be understood, respected, and valued. Emotional connection is the new currency of customer loyalty. Brands that respond to this shift by building empathetic customer service strategies set themselves apart in an increasingly digital and impersonal world.
Before we explore why empathy works better, let’s clarify the terms. Sympathy and empathy are often mentioned together, but they are not the same.
Sympathy usually means feeling sorry for someone’s situation – it’s a bit like standing at the edge of a dark hole where your friend is stuck and calling down, “That looks really rough. I’m sorry you’re down there.” You care that they’re hurt, but you maintain a distance. In contrast, empathy is feeling with the person, as if you climb down into that hole with them, look them in the eye and say, “I’m here with you. I understand something of what you feel.” Empathy is about genuinely understanding and sharing another person’s feelings, fostering a much deeper sense of connection and support.
Sympathy, while it comes from kindness, often involves pity – for example, feeling bad for someone – without truly understanding the person’s experience.
When it came to responding live to users' empathetic responses, Noora had freer rein. Taking advantage of the LLM’s abilities for in-context learning, the team simulated users' personalities and had Noora practice responding to users that showed varying levels of empathy. They also selected difficult cases and provided feedback for Noora to learn from.
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