Empathy, the act of understanding and sharing the feelings of others, has long been the underpinning of religious, humanitarian, and philosophical teachings.

Now, there's a new perspective increasingly heard in conservative circles: Empathy isn't always a good thing. Elon Musk, for example, recently said that we have to fight against "civilizational suicidal empathy," something he believes is weaponized by Democrats to 'import' as many immigrants without legal status as possible. It's also being preached from right-wing pulpits by pastors who say empathy's OK but that not everyone's deserving of it.

At the end of February, the world’s richest human appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and made some confused comments about empathy.

Elon Musk’s public speaking isn’t the most coherent at the best of times, so it’s not always absolutely clear what his meanings and motivations are.

While many associate empathy with older children and adults, research shows that the foundations of this essential social skill begin forming in infancy. From recognizing emotions to responding with kindness, young children have a remarkable capacity to connect with the feelings of others. But what makes a toddler respond with kindness? And how can parents encourage this emotional intelligence?

Elon Musk thinks empathy is killing civilization. In a recent appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the world’s top right-leaning podcast, Musk made a surprising proclamation: empathy, he claims, is the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization,” pushing us toward “civilizational suicide.”

As a Canadian social psychologist who researches empathy scientifically, I disagree sharply with his assessment. Simply put, Musk is wrong.

Musk’s claim relies on two key assumptions: that empathy is higher in ‘western civilization’ than other societies and that high empathy harms civilization.

What about empathy for other people's pain?
We also tested our participants' responses to other people's pain by showing them images, such as a hand trapped in a door or a bare foot stepping on glass. Previous research has shown that people higher in psychopathy show reduced levels of physiological arousal to other people's distress.

For example, a 2015 study found people higher in psychopathy demonstrated lower levels of brain activity when seeing other people in painful situations. In our study, we found that people higher in psychopathy not only reported feeling less empathy but also showed lower sweat responses when viewing other people's pain.

Why do so many conversations leave us feeling unheard and disconnected? In Deep Listening, acclaimed BBC journalist, accredited executive coach, and mediator Emily Kasriel argues that it’s because we've forgotten how to truly listen.

Distracted by our own agenda, we so often hear without understanding, impatiently waiting for our turn to speak. In this exploration of transformational listening, Kasriel shows how shifting from surface-level exchanges to Deep Listening can enrich our relationships as friends, parents, and partners, enhance our effectiveness as leaders, and strengthen the fabric of our communities. At a time when divisions within communities, organizations, and families are often a source of profound pain, this book offers inspiration and practical guidance on how we can better listen to each other, even when we fiercely disagree.

Deep, high-quality listening that offers a nonjudgmental approach, understanding, and careful attention when speakers share disparate views can have the power to bridge divides and change speakers' attitudes. However, can people be trained to provide such listening while disagreeing with what they hear, and if so, are the effects of the listening training sufficient for creating perceptible change during disagreements?

This study, conducted with delegates (N = 320) representing 86 countries experimentally tested a “deep” (otherwise termed “high quality“) listening training against a randomly assigned subgroup of attendees who served as a “waitlist” control. During a conversation with another participant on a subject about which they strongly disagreed, participants who had completed a 6-h training over 3 weeks in high-quality listening demonstrated improvements in their observed listening behaviors, reported higher levels of interactional intimacy with conversation partners, appeared to increase their self-insight and subsequently, showed evidence of attitude change.

Among the first studies to test semi-causal outcomes of high-quality listening training between attendees with diverse and contrary attitudes in a real-world, cross-national setting; we discuss the potential and limitations for listening training to support positive relations and an open mind in the context of discourse, disagreement and polarization.

This one-day workshop is designed for healthcare practitioners, clinical educators, educational supervisors and training leads.

An increasing amount of evidence shows that empathy improves patient outcomes (including patient satisfaction) and practitioner well-being. With a keynote on the latest evidence around empathic healthcare, group work, and patient stories, this workshop will cover the theory and practice of empathy in healthcare and facilitate the development of evidence-based ‘empathy habits’ to enhance empathy in clinical practice and organisations.

This workshop will be facilitated by Dr Andy Ward, Director of Education and Training for the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare.

by KirkLC
Musk is parroting ideas advanced by Gad Saad, a Lebanese-Canadian professor and author of “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense (2020).” Saad has a Ph.D. in marketing, although he held the chair of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption at Concordia University for a decade until 2018.

His background in this discipline is not at all clear. It is hard to take Saad’s extreme ideological, un-academic views seriously, though Musk does. Both men argue that empathy is an infectious idea that undermines rational thought. Saad frequently uses immigration as a focal point, claiming that the left’s progressive stance on open borders exploits empathy, yet the majority of Americans do not support such policies.

This is an oversimplified strawman argument that ignores the broader complexities of immigration policy. Ironically, both Saad and Musk are immigrants themselves, with Musk having illegally overstayed his student visa when he dropped out of college to start a business.

The business case: How empathy affects KPIs.
Empathic leadership isn’t just a soft skill—it’s a key driver of business success. When you lead with empathy, the improvements are measurable, including employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and even retention rates. Ross’s research proves that.

In fact, organizations with high empathy scores tend to experience lower turnover, higher customer loyalty, and increased profits. Empathy creates an environment in which employees feel connected and valued, and customers can sense the difference.

“Library professionals want to stand in gaps. That's one of the things that they're good at,” Chrastka said. “They're standing in knowledge gaps, you know – ‘here's there's the good stuff in the archives, read it’ – and they also have a deep empathy, I would suggest, because they are readers.”

“Reading builds empathy,” Chrastka continued. “So when you see gaps in the social services, when you see that another component of government has been taken over by an anti-person perspective and says, ‘those people aren't valued,’ librarians have stepped up.”

Between the lines: Lucas LaFreniere, an assistant professor of psychology at Skidmore College who recently taught a seminar called "My Therapist is a Robot," says there are two kinds of people — those who are willing to suspend disbelief to accept that a chatbot could help them with personal problems and those who aren't.

"You can tell in the first five minutes of talking with somebody, whether they think it's all going to be bullshit, or they are really open to it, think it has a lot of potential and could be cool, and can relate to it," LaFreniere told Axios.

Empathy is in the eye of the beholder, he said: "If the client is perceiving empathy, they benefit from the empathy."
But he says there are a lot of people who simply don't feel that empathy — or if they do feel it, it will disappear at the first glitch. "That just kind of reminds the user very starkly that they're talking to software," he said.

I think that real love is when one person can feel another person completely, like they have one mind, soul, heart and body.

When Elon Musk recently told Joe Rogan that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” no one could have been surprised given what we know about Musk. Nevertheless, out of context this is an awfully weird thing to say.

Why exactly would it be a weakness to have a society in which people are able to understand the perspective of others and see the world through their eyes? In context, however, it makes slightly more sense, though it’s no less repugnant: What Musk is arguing against isn’t empathy but sympathy, caring about other people’s welfare and not wanting bad things to happen to them.

Hello! My name is Greg Depow, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management, working with Dr. Chris Oveis in the Empathy and Emotion Lab. I am also working with Dr. Amit Goldenberg who runs the Digital Emotions Lab at Harvard Business School. I research empathy, prosocial acts, and subjective well-being–employing a range of tools from lab-based experimental approaches to repeatedly sampling experiences in everyday life.

My work is supported by Social Sciences Human Research Council, and the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. I’m also a Rechter Fellow at the Center for Positive Leadership. I received my PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto, with Dr. Michael Inzlicht in the Work and Play Lab.

Empathy’s impact
In the April 2024 issue of JAMA Network Open, we reported that patients treated by very empathic physicians had better outcomes than those treated by physicians with less empathy. Over 12 months of follow-up, greater physician empathy was associated with less pain intensity, fewer back-related disabilities and better health-related quality of life involving physical function, anxiety and depression, sleep health and impact on social roles and activities.

Greater physician empathy was associated with better patient outcomes than costly, risky or invasive treatments such as opioid therapy or lumbar spine surgery.

Despite such benefits associated with physician empathy, some research has shown that medical students and residents may become less empathic during their education and training. This is often attributed to the ever-growing volume of information to be learned and a perceived need for objectivity in making medical decisions, ostensibly through patient detachment and reliance on technology.

Objective
From the perspective of empathy theory, this study focuses on the process of entrepreneurship education to explore the mechanism between teacher-student empathic relationship and psychological connection.

Background
Entrepreneurship education aims to provide talent to support the innovative development of society. Previous studies have focused on the educational significance of the promoting entrepreneurial intention, and few have paid attention to the psychological differentiation caused by the incomprehension between teachers and students.

Is empathy learned? Believe it or not, empathy is a superpower these days. Research suggests that people with empathy are fantastic family members, friends, and romantic partners.

So what is Empathy? Empathy is a skill that allows us to see things from the other person's perspective. It is the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes and experience the world as they would experience it.

Most people are genetically gifted with empathy; however, some have to learn this skill. For instance, therapists are taught 'empathy' before they can attend to clients. 

A call has gone out for professionals working in empathic healthcare to provide poster, abstract and workshop submissions for a ground-breaking international symposium.

The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network Symposium: ‘Rehumanising Healthcare in a Divided World’ will attract healthcare professionals, researchers, educators, and advocates from around the world to Leicester in September.

Professionals have until Saturday, March 16, to submit abstract and poster submissions relating to the themes of Teaching, Research, Policy or Integrated themes spanning Teaching, Research and Policy.

What is empathy, and is it Biblical? Join us as we discuss the important quality of empathy and how it shows up in the Christian's life.