Empathy Movement Magazine

Melanie Sears has been a trainer for the Center of Nonviolent Communications since 1991. She works with businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, individuals, couples and parents in transforming their usual way of operations, interpersonal interactions and dealing with conflict to one which is more compassionate, conscious and effective.

 Melanie presents Nonviolent Communication at conventions, at universities, and at churches.  She has been interviewed on the radio and on TV and is the author of several books including: Humanizing Health Care with Nonviolent Communication.

Lou Agosta is on the faculty of the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. He practices psychotherapy in the Chicago. His area of concentration includes the dynamic containing and transforming of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse.

 

Lou is author of Empathy in the Context of Philosophy which is an exploration of the deep structure of empathy as a fundamentally human capability for creating possibilities of community and human relations. He also writes extensively about the nature of empathy on his websiteListeningWithEmpathy.com.

Women’s rights advocate Lisa Shannon called on graduates of the College to exercise empathy as a means of empowerment at commencement Saturday.

 

“I’d like to talk about power. It’s a tricky thing because it so often lurks in the moments that we least expect to find it,” Shannon said. “The empathy switch, flip it on, keep it on, it will fuel you over the threshold of doubt, of fear, of discomfort to find power.”

Shannon discussed her efforts to lobby Congress to pass a bill to combat the use of conflict minerals in 2010. She said empathy helped her protest and confront people opposed to the bill.

“Some people talk about compassion fatigue as though empathy wears you down. I’ve actually found the opposite to be true,” she said. “I found empathy to operate more like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the more power it gives, the more reflexive it becomes. It’s not that stepping up become more comfortable. It’s just that comfort becomes less relevant in the face of this sort of empathy override.”

 

By Eitan Sayag

Jan Birchfield, Ph.D. writes about the basis of a shared ethic in leadership—happiness—and why we should look inward before trying to solve the world’s problems.

Social entrepreneurship has given me, and many others, a great deal of hope. With the overwhelming number of social ills in virtually every sector of our society, it is heartening to see the growth of a movement that combines the discipline, rigor, flexibility, and innovation of the entrepreneurial business sector with the core mission of delivering social value above all else, including wealth creation. The movement, in part, challenges innovators to ask, how can we better meet the enormous challenges of the world around us, or, how can we better serve?

In a world where we tend to think of business in terms of the bottom line and financial metrics, a discussion on the role of empathy can seem at best a soft-issue, and at worst, downright absurd.

 

Instead, the importance of plugging into and reflecting consumer sentiment, and the value of bringing levels of emotional intelligence and empathy into the business world is something that is bringing far greater worth. Empathy is essential to providing better customer experiences. If you understand your customers, you'll be well equipped to give them exactly what they need. Indeed, there is growing evidence that organisations that have happy employees, strong organisational health, empathetic leaders, and a social mission, outperform their peers.

 

The notion of 'empathy as a social currency' is something which is gaining increasing prominence in the business world. In the book Humanize, Grant & Notter make the point that empathy is a currency that should be deployed in order to serve internal and external customers.

 

by Rose Schreiber - Consultant and professional generalist

Marco Iacoboni, Lidewij Niezink and Edwin Rutsch discuss Definitions, Measurements & Metrics of Empathy. 

Marco Iacoboni is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Director of the Marco Iacoboni Lab, UCLA Brain Mapping Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He is author of, Mirroring People: The New Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others.

 

Marco says, "I think what's interesting to me most is to define metrics of empathy. How can I measure this thing?  Why it matters? If we want to design interventions to improve empathy we need to agree upon ways of quantifying it. People do get bogged down in debates on definitions and don't even get to the point of trying to discuss metrics of empathic behavior. This slows down progress, I think" Sub Conference: Science

In our efforts to solve difficult social problems in particular, we rely too heavily on reason and numbers and econometrics, and not often enough on empathy.

 

Empathy," writes Paul Bloom in The New Yorker this week, "is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it." We'd be better off were we to supplant our flawed empathetic sensibilities with reason (that most flawless of human capacities).

 

His central argument is a utilitarian one: empathy is an often irrational emotional response that plays favorites, he says. It is thus a poor mechanism for solving real problems and making tough choices -- whether distributing international aid or making sacrifices today so that we don't warm our planet to oblivion tomorrow....

 

But to truly empathize is not easy. In this sense Bloom is right: we're more likely to do so with those who look and think like we do. So rather than dismiss empathy, why not commit ourselves to practicing it more deliberately and more often, and expanding our spheres of empathy to those who are not just different but who challenge some of our very own moral foundations?

 

by Michael Zakaras

For the fifth consecutive year, Sapienza University of Rome will host artists, performers, filmmakers, scholars and neuroscientists from different research centers in Europe and the United States on the occasion of the International Conference Dialogues between theater and neuroscience . neuroestetica the theatrical anthropology, from studies on empathy to research on intersubjectivity, moving from studies of motor cognition, memory, emotions, on mirror neurons and alternative therapies.

 For biologist Frans de Waal, a peaceful species of great ape in Africa is a mirror of humanity and a living argument that empathy and cooperation are far from unique to mankind.

"The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates", argues that both traits may be evolved behaviors based on his studies of the bonobo, which is found only in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other primates...

He spoke with Reuters by telephone from his home about his book and take on religion, evolution and monkey business.

by Ed Stoddard

img http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo ;

Culture of Empathy Builder Page:  Frans de Waal
 http://j.mp/YhPg01 ;

Jessica Williams aids a conservative politician suffering from acute compassion.

A former Utah state legislator questions his own conservative beliefs, so Jessica Williams steps in and helps him return to his dogmatic roots. 

Audio: Mary Gordon discusses her program "Roots of Empathy," which sees school-age children interacting with a mother and child. She says this helps them develop a better sense of empathy, which leads to reduced aggression in the classroom.