Empathy Movement Magazine

They found that empathy also correlated with belief. Not only that but, using a statistical technique called "bootstrapping",  they found that the most plausible explanation for the correlation was that autism was related to a lack of empathy, which in turn was related to lack of belief (see the figure).

In other words, lack of empathy was the 'in between' factor that mediated the relationship between autism and lack of belief.

By Tomas Rees

if you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  ~Dalai Lama

I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.

The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice.

 by Leo Babauta

Part of building empathy in your business means creating and managing open channels of feedback. Here’s how to do it.

In a previous post I explained what it means for businesses to scale empathy and why it’s important. I laid out 3 steps to help you scale empathy across your business. My first post in this series described how to get closer to your customers by creating and utilizing personas. The second step explained how to apply what you developed in the personas to customer touch points online and offline. Now to close the loop with the final of the 3 steps by creating open channels for feedback and communication.

Giving test subjects Superman-like flight in a virtual reality simulator makes them more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior in real life, Stanford researchers find.

If you give people superpowers, will they use those abilities for good?

Researchers at Stanford recently investigated the subject by giving people the ability of Superman-like flight in the university's Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory (VHIL). While several studies have shown that playing violent videogames can encourage aggressive behavior, the new research suggests that games could be designed to train people to be more empathetic in the real world.

BY BJORN CAREY

Human interaction and user experience are becoming ever-increasingly important elements in our approach to creative work. It isn’t good enough, anymore, to rely on data and quantitative researchwhen generating work that ultimately needs to speak to human beings. We need a deeper understanding of those humans. We need to cultivate a new way of empathetic thinking.

We spend every day in meetings, in brainstorms, behind our computer screens and in strategy sessions finding innovative ways to help out clients deliver on their business objectives.

by Louise Hildebrand

Religion and science have not always been easy friends, as Galileo could attest.

But over the last week scientists and Buddhist scholars have been working in this small Tibetan enclave in southern India to prove that these two worlds can not only co-exist — but benefit each another.

It is the 26th edition of the Mind & Life Conference and the first held in a monastery, for thousands of Buddhist monks gathered here. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, greeted the scientists last Friday and introduced the week-long dialogue about science and religion

In an effort to create a more compassionate society for animals, Tehama County Animal care manager Mark Storrey is volunteering his time at schools across the Northstate.

Storrey is using his experience and knowledge to teach students the importance of pet responsibility and the consequences for negligent care. 

“In order for us to make a change throughout the nation we’ve got to educate and start with the kids,” says Storrey.

Storrey uses his two companion dogs, Missy and Nikita to help drive the message home. 

By Tracey Leong

Core Vulnerability

Empathy is a humane quality that is beneficial to all parties in most social contexts. But in intimate relationships, especially those that have suffered damage, empathy is woefully inadequate.

Empathy is identification with what another person is feeling. (“I feel your pain,” was a hallmark of empathy, before it was relegated to political satire.) We empathize with our partners based on our ability to identify with what they feel. Here’s why this is a serious limitation following relationship damage. You and your partner probably will not understand what support you each want during recovery, because you will most likely have a different core vulnerability, which will require different kinds of support.

by Steven Stosny

Educators are aware that social problems like poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, violence, and family trauma can affect how students learn when they come to school. Though teaching subjects like math and literacy are the biggest part of their job, in many cases they’re also called on to attend to their students’ emotional health as well, incorporating social and emotional skills.

“Science is starting to show that there is a very strong integration between social and emotional skills and learning,” said Vicki Zakrzewski, education director of the Greater Good Science Center at U.C. Berkeley, which studies the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being during a recent Forum radio show. “Some scientists believe that cognitive achievement is 50 percent of the equation and social and emotional skills are the other 50 percent.”

By Katrina Schwartz 

I wanted to share with you some thoughts sparked in me this morning by an excerpt from a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.    

As I prepare to teach a course on self-compassion, this passage jumped out at me as profoundly wise:

The nonviolent [compassionate] approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his/[her] conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Helen McConnell

Anyone looking for someone to feel their pain should talk to a woman in her 50s or 60s, a new report shows.

For according to the latest study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age and than younger or older people.

"Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," says Sara Konrath, co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences.

"They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others."

What if there is something fundamental about empathy such that when we cannot act on it, we lose part of ourselves, perhaps even our humanity? What if we have unwittingly created a world in which we chip away at our capacity for empathy, and with it, one of the unique traits of humankind: the ability to love beyond kinship and species boundaries? Can we continually be exposed to violence and degradation, particularly through the media, and maintain empathy towards the suffering of others, or must we begin to shut down, feeling a little less compassion in exchange for a sense of safety, if not hope?

Compassion fatigue ails many of us, and results from viewing too many harrowing images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (famine, war, death, and pestilence). In our era of 24/7 news coverage, repeatedly viewing disasters such as the attack on the World Trade Center or the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, can leave us hypervigilant, or emotionally numb, paranoid we might be similarly victimized, or too overwhelmed to entertain the possibility of catastrophe in our own lives.

By Laura K Kerr

Four education experts call for an end to infighting. It’s time we embraced “both and” in education and reexamine what school can be.

Last week, we brought together some of the best minds in public education and child development for an informal roundtable discussion on the future of education in America and a look at where empathy fits in. Against a snowy DC backdrop, the four panelists shared an alternative to the prevailing education model and shed light on what it’ll take to get there.

For the Cliff’s Notes fans among you, a few takeaways:

Empathy, or the lack thereof, causes so many of the daily frustrations in teaching and prevents so much of the learning that could take place in the classroom, that it seems foolhardy to ignore the potential impact of examining this concept in...

So what is the empathy-led curriculum, this panacea of which I speak so lengthily? I do not pretend to have all the answers - indeed, you may be better off speaking to someone who is an expert in child psychology and the development of empathy. I can only present ideas that may increase levels of empathy in your classrooms.

Of course, the PSHE curriculum, the ways we study texts in English, the way we present historical events through the people who were there can all be enhanced to include a greater focus on empathy. Just adding on modules on empathetic behaviour may not be the answer here; it's in our daily interactions (the curriculum that we don't ever see written down) that empathy needs to be pushed to the forefront. Our language has to change when it comes to encouraging students to behave in a more empathetic manner.

Bansi Kara - Head of English in Hackney who believes in the possibility of change in education

The Common Core requires that teachers teach more nonfiction, but how will that affect students?

As people are experiencing fiction in their own ways, they are practicing empathy. The fiction they read allows them to experience life as someone else, or in a different time and place, and allows them to be more empathetic in their real lives. As a teacher, I want my students to be productive members of society who are prepared for life after high school, but I also want them to be good citizens who will help someone in need.

I want them to be able to think about their actions and how they affect the world around them and then make choices that benefit themselves, but also benefit the greater good. If we take fiction out of the curriculum, there is a danger that this will not happen. Teaching fiction is vital to creating well-rounded young adults, and is also necessary in practicing empathy.

by Ashley Lauren

 Continuing our look at imaginative empathy and how empathy is a core part of great acting, here is an interview by the Deepak Chopra Well with acting instructor Diana Castle. For 25 years she has been exploring and teaching the role of empathy in acting.  See the video and interview at http://j.mp/WlPkKE

Master the Art of Empathy
 

"Chopra Well: You are an acting instructor and also teach empathy skills. How are empathy and acting related?

Diana Castle: Acting is all too often thought of and even encouraged to be a narcissistic profession – and yes, there are plenty of cultural narcissists today. However the truth in the art of acting is to be found in the heart of empathy. A great actor is that human being who is willing to exchange his or her personal interpretive framework for an alternative interpretive framework, or as Atticus Finch said in To Kill A Mockingbird, to walk a mile in another person’s shoes."

More at Culture of Empathy Builder Page:  Diana Castle

http://j.mp/W38zKR ;