A neuroscience team at Stanford University is exploring whether compassion can be learned. This has potentially great use for all sorts of places where violence and aggression cause problems — schools, prisons, streets and war zones.
Dr. James Doty
The research by Dr. James Doty and his team is simply fascinating. They are asking whether altruism and compassion actually reside concretely in the human brain. Can humans be taught to be more compassionate? The answers to these questions could have major impacts for our violence-prone society.
Doty will be presenting a public lecture in Seattle April 4 at 3 p.m. at the University of Washington, sponsored by the Compassionate Action Network International.
“When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without taking responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. When I have been listened to, when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and go on.” – Carl Rogers
The results of a new research study underscoring the importance of empathy for marital satisfaction, just hit the web and weekly news magazines. Before you ask yourself why in God’s name we needed research to confirm such an obvious observation, let me explain how I came upon this and why I chose to write about it.
The problem is that by approaching this as a question of sympathy it's all about how the speaker thinks the world should work, and the speaker's frustration that the world's not working that way.....
Empathy helps us see the challenge from different perspectives. It lets us consider why those who oppose our noble efforts might see things differently, better understand their concerns, and perhaps identify opportunities to solve problems together. By abandoning sweeping proclamations for specific queries, it allows us to isolate opportunities for agreement and the more limited number of places where we'll need to have the knock-down, drag-out fights. Empathy is ultimately the difference between cage-busters who implode amidst endless battles and those who, studying their Sun-Tzu, operate with determination and deliberation.
by Education policy maven Rick Hess of the Conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank.
What do misbehaving students, a bus crash in Coventry, the Tottenham riots and our current government have in common?
The concept of empathy is one I have long been interested in. Differences between students can often be attributed to varying levels of empathy - persistent low level misbehaviour speaks volumes about that particular child's lack of empathy for students around him or her. Generally speaking, the more empathetic a student is, the better their relationship with their peers and the adults around them; it comes as no surprise that these students often achieve more highly than less empathetic
The Heart of the Creed: Empathy, Human Rights and Democracy
In order to value human rights, it first is necessary to have empathy, to see other people as human. This may appear obvious to us now, but for Europeans, it was in the 18th century only that people began to be seen as being autonomous, equal human beings. Prior to that time, many kinds of people, such as servants, slaves, children, women and people without property were not regarded as autonomous individuals who employed independent moral judgment.
Empathy is key in recognizing human rights and creating democracy. From a psycho-spiritual perspective, recognizing another person's humanity and therefore their human rights, is a sign of emotional and spiritual maturity. Society has many ways of ranking people, but the moral value implicit in the Creed, i.e., the self-evident assertion that all people are created equal, tells us that our innate worth transcends any social ranking.
(Study: Empathy - Compassion under the microscope)
It’s normal to not always act on your sense of compassion—for example, by walking past a beggar on the street without giving them any money. Maybe you want to save your money or avoid engaging with a homeless person.
But even if suppressing compassion avoids these costs, it may carry a personal cost of its own, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. After people suppress compassionate feelings, an experiment shows, they lose a bit of their commitment to morality.
I remember, in my first psychotherapy grad course, when the professor talked about empathy’s champion, Carl Rogers and his person-centered therapy. He explained how connecting with the client built trust, thereby aiding therapy. I remembered thinking, “This is obvious. Why didn’t I think of it?”
I later realized, one of the reasons I didn’t think of it was that the act of a man caring and connecting to another was not encouraged. In fact, the opposite was encouraged. As teenagers, we were admired for our ability to be nonchalant, if not cruel. You often hear in a man’s humor, a cut that shows everyone, not only does he not care, but that he is smarter and quicker, because he said the wisecrack before anyone else.
'Psychopathic traits include being highly manipulative and callous, lacking empathy and remorse, having little concern about consequences, being willing to use deceit or threats to get what you want and caring little for others except in terms of what you can get from them. Although the stereotype of a psychopath is a serial killer, they are actually more likely to be con artists or shady businesspeople...
The thing about psychopathic values is that they’re contagious. We pick up the values of our leaders and often mirror their behavior. But determining what to do about it is a lot harder than making the diagnosis. '
By Maia Szalavitz
More about Maia Szalavitz Maia Szalavitz & Edwin Rutsch: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy http://bit.ly/mDhQpl
Although compassion is a cornerstone of every major faith in the world, it is also a secular and universal human value. Compassion is essential to our safe and caring schools and community.
Compassion gives us the ability to feel with others and brings us into the presence of something greater than ourselves. It helps us to address the issues that we face both locally and globally. Compassion is fundamental to devloping socially responsible citizens who can address the global challenges we face.
Secondary Lessons Plans about the Charter for Compassion
The Charter for Compassion Lesson on the Charter for Compassion Lesson on Karen Armstrong Rubric for Charter and Karen Armstrong Lesson Ideas for English Language Arts Curriculum Connections Digital Expression Lesson: Is Compassion Necessary? Digital Expression iMovie-Making Rubric
Additional Secondary Lesson Plans for Exploring the
Topic of Compassion
Developing Empathy Drama Unit Plan on Compassion Science 8 Water Bottles Universal Responsibility
"An exercise on the challenges of aging helps students feel more compassion for patients, but researchers say repetition is needed for lasting results.
The link of outcomes and empathy Previous research has shown a positive relationship between physician empathy and patient outcomes. In a March 2011 Academic Medicine study, Hojat and his colleagues found that physicians with high empathy had patients with significantly greater control over their diabetes than patients of physicians with low empathy
The studies used the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, which Hojat and his colleagues developed to assess how empathetic physicians are to patients. The test is now used throughout the world, Hojat said."
Welcome to the Institute for Poetic Medicine and John Fox..
When Someone Deeply Listens To You
When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water. When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin, you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind's eye. It is as if gold has been discovered!.
Men are more satisfied in marriage when their spouses pick up on their happiness.
A lot of research has looked at the connection between picking up on what your spouse is feeling and satisfaction with the relationship. Mostly, it has found a positive connection: the more “empathetic accuracy” there is, the better the relationship. But some studies have arrived at different conclusions, suggesting that there isn’t always a benefit in intuiting the feelings of the other person.
Welcome to the 2012 Empathic Transformation Telesummit: How Compassionate Communication is Changing Our World, a 30-day event I’ll be hosting from March 20th through April 18th.
We’ll be coming together to integrate the consciousness of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and to co-create a world where we’re all committed to an awareness of universal needs, presence to our own and others experience, seeing beyond right and wrong thinking, and power to seek that which would make our lives more wonderful.
Title: The Language of Empathy: An Analysis of Its Constitution, Development, and Role in Psychoanalytic Listening
Abstract: Viewed from an epistemological perspective, empathy in psychoanalytic practice is described as that aspect of a specialized attentional stance that opens channels of interaction facilitating the formation of a trusting bond and enabling one to gain access to the emotional qualities of another’s experience. A literature overview traces the origins of the concept in Freud and its role in psychoanalytic listening (including its controversial, divisive evolution in our field). Empathy is then examined from a semiotic-developmental framework....
Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.
Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. ...
It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.
Strong academic skills aren't enough to guarantee success for 21st-century students. Now, one group is looking to broaden what our children are taught.
Ashoka Changemakers, a nonprofit that provides tools and resources to help people improve their communities, is looking for entries for "Activating Empathy," a competition seeking to spotlight and support smart ideas, programs, and learning models that build students' abilities to collaborate and communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and respect multiple perspectives.
"Empathy, I would say is presence. Pure presence to what is alive in a person at this moment, bringing nothing in from the past. The more you know a person, the harder empathy is. The more you have studied psychology, the harder empathy really is. Because you can bring no thinking in from the past.
If you surf, you'd be better at empathy because you will have built into your body what it is about. Being present and getting in with the energy that is coming through you in the present. It is not a mental understanding." Marshall Rosenberg
When people suppress their sense of compassion, there’s often a price to pay: Losing a bit of their commitment to morality.
Normally, people assume that ignoring their compassionate feelings — such as refusing to give money to a homeless person — has no effect, but researchers Daryl Cameron and Keith Payne, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suspected that wasn’t true.
“Compassion is such a powerful emotion. It’s been called a moral barometer,” said Cameron, ...
My previous empathy post is the second most popular post behind the “Secrets about Women and Sex” post. One outcome of the empathy post was my recent interview with Edwin Rutsch via his site, Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. The interview with Edwin is a deeper look at the power of empathy for men.
We spoke about the culture of empathy as well as how men can be more empathetic. We won’t have a culture of empathy without men developing deeper empathetic skills. That is happening. Watch the interview to find out how it is and what you can do deepen your skills. You can learn about masculine emotional intelligence.post.
I’ve always believed that empathy is a core part of what makes us human – and what makes the world a place we can and want to share with others. And I’m certainly not alone...
What Causes Empathy Deficits in Children? My belief is that parents care deeply about raising children who recognize and respond appropriately when other people are suffering, but that modern life has put many obstacles in our way. Here are some of the hurdles we face in raising empathic children:
- Popular Media – Researchers have speculated that the widespread use of social networking and texting contributes to a growing empathy deficit.,..
Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue will host a citywide conversation on compassion with world-renowned author Karen Armstrong for the 12-day period March 19–30, 2012. http://bit.ly/yHcgpA
World-renowned author and 2008 TED Prize recipient Karen Armstrong will make her inaugural ‘State of the Charter for Compassion’ address during her ‘Twelve Days of Compassion’ visit, hosted by Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue.
The address will take place immediately following her free public lecture on March 22, entitled ‘What is Religion,’ at Gladstone Secondary School. It will detail progress made around the world to re-centre society on compassionate action and create a more peaceful planet.
Armstrong’s presentation will include stories from Pakistan, Jordan, Kentucky and Vancouver and will discuss a global call to action with “Assignment Compassion,” and will unveil the redesigned Charter for Compassion website – the new hub for this movement, now more than 80,000 members strong.
'Mohammadreza Hojat is trying to figure out how to make doctors more empathetic.
His study, published in this month's American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, found that medical students who watched a skit about a senior citizen's introduction to an assisted-living facility became more empathetic, but it didn't last. His most recent work, not yet published, looks more promising. In that one, he combined discussions of short film clips with lessons on why empathy matters.
The stakes are high. Research shows that patients of doctors with empathy - what used to be called bedside manner - are more satisfied and are likely to follow doctors' orders. Empathy also reduces the risk of malpractice suits and errors....'
However, there’s a dark side to empathy that is rarely discussed. UX Booth’s own Andrew Maier explains in his article about reducing noise, that “although office environments are designed to encourage creativity, their inhabitants can occasionally hinder it”.
“Sometimes we can become overwhelmed by empathy at work,” adds Judith Orloff, MD, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and author of “Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life.” She stresses that “in the workplace, empathy has both an upside and a downside. People who are extremely empathic and sensitive need to be aware of both.”
Sylvia Clute an author and attorney in Richmond, Va., presently engaged in the creation and implementation of a unitive justice system in a high school. Author Beyond Vengeance, Beyond Duality: A Call for a Compassionate Revolution.
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