Empathy in the Arts

The reason, Catala says, is that “empathy is too intense or too raw and can become a hindrance rather than a help.” He rebranded this feeling as something called “distant feel.”

“Distant feel is a cool, detached, focused form of empathy,” he says. “It acknowledges that it's paradoxically OK to be distant and encourages us to express our empathy in an effective way.

“Empathy is fundamental to our shared human experience, core to our biology, our evolution, our culture, our society,” he says. “It is the raw, unprocessed emotional connective tissue between people. It is the glue that holds the human race together.”

Conversely, the distant-feel symbol, those mirrored Es, is mutable. It can be drawn, typed or gestured, as in holding three fingers in each hand to make the design.

By Kurt Shaw

Devyn Hebert ’17, Gideon Hess ’16 and Claire Bergey ’17 acted in the play, which posed questions about our capacity for empathy. 

Ideally, empathy allows us to attach meaning to others’ experiences, but the play provokes certain questions:

• Can we truly understand that which we haven’t experienced?
•  Is true empathy possible, or is it a socially constructed performance that allows us to feel closer to each other and better about our own humanity?
•  In other words, if empathy is just an act, then why is it so important?

One line spoken between the actors stands out, neatly summarizing the doubts with which the audience grappled:

Seldes did not like to be intimidated while working, and did not intimidate her students.

Many business people have already discovered the power of storytelling in a practical sense – they have observed how compelling a well-constructed narrative can be. But recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

As social creatures, we depend on others for our survival and happiness. A decade ago, my lab discovered that a neurochemical called oxytocin is a key “it’s safe to approach others” signal in the brain. Oxytocin is produced when we are trusted or shown a kindness, and it motivates cooperation with others. It does this by enhancing the sense of empathy, our ability to experience others’ emotions.

Empathy is important for social creatures because it allows us to understand how others are likely to react to a situation, including those with whom we work.

by Paul J. Zak 

Field trips to live theater enhance literary knowledge, tolerance and empathy among students, according to a study published this week by researchers in the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform.

Scientists have claimed that reading fiction stories can make one more empathetic.
 

Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, discussed how exposure to narrative fiction may improve our ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling in his session at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention.

In this guest post, the filmmakers of the forthcoming feature documentary, "My Country, No More" explain the importance of empathy in the storytelling process.

If empathy is feeling with someone, sympathy is feeling for them. Sympathetic storytelling lets sentimentality get in the way of a good story. In the film "Into the Abyss," Werner Herzog declares to a death row inmate, "I don't have to like you, but you are a human being."

Just because we dislike someone does not mean they don't have a story worth sharing. How many TV shows out right now are about putting yourself in the headspace of a mad man?...

1. Storytelling is about shared experience.
2. Empathy is not sympathy.
3. Empathy is difficult.
4. Empathy leaves us with a feeling instead of telling us what to feel.

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Empathy fuels our curiosity and reveals a
more nuanced way of looking at the world.
To approach situations empathetically is
to keep an open mind.

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By Rita Baghdadi and Jeremiah Hammerling

I look around me,
breathing in deeply
as I reflect on the totality
of what I see.
Before me, a man lays sleeping
on a downtown street
that jumps with a crisp
four/four time Hip-Hop beat,
bouncing from an upbeat retreat,
where folks hang out,
chillaxed to the max
as it’s the “Thank God it’s Friday,”
day of the week.
The man is wrapped up in a
tattered army sleeping bag lined with a bed sheet
that had long ago given up on the idea of being a sheet
and the forecast calls for snow or sleet
and a passerby pinches her nose with her
forefinger and her thumb,
thinking why doesn’t somebody arrest this bum?

Empathy, I’m thinking on the run,

.....

Sabra Williams, an actor and the Actors' Gang prison program director, explains that once inmates are given the tools and the opportunity to work as a team they develop empathy and start to create healthy relationships.

'People in prisons survive by numbing their emotions, and when people are numb they have no empathy and continue to commit crimes,' she says. One inmate confirms, 'I came here to learn how to control my emotions rather than let my emotions control me.'

Another who has done the course several times explains, 'It puts your head in a different mind-set.'

Neuroscience suggests that the classic dramatic arc can change our brains and spur us to action. Kirby Ferguson, Paul Zak
6 MINUTES

Interested in exploring the idea of empathy from multiple perspectives, Phelps asked eight playwrights he admires and has worked with to write brief solo pieces on the question, “What does it mean to engage in an act of compassion?”

“Eight is significant to me,” says Phelps. “I had the idea for this show and picked an animal Tarot card around New Year’s—it was an eight, which represents a spider, so the spider is a symbol of creativity and making a web. Compassion is connected to the number eight in Buddhist thinking and practice. And my birthday has eights in it, plus eight is the symbol of infinity, so it’s very significant.”

An article published last year in Science presented evidence that literary fiction makes readers more empathic than popular fiction; that is, it claims LitFic is better for you than mystery, romance, thrillers, or science fiction. Author Ransom Stephens offers a primer to prepare you to participate in Litquake's Does Literature Make You an Empath? event next week...

My aim here isn’t merely to convince you to mark your calendar; it’s to prepare you to participate in Litquake’s Does Literature Make You an Empath? event next Tuesday at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco....

Litquake’s Does Literature Make You an Empath? panel is Tuesday, Oct. 14, 6:30pm at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco. For more information, visit litquake.org.

by Ransom Stephens

Does Literature Make You an Empath?
http://www.litquake.org/events/does-literature-make-you-empath  

An emerging theory suggests exposure to narrative fiction can improve an individual’s ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling.

Dr. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, said, “we understand stories using basic cognitive functions, and there is not a special module in the brain that allows us to do this. Understanding stories is similar to the way we understand the real world.”

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There is some evidence that adults who process stories deeply and are highly engaged in the story report more empathy, but the results have been inconsistent.

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By RICK NAUERT PHD 

Are you an art teacher that avoids critique sessions? Art teachers tell me that they are skipping the critique because it has been a negative experience. How much learning are your students missing?

Empathic critique is collaboration,
not competition. Empathic class critique
in studio art is not a debate session.

It is a hunt for visual effects, meaning, purpose, and new ideas. All participants are acting in their own best interest by being their naturally helpful selves. Competition is replaced by mutual discovery.

In addition to facilitating art learning, the empathic critique culture helps students rediscover their basic relationship intelligence.

They learn to leverage their own natural goodness and helpful instinct to intuit how to make the world a better place. In place of defensiveness and conflict, they experience the mutual benefits of cooperatively hunting and gathering good ideas. What may have been feared as mistakes, become coveted discoveries that promote new insights and learning.

by Marvin Bartel 

Image: 

Gabriel Cornelius von Max,   Monkeys as Judges of Art 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism

Empathy

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible
Comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weight thoughts,
Nor measure words--but pouring them
All right out--just as they are
Chaff and grain together,
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them,
Keep what is worth keeping,
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.

 Author: George Eliot (English novelist)
image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot ;