First of all, I owe the launch of today's thought process to Ms. Jone Johnson Lewis of the Northern Virginia Ethical Society, and her thought-provoking blog post, "Empathy in the White House."
The concept of empathy as a worthy and even central consideration in our world is one I've seen highlighted by President Obama, as noted in past posts of mine, such as this one.
But I laud an effort Jone highlighted by an individual to collect a documentary's worth of examples of Obama discussing empathy, titled "Barack Obama and a New Spirit of Empathy".
All politics is moral. Political leaders put forth proposals on the assumption that their proposals are the right things to do, not the wrong things to do. But progressives and radical conservatives have very different ideas of right and wrong..
The basic idea is this: Democracy is based on empathy, that is, on citizens caring about each other and acting on that care, taking responsibility not just for themselves but for their families, communities, and their nation. The role of government is to carry out this principle in two ways: protection and empowerment.
President Obama has begun road-testing his 2012 campaign message this week in a series of speeches that can be boiled down to a single word: compassion.
“The America I know is generous and compassionate,” Obama said in his speech on the debt Wednesday .
At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night in Chicago, Obama reiterated his “belief in an America that is competitive and compassionate,” contrasting that with a Republican Party that “is entirely sincere that says we no longer can afford to do big things in this country ... (that) we can’t afford to be compassionate.”
A new study suggests individuals who call themselves liberals are more likely to have brains that have a larger anterior cingulate cortex while conservatives have larger amygdalas.
According to what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with some reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat.
Another study from the University of Nebraska found that liberals and conservatives had different reactions to "gaze cues" — whether they tended to look in the same direction as a face on their computer screen. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to follow another person's gaze, suggesting that people who lean right value autonomy more; alternative explanations suggest that liberals might be more empathetic, or that conservatives are less trusting of others.
When you have senior parents who need increasing support, empathy is critical. You try hard, and not always with success, to understand what they are experiencing. That’s called empathy.
The concept of empathy has received a bit of a bad rap the past year or two with politicians actually taking the time to deliver statements against looking at the world through an empathic lens (I could write an entire post just on these tactless quotes). During some U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for judges questions on empathy played a central, and I think somewhat silly, role.
Remember compassionate conservatives? It wasn't that long ago when Republicans attempted to portray themselves that way. The phrase had a nice ring to it, but now it seems the GOP has given up on any nice-guy pretensions....
Soak the poor is an easy maxim to run against. Republicans might want to think about that and get a little compassion back into their message.
Empathizing and systemizing in the Autism Spectrum Conditions Simon Baron-Cohen Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC), Cambridge, UK vice-president of vice-president of INSAR. (video is translated and difficult to hear, but you can see the slides) .
Putting empathy under the microscope he explores four new ideas: firstly, that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum, from high to low, from six degrees to zero degrees. Secondly that, deep within the brain lies the ‘empathy circuit’. How this circuit functions determines where we lie on the empathy spectrum. Thirdly, that empathy is not only something we learn but that there are also genes associated with empathy. And fourthly, while a lack of empathy leads to mostly negative results, is it always negative?
As a scientist, Baron-Cohen dislikes the term “evil” and proposes “empathy erosion” as an alternative. One has to confess that it doesn’t quite have the same resonance. “The empathy-eroded Count Dracula sank his fangs into her neck” lacks a certain elan. Why swap terms anyway? Because empathy erosion is more measurable than evil, and thus more congenial to the white-coated technicians of the mind. But why should being able to measure something in the laboratory be the key factor?
Children like David develop empathy effortlessly, and the benefits are both immediate and enduring. They tend to be more popular, better at communication, have higher self-esteem and do better academically. Throughout their lives they find socialising and relationships easier. The benefits of empathy affect others as well. Those in their orbit feel understood, appreciated, valued and included.
Further down the spectrum, children like Thomas have trouble developing empathy, and difficulties ensue.
Guest PJ Manney joins Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon in a discussion of how empathy may prove a critical factor in determining what sort of future we experience.
Topics include:
- What to make of recent findings concerning the physiological nature of empathy.
- Why empathy exists in so many animals, including humans
- Why as the world becomes more complex, we may need it more and more
Some argue that empathy is undesirable in politics. Ayn Rand, for example, would argue that empathy is a false god, one that leads inexorably to emotionalism and statism and tyranny. Rand’s novels, like her politics, are austere. They are grandly idealistic; her characters posture and pose, but often fail to breathe.
But empathy, properly understood, doesn’t involve acquiescence to the every need of constituents, or the elevation of feeling over logic or necessity. Empathy is broader than that. Empathy speaks to human motivations, like greed or guilt, to human failings, like hubris or arrogance. Understanding people can bring clarity to policy, and some subtlety.
Our budget offers a compassionate and optimistic contrast to a future of health-care rationing and unbearably high taxes. We lift the crushing burden of debt, repair the safety net, make America's tax system fair and competitive, and ensure that our health and retirement programs have a strong and lasting future.
From birth, when babies’ fingers instinctively cling to those of adults, their bodies and brains seek an intimate connection—a bond made possible by empathy, the remarkable ability to love and to share the feelings of others.
In this unforgettable book, award-winning science journalist Maia Szalavitz and renowned child-psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry explain how empathy develops, why it is essential both to human happiness and for a functional society, and how it is threatened in the modern world.
The anterior cingulate cortex is believed to play a role in helping people cope with and sort through uncertainty and conflicting information, as well as affecting their levels of emotional awareness and empathy.
The "conservative" participants, on the other hand, had a higher volume of gray matter in the right amygdala region -- which is thought to play a big role in identifying and responding to threats. ..And, in turn, does that make them more likely to see the world in terms of threats and more absolute answers, with less tolerance for conflicting explanations or information, and less ability to feel empathy?
In The Age of Empathy, Frans de Waal answers some questions about male vs. female empathy that I had been wondering about. People everywhere perceive a considerable difference between male and female empathy:
"Cross-cultural studies confirm that women everywhere are considered more empathetic than men, so much so that the claim has been made the the female (but not male) brain is hardwired for empathy."
You are invited to participate in this conversation about empathy, not only in the context of philosophy, but whatever aspect or dimension engages you, the reader. A substantial amount of research has been devoted to the concept of empathy.
However, empathy remains poorly understood, under-theorized, and subject to conflicting and opportunistic uses. Its systematic role in human experience has not been analyzed and interpreted from top to bottom.
Click here to go to the Empathy Cafe Magazine Front Page http://bit.ly/dSXjfF Empathy and: Animals, Art, Compassion, Education, Empaths, Health Care, Learning, Justice, Teaching, Work, Self-empathy, Self-compassion, etc
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Join the Cause: Let's Find 1 Million People Who Want to Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion http://Causes.com/Empathy
“The trouble with sanctions: Organizational responses to deviant anger displays at work,” co-authored with University of Baltimore’s Lisa T. Stickney, stated that “when companies choose to sanction organizational members expressing deviant anger, these actions may divert attention and resources from correcting the initial, anger-provoking event that triggered the employee’s emotional outburst.”
Managers who recognize their potential role in angering an employee “may be motivated to respond more compassionately to help restore a favorable working relationship,”
Empathy is the drive to identify another person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. We now know quite a lot about which parts of the brain are used when we empathise and how empathy grows in typically developing children. We also know that hormones in the womb, specific genes, and your early environment all influence how much empathy you have. There are several ways in which one can lose one’s empathy, and this is clearly seen in psychiatric conditions such as personality disorders.
Simon Baron-Cohen is a controversial figure in the autism community due to his theories about what is behind autism and that there is a failure of theory of mind in autistic children (and a failure of empathy). He has a new book coming out in the US in May, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, which is already available in the UK under the title Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty
Baron-Cohen has made a major contribution to our understanding of autism. Autistic people lack any comprehension that other people have feelings. They do not understand what empathy is. Like most psychologists, he loves categorising and measuring. He describes how our degree of empathy can be measured, and how our scores form the familiar shape of the bell curve. If you want to find your Empathy Quotient (EQ), the questionnaire is in the book.
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