Ella: What is Empathy, and How Can We “Do It Right”?
In these modern times, one would not necessarily be exaggerating by saying that you can see the words “empath” or “empathy” or “empathetic” everywhere you look, whether online or in real life. In the digital universe, you may have seen one of Buzzfeed`s myriad of quizzes promising to tell you whether you are an empath, or browsed a few Tik Tok videos offering you telltale signs that you are one. In the news, perhaps you have heard discussion about “empathy politics”; maybe you have heard remarks that someone in your life could use a little more empathy – or even a little less.
A few natural questions arise from the wide usage of this word: what is empathy, and how does it work? Is it good or bad to be empathetic? How do we know?
According to the Psychiatric Medical Care Communications Team, empathy differs from another commonly associated word – sympathy – in its being shown by how much compassion and understanding we give to one another, rather than pity (PMC, 2023). Emotions researcher Brene Brown further elucidates this decision with an excellent analogy: when someone else falls down into a hole, we enact empathy by climbing down into the hole with them, rather than looking down on them from above. In this way, she explains, “empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection” (PCM, 2023). What does climbing into the hole entail for Dr. Brown? It’s simple: we must open ourselves up to perspective taking, seek to listen and stay out of judgment, recognize the emotion the other person is experiencing that we have perhaps felt before, and then communicate that we can recognize that emotion (Psychology Today, 2014). However easy this sounds, it can be surprisingly hard to implement consistently: like anything else, empathy is a skill that needs repetition in order to gain proficiency.
A potential aid to understanding how to better enact empathy interpersonally is learning how we experience empathy within ourselves. Elliot et al. (2011) explains that empathy consists of three major subprocesses that we can trace to specific brain regions. Firstly, empathy begins with emotional simulation, wherein brain activation centering in primarily the limbic system mirrors the emotional elements of another`s bodily experience (Elliot et al., 2011, p. 2). Next, we enter into a process of perspective taking via the medial and ventromedial areas of the prefrontal and temporal cortices, through which we attempt to “place ourselves in another’s shoes” (Elliot et al., 2011, p. 2). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is an emotional regulation process which allows us to soothe our own distress that we feel in response to another person’s pain or discomfort (Elliot et al., 2011, p. 2).
As Brene Brown alludes to, empathy executed incompletely can be incredibly disconnecting. We can continue to distinguish empathy from sympathy through conceptualizing sympathy as two out of three critical processes, as described by Elliot: mentalization and self-regulation. Without emotional contagion – or the ability to feel what the other person is feeling – you are disconnecting by looking down on them from above the hole they feel stuck in. Similarly, and perhaps in some cases more damaging for relationships, is empathy that occurs without self-regulation. If you take on the emotions of others such that you can no
If you cannot understand, regulate, and work with your own emotions, unregulated empathy could lead you to take on the pain or distress of others and internalize it. This is not only harmful in that it leads to unnecessary personal suffering, but it also inhibits your ability to provide compassion or understanding for the other person; in short, it becomes all about you. When others are vulnerable with us and we react in ways that – albeit, unintentionally – center our emotional experience over their own, we communicate that their feelings are a burden to us, and we fail to forge connection in a time when it may feel critically necessary for the other person.
All in all, empathy is an incredibly complex and powerful facet of the human experience. No person can know what it is like to be another person, but when it comes to understanding our emotional selves and that of others, it is essential for connection that we try.
Cassie: Imagining Human Empathy and its Unique Ability to Transcend Reality
So, by now, it is clear that empathy is important for social connection among humans. In fact, many claims have been made by researchers and laypeople alike which suggest that humans have a special capacity for feeling empathy towards others. While research has largely refuted the idea that humans have a greater capacity for empathy than other non-human animals (e.g., Palagi et al., 2014), human empathic concern is still incredibly fascinating and important to consider as it extends beyond proximal social and physical boundaries.
Have you ever cried while watching or imagining your favorite character in a movie, TV show, or book as they experience grief from the death of a loved one? (Shout out to the heart-wrenching final chapter/movie scene when Hazel Grace reads Augustus’ letter in The Fault in Our Stars and the countless tear-jerking episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.) Or, have you ever smiled so embarrassingly wide at the end of a movie because of a feel-good ending? (Dozens of romantic comedies like The Proposal or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days come to mind.) If so, research suggests that you certainly aren’t alone.
Aside from helping us to more deeply understand and support our loved ones in times of distress or elation, our incredible empathic capabilities allow us to understand and experience the emotions felt by fictional characters presented on a TV screen or in a book, too. So, when our favorite characters experience happiness, anger, sadness, or fear, we can feel and experience it with them–especially when authors or cinematographers create the right narrative-focused ambience (Keen, 2006; Lankhuizen et al., 2020). For example, one study found that, among a sample of young women with high levels of trait empathy, exposure to emotional movie clips meant to induce either a positive or a negative mood led to a larger cortical gamma response (which measures the processing of emotional information) and a greater subjective emotional reaction than exposure to a neutral movie clip (Maffei et al., 2019). However, among young women with low levels of trait empathy, a difference in gamma response was only observed when participants were exposed to a movie clip meant to induce a negative emotion (Maffei et al., 2019). Another article reports similar findings in dispositional differences between readers regarding felt empathy towards fictional book characters, suggesting that empathic concern is more readily expressed when reading about and trying to understand or empathize with a character’s negative emotions (Keen, 2006). These results suggest that humans have the ability to feel empathy – to some degree – towards fictional characters, despite their own varying empathic dispositions. Thus, they also support that humans have an intriguing – and perhaps unique – capacity for empathy.
But why would humans have the ability to empathize with people who don’t actually exist in the real world? One potential explanation is that empathizing with characters in movies, TV shows, books, and other forms of media increases perceived enjoyment of our watching and reading experiences. Being immersed in a fictional world by engaging in empathic concern for its characters may allow us to more completely buy into the narratives being portrayed, thus leading to greater enjoyment of the media we are exposed to (Green et al., 2004). Another possibility is that engaging in empathy with distant others has real-world benefits – even if those others appear only on a movie screen or in a book. For example, one account suggests that engaging in empathic concern for fictional characters allows us to hone our skills to better understand and interact with others (Mar, 2018). Whatever the reason, humans’ ability to empathize with fictional others seems to have important implications for the centrality of empathy to social connection and human nature.
Pomai: Keeping an Empathetic Mind in the Judicial System and Beyond
Bringing things back to the real world, empathy is crucial to how we understand people – not only those close to us, but also those who we wouldn’t normally share a connection with. It’s easy to be empathetic towards our friends and close relations, but what about those in need or those who we don’t always see eye to eye with? In the case of the judicial system, it’s so hard to be empathetic towards criminals and those prosecuted, especially when they seem so different from us. But empathy is an important part of being human, and it’s needed to ensure that all people, even those who are prosecuted, are treated with compassion and fairness.
Empathy in the judicial system is complicated and there’s a growing debate regarding the use of empathy in court decisions. Some judges are intentionally empathetic in their cases, while others try to be as impartial as possible. The argument for empathy is that it makes judges more compassionate towards an accused person’s wellbeing (Cormack, 2021), making them less likely to inflict debatably immoral sentences such as the death penalty. However, psychologists also argue that empathy can lead to cognitive distortion and racial bias by overvaluing certain individuals’ perspectives more than others (Cormack, 2021). These distortions include potentially overvaluing a specific witness’s testimony and thus making a false accusation, and overvaluing a victim’s statement and thus being more willing to support the victim despite contrary evidence. For instance, in murder cases, if a judge is a White male (as they often are, given that White people account for ~98% of judges in most states) and is hearing testimonies from a White victim, the White victim’s perspective is significantly overvalued such that a Black defendant is 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a White defendant (IResearchNet, 2022).
The drastic racial biases in judicial decisions make empathy seem like a dangerous flaw in the judicial system that prevents equality for all people involved. But to really understand empathy’s role, we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, when is empathy present in judges’ decision making? What we find is that arguments against using empathy are irrelevant because empathy inherently plays a role in judicial outcomes.
As shown by our tendency to empathize with friends, family, strangers, and even fictional characters, empathy is a natural human response and it is inevitable. While we have a good amount of control over who we empathize with, studies have shown that we naturally empathize with people who we can relate to (Colby, 2012). So, we can’t just instruct judges to act impartially because they will subconsciously have more empathy towards groups of people who are more similar to them based on commonalities such as partisanship, race, and gender. Interestingly, a 2015 study found that judges who had daughters were more liberal in their decisions on criminal and civil court cases (Glynn et. al., 2015), which is a clear indicator of the subconscious role that empathy plays in decision-making. Even judges who don’t consciously empathize with a victim, witness, or defendant have too many life experiences that will sway their subconscious empathy towards specific individuals simply because empathy is a crucial part of being human. So to ask a judge to not have empathy at all is to deny people the right to connect with those in need. Yes, there will be mistakes in judicial decisions because empathy isn’t perfect. But judges can learn to set boundaries and work on recognizing what types of individuals they subconsciously empathize with so that they can make more just decisions.
As for the rest of us, we can reconceptualize how we treat people based on how we view empathy. Empathy is not bad; it is not racist, nor unfair. It is just a tool that everyone can choose to use in a productive way. We should practice having empathy for those who are different from us and those who are distant from us, aiming to be more aware of our empathetic tendencies by taking on the perspectives of more than just our friends and making sure that we’re not judging people based on subconsciously perceived in-group connections. In doing so, we can live life with an open mind and be able to find ways to bridge the gap between our empathy and our biases.
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