Empathy Is Actually a Choice
ONE death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic.
You’ve probably heard this saying before. It is thought to capture an unfortunate truth about empathy: While a single crying child or injured puppy tugs at our heartstrings, large numbers of suffering people, as in epidemics, earthquakes and genocides, do not inspire a comparable reaction.
Studies have repeatedly confirmed this. It’s a troubling finding because, as recent research has demonstrated, many of us believe that if more lives are at stake, we will — and should — feel more empathy (i.e., vicariously share others’ experiences) and do more to help.
Not only does empathy seem to fail when it is needed most, but it also appears to play favorites. Recent studies have shown that our empathy is dampened or constrained when it comes to people of different races, nationalities or creeds. These results suggest that empathy is a limited resource, like a fossil fuel, which we cannot extend indefinitely or to everyone.
Article via The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html?_r=0
#psychology #neuroscience #empathy #research
If there was wider empathy, wars would be far less likely. If people actually got to know more about other cultures and races, they would realise we are all fundamentally the same.
ReplyDeleteI think we didnt evolve to see the big picture hundreds is a number that can hardly visualize, whereas one or two seems like a less abstract thing.
ReplyDeleteSam and David,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you both. I think that in the absence of empathy people in any position of power or authority are prone to making bad decisions on behalf of others. I liken the absence of empathy to total colour blindness: would you want a colour blind person to be organising your wardrobe [never mind controlling a powerful machine whose control panel has lots of different gauges, warning lights and buttons distinguished by their colour as much as by their position]?
One of the big problems of our time is that bureaucracy is so deeply entrenched as the instruments of government and of big business. In fact the bureaucratic organisation of gov't agencies and companies is so much taken for granted that it is not seen as a construct. This is problematic because all bureaucracies are intrinsically dictatorships unless mitigated by objective implementation of truly democratic internal processes. [and when does that happen?]
Companies and government agencies are given the status of legal persons, they accrue ever greater power and influence, and yet their very nature discourages or even abolishes empathy as a legitimate criterion for the assessment of 'policy' and procedure.
I take Karl Popper to be the person who demonstrated the intrinsic problem with all non-democratic forms of governance. The eventual outcome of the absence of democracy is entrenched dysfunction and the absence of empathy!
Sam Collett - all problems seem to hide in the term fundamentally. And there is no hint how people (and peoples) could know more about other cultures - and how they could keep such a volume of knowledge. To say nothing of religious beliefs, at odds with each other.
ReplyDeleteMark Peaty - when things are well organized we talk of administration, otherwise we use the term bureaucracy. And vices of bad administration as well as virtues of good bureaucracy could be found in all societies in time :)
Empathy is also a skill, some are better at empathy than others just like some people can play the piano just from listening to the radio.
ReplyDeleteAndrzej Solecki
ReplyDeleteWell said. The issue I see is that there seems nowadays to be a fragmentation of consensus, which is not necessarily all bad. I mean so much is changing with the uses of new technologies, and changing of social mores but I do not see - where I am in Australia - any significant depth of public discussion about the need to update the way we think about what is actually involved in really adapting large social organisations to the real needs of this modern world.
Yes there is all sorts of lip service given to ideas like 'reinventing' the organisation and 'managing change' [slogans well entrenched in the entity I work for] but at the end of the day the need for open communication amongst peers which I see as a necessity is always stultified by belief in the sanctity of the command structure [AKA 'establishment']. The result is silos and straight jackets while the slogans of managerialism are treated as Holy writ: ceremonially chanted yet effectively ignored in reality.
I tend to follow the idea that empathy has some strong influence from genes and therefore it would not be so much a choice but part of the being. Although there might be ways to promote it. There was some research done around the mirror neuron concept which would explain the genetic basis but for the moment it seems still pretty fragile ...
ReplyDeleteAnyhow it is a super interesting topic.