empathy

It’s a coincidence that empathy is built from a homonym for the Old English path, as in a trail. Or a dark labyrinth named Path. Empathy is a journey you travel, if you pay attention, if you care, if you desire to do so. (Rebecca Solnit)

Power erodes empathy

From this research summary:

Yale University social psychologist Michael Kraus and his colleagues have found that people who are high versus low in power and status are less likely to be able to understand other people’s emotions. Their heart rates don’t match up with other people. When they’re in conversation with a stranger, they’re more likely to look disinterested, for instance, not making eye contact, and they report lower compassion for the suffering of other people.

“Based on the research that in essence, people who are lower in status just realize that the skill of connecting with others will be very important for them to make it, because oftentimes they don’t know if they have the resources to make it on their own. And so it’s that recognition of the need for others that drives us to practice something like empathy, which in turn builds that muscle, builds that skill. And that’s one of the sad things, is that people who have a lot of privilege could make a difference. They can affect lots of people with their words and actions. And yet, it’s these very people who often have blind spots to the experiences of the folks who they could help the most.

Why is this?

At least two reasons. First, those with power and privilege don’t need to practice—literally practice—empathy, because they don’t have to depend on others as much. Second, when ones power harms or has harmed others, empathy with its victims can seem like a threat to ones identity as a good person:

[Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura] studied in executioners and other death workers, and what they found is that people who were responsible for executing folks were more likely to dehumanize those prisoners and the level of dehumanization tracked how involved in the prisoner’s death somebody was. The idea here is that when empathy threatens us, we might purposefully turn it down. So in one set of studies, psychologists reminded white Americans about the slaughter of Native Americans at the hands of Europeans. And in response to this, white Americans tended to dehumanize Native Americans or view them as less capable of experiencing the full range of human emotion.”

What can be done?

Research shows that perspective-taking exercises can build the “empathy muscle”.