Saturday, March 4, 2017

Major Statement: On Empathy's Existence and Application

These particularly divisive times have left many Americans searching feebly for a solution to the growing divide and attempting to understand why the right feels one way and the left feels another.

But as disagreement and disgust grow, the simple request of putting ourselves in each others' shoes seems almost too much to ask. When we do give it a try, many find themselves in major discomfort trying to adopt the opposing mindset. We can't bear to bring ourselves to try to rationalize how the other is feeling.

I am of the belief that empathy (or a lack thereof) is at the root of nearly all of our nation's problems. I've become fixated on the idea, thoroughly convinced that invoking empathy on a macroscale is the solution our country needs.

Is empathy instinctive? Or does it need to be taught -- "treat others the way you would like to be treated," as the golden rule goes? Can it even be applied in the way I think it should be?

To evaluate this theory of mine, I had to start with the origins and basis of empathy. According to The New Yorker's Paul Bloom, the word itself is only a century old, with its roots in the German word 'einfühlung,' meaning 'feeling into.' But as early as 1759, thinkers such as Adam Smith were acknowledging its significance. “Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers,” he wrote.  To generate action, he observed, there existed a need to “place ourselves in his situation...and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.”

In his book, "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society," Frans de Waal argues that 
"human empathy has the backing of a long evolutionary history." He (and scientists) turned to apes as basis for this claim, as we often do for a look into our past. de Wall points to research that chimpanzees will yawn when presented with a computer animation of another chimp yawning, the same, seemingly uncontrollable phenomenon that humans face. He says this mirroring of behavior is a very basic, primal form of empathy.

In 2009, a group of researchers at Columbia University set out to determine the neural basis of empathetic accuracy. 

One of the two regions they found to be most active in making accurate judgements about others emotional states is the human mirror neuron system. Initially thought of only as the control center for programming motor movements like scratching our head, the study showed the system also allows us to vicariously interpret the motor movements of others, to think about what those movements might feel like. The second region of activity was the medial prefrontal cortex, which is critical for forming conceptual thoughts and ideas about meaning of someone's behavior.

In short - we are hardwired to empathize with others. So what is the effect or power of empathy? This is where C. D. Baston's "empathy-altruism" hypothesis comes in.

Baston presents substantial research to show that empathy is the primary motivation for altruistic behavior. He defines altruism as "a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s
welfare.

"As long as a person in need is helped, why worry about the nature of the underlying motivation?" he writes. "If one is only interested in getting help for this person in this situation, the nature of the motivation may not matter. If, however, one is interested in knowing more generally when and where help can be expected, and how effective it is likely to be—perhaps with an eye to creating a more caring society—then understanding the underlying motivation is crucial."

It all seems so simple, then. Empathy is not only inherent, but it is also what moves one individual to help another. No matter how difficult a task it may be, we just need to keep channeling empathy and our problems will eventually be resolved. Right?

Not so fast.

In "The Baby in the Well," Bloom makes a pretty convincing argument against empathy. "Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate," he says. "We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it."

He even addresses the exact area that sparked my inquiry into the possibilities of empathy:
Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with. Liberals argue for gun control, for example, by focussing on the victims of gun violence; conservatives point to the unarmed victims of crime, defenseless against the savagery of others. Liberals in favor of tightening federally enforced safety regulations invoke the employee struggling with work-related injuries; their conservative counterparts talk about the small businessman bankrupted by onerous requirements. So don’t suppose that if your ideological opponents could only ramp up their empathy they would think just like you.
He boils down the government's "failure to enact prudent long-term policies" to the politics of empathy. "Our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future."

On the other side of the argument is Matt Waldman, founding director of the Center for Empathy in International Affairs. Waldman believes major foreign policy errors could be avoided if empathy was introduced to the process.

Waldman's approach to empathy is less about the precarious path of assisting victims that Bloom traverses (though it includes that as well), and more about pragmatism. "Empathy will produce better diplomatic outcomes and counteract dangerous modern political propensities towards over-simplification, polarization and stereotyping," he says. "Empathizing deepens our understanding of allies, adversaries, population groups or other actors....understanding adversaries is central to smart strategy-making, negotiation and leadership. Awareness of others’ mindsets, emotions and perceptions provides us with a critical advantage, given that those factors shape the way others behave."

Where does that leave us then? This light assessment of both sides of the argument leads me to conclude that empathy has an important role in conflict resolution on a macro scale, but we have to do more than just act on our empathic instinct. We need to think about how best to channel those impulses to produce the greatest reward. And - as both Bloom and Waldman suggest - we need more research into the applications of empathy.

Bloom's final thoughts resonated with me, and so I leave you with them as my final thoughts as well:
If a planet of billions is to survive, however, we’ll need to take into consideration the welfare of people not yet harmed—and, even more, of people not yet born. They have no names, faces, or stories to grip our conscience or stir our fellow-feeling. Their prospects call, rather, for deliberation and calculation. Our hearts will always go out to the baby in the well; it’s a measure of our humanity. But empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future.

References:
"The neural bases of empathic accuracy"
by Jamil Zaki, Jochen Weber, Niall Bolger, and Kevin Ochsner
http://www.columbia.edu/~nb2229/docs/zaki-weber-bolger-ochsner-pnas-2009.pdf


"The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society"
by Frans de Waal
https://books.google.com/books?id=IynmOp5-I-0C&dq=Frans+de+Waal+empathy&lr=

"Empathy-Induced Altruistic Motivation"
by C. Daniel Batson
http://portal.idc.ac.il/en/symposium/herzliyasymposium/documents/dcbatson.pdf

Center for Empathy in International Affairs
http://www.centerforempathy.org/why-empathy-and-why-ceia/

"The Baby in the Well"
by Paul Bloom
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/the-baby-in-the-well

1 comment:

  1. I believe empathy is something all human beings are capable of but is an ability that not all put to use. It is a shame that not individuals choose to act on this innate feeling but it explains why there is good and bad in the world. I believe that empathy is essential to the way our world works. If there was no empathy at all, there would be no good in the world. Unfortunately; because so few people practice empathy in this day and age (or so it seems), there is a lack of kindness and goodness in the world. I do not like the approach of Waldman, only because I think he is looking at empathy as a tool for profit. Empathy should be something humans’ practice on one another as a means of creating a more unified and understanding society.

    -Audrey Blow

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