Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's often counterintuitive for people that empathy could be
Speaker 1: more than one thing, like walking in someone else's shoes,
Speaker 1: feeling their pain, caring about them and being kind. And
Speaker 1: people say, how could one word like empathy refer to
Speaker 1: many things? But empathy is the way that other people's
Speaker 1: experiences get into our experiences, and so there should be
Speaker 1: many ways that that happens. That's Jamie Zaki, a professor
Speaker 1: of psychology and an expert on empathy. Jamil is the
Speaker 1: author of the book The War for Kindness, Building Empathy
Speaker 1: in a Fractured World, and he sees empathy as a
Speaker 1: kind of psychological superglue that connects people. Neil says empathy
Speaker 1: is a skill we can cultivate and that we should
Speaker 1: be more intentional about where we focus it. Empathy is
Speaker 1: like a spotlight. The thing that I think is really
Speaker 1: important to remember is that we are the ones pointing
Speaker 1: that spotlight, and that we have agency. We have autonomy
Speaker 1: to align our emotional experiences with the people we want
Speaker 1: to be. On today's episode, a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: science of empathy, the different types, how we can build it,
Speaker 1: and what you can do if you feel things too much.
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plan,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. I would love
Speaker 1: to start by hearing about how it is that you
Speaker 1: got interested in the topic of empathy. Yeah. Well, I've
Speaker 1: been interested in this topic since well before I knew
Speaker 1: what the word empathy meant. My parents come from very
Speaker 1: different places. My dad is from Pakistan and my mom
Speaker 1: is from Peru, and they both immigrated to the United
Speaker 1: States when they were about twenty five years old and
Speaker 1: ended up, of all places, in Pullman, Washington, at Washington
Speaker 1: State University, where they met and fell in love. I
Speaker 1: think that they fell in love mostly because they both
Speaker 1: felt out of place in the US as immigrants, as foreigners,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that they found solace and
Speaker 1: commiseration in each other. But I think as they grew
Speaker 1: acclimated to this country, they realized how little they have
Speaker 1: in common, which is very little, like very little, And
Speaker 1: by the time I was six years old, it was
Speaker 1: clear that it wasn't going to work for them. They
Speaker 1: started divorcing when I was eight, but didn't finish until
Speaker 1: I was twelve, and it was not what you would
Speaker 1: call an amicable split. I'm their only child, and for
Speaker 1: a bunch of my childhood, my primary experience was being
Speaker 1: in this state of conflict with these two people whose
Speaker 1: minds and hearts were as different as the countries that
Speaker 1: they came from, and it was a lot of turmoil.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of pain, and so I felt
Speaker 1: like my job as a kid, almost as a survival
Speaker 1: strategy for our family, was to learn to tune myself
Speaker 1: to their different frequencies. I think these days of my
Speaker 1: parents divorces like an empathy gym that forced me to
Speaker 1: work at care and understanding. Yeah. Interesting. I love the
Speaker 1: definition of empathy that you give in your book. It's
Speaker 1: really beautiful to me and very stirring. You talk about
Speaker 1: empathy as being our emotional and psychological entanglements with one another.
Speaker 1: You also define three different types of empathy, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if we can actually just walk through each one
Speaker 1: in detail to give people a sense of what each
Speaker 1: of these different types of empathy means. So I love
Speaker 1: it if we could first talk about what you call
Speaker 1: emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is the evolutionary and developmentally oldest
Speaker 1: type of empathy, so it's the type of empathy we
Speaker 1: share with many other species in fact, and it's this
Speaker 1: idea of resonance or feeling what other people feel. So
Speaker 1: it's that experience of I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: watched a tightrope walker and you kind of feel yourself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like your palms start to sweat and you feel like
Speaker 1: I'm hyperactive ver neurals hard for me to watch movies
Speaker 1: even exactly. So that experience of resonance, whether it's motor resonance,
Speaker 1: sort of as you see someone move in a certain way,
Speaker 1: you kind of feel something in that part of your body.
Speaker 1: It can be resonance for pain, it can be resonance
Speaker 1: for different emotions like sadness, anger, and joy as well.
Speaker 1: But that sense of overlap between self and other emotionally
Speaker 1: is what we think of as emotional empathy. And how
Speaker 1: is that different from cognitive empathy. Yeah, so cognitive empathy
Speaker 1: I would think of as the detective work that we
Speaker 1: do to try to understand what's in someone's mind. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between emotional and cognitive empathy. Emotional
Speaker 1: empathy often trades on the things that we have in common.
Speaker 1: If I see you in pain. I can sort of
Speaker 1: imagine what that feels like, and it's the similarities between
Speaker 1: us that allow me to access that type of emotional empathy.
Speaker 1: Cognitive empathy is useful when we don't come from the
Speaker 1: same place, when I'm trying to take the perspective of
Speaker 1: someone whose worldview or perspective is different from my own.
Speaker 1: And then finally, the third type of empathy is something
Speaker 1: that you call empathic concern or compassion. Do you mind
Speaker 1: just describing what empathic concern is. It's a desire to
Speaker 1: improve somebody else's well being, to decrease their suffering, or
Speaker 1: to increase their joy. It's a mission that we put
Speaker 1: ourselves on, right, It's a motivation, And that part of
Speaker 1: empathy is actually probably the least well understood by scientists
Speaker 1: and the most well understood by spiritual practice. Tis. It's
Speaker 1: been studied and developed for thousands of years in numerous
Speaker 1: spiritual traditions. But neuroscientists, for instance, have studied compassion far
Speaker 1: less than they've studied cognitive empathy, and much less than
Speaker 1: what we think of as emotional empathy. So to summarize,
Speaker 1: empathy has three core components. Emotional empathy, which is that
Speaker 1: kind of resonance, that feeling of what other people feel.
Speaker 1: Cognitive empathy the efforts we make to try to understand
Speaker 1: what is in someone's mind and in their heart. And
Speaker 1: empathic concern or compassion, the desire or motivation we have
Speaker 1: to improve their well being. One of the most fascinating
Speaker 1: things you talk about in your book that really stuck
Speaker 1: with me is that these three types of empathy are
Speaker 1: only moderately correlated with each other. So, for example, you
Speaker 1: can be the kind of person who intensely feels another
Speaker 1: person's sadness, but you might not be very good at
Speaker 1: understanding why they feel that way or how to actually
Speaker 1: help them. Yeah. I think a lot of times when
Speaker 1: I describe the three pieces of empathy, people are like,
Speaker 1: all right, Zachi, you just describe the same thing in
Speaker 1: three different ways. You know, if I share what someone feels,
Speaker 1: won't I understand it? And if I understand it once,
Speaker 1: I also care about it, And I say, well, you
Speaker 1: know that's fair. But it turns out that these pieces
Speaker 1: of empathy, although they do connect in many ways, are
Speaker 1: weirdly independent at a number of levels. So, for one,
Speaker 1: they're not that correlated in the population. If you are
Speaker 1: somebody who really takes on other people's feelings. That doesn't
Speaker 1: tell me very much about how good you'll be at
Speaker 1: understanding them. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes we
Speaker 1: make in cognitive empathy is assuming that people are just
Speaker 1: like us, assuming that we can use ourselves as a
Speaker 1: beacon for understanding someone else. So, for instance, if I
Speaker 1: meet somebody else whose parents are divorced and they tell
Speaker 1: me their story, I might think to myself, Oh, their
Speaker 1: parents divorce must have been really difficult for them, because
Speaker 1: my parents' divorce is really difficult for me. But maybe
Speaker 1: they had a breeze of it, right. And our overuse
Speaker 1: of assume similarity is one of the things that gets
Speaker 1: this in the most trouble with respect to cognitive empathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting in this moment, I'm reflecting Jamil on
Speaker 1: the fact that we tend to put a premium on
Speaker 1: this first type of empathy, emotional empathy one, because it
Speaker 1: does breathe this instant feeling of solidarity. So I sit
Speaker 1: down for dinner with you, I tell you about my problem,
Speaker 1: and it just feels so unifying to see that you
Speaker 1: are carrying a bit of my distress, right, that you
Speaker 1: are feeling my pain, and similarly, if you're the one
Speaker 1: feeling it, it feels really good to feel someone else's
Speaker 1: pain because you know you're connecting with them emotionally. But
Speaker 1: I'm reflecting in this moment that maybe we should be
Speaker 1: more open minded about the different ways in which people
Speaker 1: can provide empathy to us. Right, someone might not actually
Speaker 1: be great at emotional empathy, but their intentions might very
Speaker 1: well be in the right place. They absolutely have that
Speaker 1: will to help you. So in that moment, I might
Speaker 1: write them off and say, oh, they didn't even seem
Speaker 1: to care that I'm having the worst day ever and
Speaker 1: all these terrible things happen to me, and so they're
Speaker 1: an unempathetic person. But upon reflection, if I think through
Speaker 1: this lens, this framework that you're providing for us, and
Speaker 1: might think, look, maybe emotional empathy in this person is
Speaker 1: not super high, but they really excel in the cognitive
Speaker 1: empathy space. They are like my super friend when it
Speaker 1: comes to understanding what I'm feeling, why I'm feeling it,
Speaker 1: ways that they can actually help me. And so I
Speaker 1: just wonder if you could lead all of us to
Speaker 1: kind of revisit our expectations of others and from ourselves,
Speaker 1: and to recognize that even if someone doesn't excel in
Speaker 1: one of these three domains, they might actually be excellent
Speaker 1: in the other ones. I love that perspective. I think
Speaker 1: you're right that emotional empathy is so easy to access,
Speaker 1: it's so palpable. But I feel like there's all this
Speaker 1: talk these days about what are known as love language,
Speaker 1: is the different ways that people communicate their affection and
Speaker 1: care for one another. Maybe we should be more open
Speaker 1: to empathic languages, to understanding both ourselves and each other
Speaker 1: in terms of a profile, right, Yeah, And if you're
Speaker 1: not a person who's very warm and fuzzy, you don't
Speaker 1: always feel what other people feel, that doesn't mean you're unempathic,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to think of yourself that way.
Speaker 1: And this is a great idea from you, Maya. It
Speaker 1: might be useful for us to each introspect a little
Speaker 1: bit about who we are and then maybe even communicate that. Say,
Speaker 1: you know, my favorite way of empathizing with people is
Speaker 1: to try to listen and understand, and I hope that's okay.
Speaker 1: You know, just bringing that into conversation could enrich our
Speaker 1: ability to connect with each other. So much. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now we have a better understanding of what empathy is,
Speaker 1: Jimial and I'm wondering why should we care about empathy?
Speaker 1: And I ask this in part because sometimes our minds
Speaker 1: can be so overwhelmed by the empathic needs of just
Speaker 1: living on this planet, because there is so much suffering
Speaker 1: and distress, it's easy to just want to put a
Speaker 1: lid on it sometimes and be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm over this, Like I cannot solve all the world's ills,
Speaker 1: you know, of course. Yeah, I think that the reason
Speaker 1: that we should care about empathy is because it is
Speaker 1: at the root of who we are and how we flourish.
Speaker 1: And that's true at basically every level you can think of.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's probably one of the secrets
Speaker 1: of our species success. You know, human beings not really
Speaker 1: that impressive. An animal, what do you think about it? Right,
Speaker 1: We're just medium sized mammals, you know, not really that fast.
Speaker 1: We can't fly or swim very well, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: as solo creatures, we have no chance. What we are
Speaker 1: is a coalitional and hypersocial species, and so that means
Speaker 1: that it's important to understand, well, what is it that's
Speaker 1: in us. What did nature imbue us with that allows
Speaker 1: us to work together so well? And I would say
Speaker 1: that one of the pillars of our ability to cooperate
Speaker 1: and to coordinate is our tendency to connect with one
Speaker 1: another and to care for one another. Empathy basically benefits
Speaker 1: almost everybody involved, including the people who feel it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's easy to think of empathy is something you do
Speaker 1: for other people, But people who report being empathic versus
Speaker 1: less empathic tend to have deeper and more meaningful connections
Speaker 1: to family and friends. And then, finally, I think empathy
Speaker 1: is really critical to building community, to seeing people who
Speaker 1: are different from us free from the lens of stereotyping, prejudice,
Speaker 1: and bias. To our ability for collective action, from making
Speaker 1: small sacrifices for the greater good. Really all the things
Speaker 1: that allow us to work together. Yeah, you know, on
Speaker 1: this question of bias, researchers like Paul Bloom and others
Speaker 1: have pointed out that our empathy has design flaws, right,
Speaker 1: and so if we rely too much on our empathy
Speaker 1: to guide our decisions, it can carry some risks. So,
Speaker 1: for example, we feel less empathy for people who are
Speaker 1: from different cultures than we are, or who don't share
Speaker 1: our skin color, or we feel more empathy for people
Speaker 1: who are attractive or are right in front of us, right,
Speaker 1: are approximate. Yeah, I think that's right. And you know,
Speaker 1: Paul Bloom's book Against Empathy is well worth a read.
Speaker 1: It's really provocative and interesting, and as you say, he
Speaker 1: points out, hey, wait a minute, empathy doesn't always move
Speaker 1: us towards justice. It doesn't always move us towards kindness equity, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it moves us to care for people who were evolutionarily
Speaker 1: programmed to care for. I think that empathy, like every
Speaker 1: other part of our mind and our psychology, is built
Speaker 1: for an ancient world, one in which probably we are
Speaker 1: just around our family members and community members, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to scale up experiences like empathy for the needs
Speaker 1: of the modern world, to help people who we will
Speaker 1: never meet, who are thousands of miles away. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think it's so important for us to recognize where
Speaker 1: these biases lie. Like you said, an empathy, but all
Speaker 1: spaces of behavioral science. I feel like in my entire career,
Speaker 1: whether I been a practitioner of this phase or an academic,
Speaker 1: I'm always looking at ways in which these more ancient
Speaker 1: intuitions can lead us astray. We want to be very
Speaker 1: intentional about where we are directing our empathy spotlight. Right,
Speaker 1: You call empathy as spotlight, and we as humans have
Speaker 1: the ability to maybe direct that spotlight. Empathy is like
Speaker 1: a spotlight, and we are the ones pointing that spotlight,
Speaker 1: and that we have agency. We have autonomy to align
Speaker 1: our emotional experiences with the people we want to be,
Speaker 1: and when we're able to do that, empathy can supercharge
Speaker 1: our values and morals by adding emotional weight to them. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you feel like you are more inclined
Speaker 1: to empathize with people who look like you than people
Speaker 1: who don't look like you, it's a great opportunity to
Speaker 1: interact with people who don't look like you and learn
Speaker 1: more about them, or read their stories, or just become
Speaker 1: familiar because it turns that that those experiences can reshape
Speaker 1: our empathy, broaden it, widen it in ways that are
Speaker 1: more appropriate for the morality that many of us have
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, it is very helpful for us to
Speaker 1: understand the ways in which it can be biased, because
Speaker 1: a lot of these empathetic responses are operating at a
Speaker 1: purely subconscious level. Right, we're not consciously deliberating over who
Speaker 1: gets our empathy, and so does require some higher level
Speaker 1: cognition kicking in. Yeah, you can think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: being on autopilot some vast majority of the time, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we have to switch into manual and drive the
Speaker 1: car ourselves. And I think that's definitely true of empathy
Speaker 1: as well. Well said, so empathy can confer a lot
Speaker 1: of benefits on an individual level, on a societal level,
Speaker 1: as you've just described, but you note that sadly, empathy
Speaker 1: has been steadily decreasing over time, and you've identified that
Speaker 1: there are some building blocks of empathy that are crucial
Speaker 1: for empathies revival, if you will, that are less available
Speaker 1: to us in present day than they used to be,
Speaker 1: and this might be responsible for some of the decline.
Speaker 1: Do you mind sharing what those building blocks are? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about the world that empathy evolved in, right,
Speaker 1: So if you think about the social world that we
Speaker 1: had one hundred thousand years ago, it's just a lot
Speaker 1: different than where we are now. You know, people existed
Speaker 1: in small bands of hunter gatherers, maybe a few families
Speaker 1: a piece, and what that meant is that if you
Speaker 1: interacted with somebody else, probably a bunch of things were true.
Speaker 1: You were really familiar to one another, maybe you were related.
Speaker 1: People were visible to one another. We could hear pain
Speaker 1: and pleasure in each other's voices, see it in each
Speaker 1: other's faces, and we were accountable to one another. It
Speaker 1: was clear who had acted kindly and cruelly, and we
Speaker 1: could take that history into account when we decide how
Speaker 1: we wanted to treat them. And I think of those
Speaker 1: pieces of social life, visibility, familiarity, and accountability as kind
Speaker 1: of empathies, immortal soup packed with ingredients that make it
Speaker 1: easy and natural to connect with one another. But those
Speaker 1: ingredients have fallen out of the lives that we live
Speaker 1: now more than ever. You know, even before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: people were living in giant cities more than ever in
Speaker 1: human history, and a loan, so we were sort of
Speaker 1: seeing more people than ever, but familiar with fewer of them.
Speaker 1: It's almost like people turned into obstacles instead of people.
Speaker 1: We interact now more in anonymous ways, in transactional ways,
Speaker 1: and those types of human connections are really not great
Speaker 1: soil for empathy to grow in. Yeah, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to give listeners. Some hope now, Jamil, because the very
Speaker 1: hopeful message coming out of your book is that we
Speaker 1: are not doomed given modern barriers. Empathy is something that
Speaker 1: we can in fact increase with some effort. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that for a long time, scientists, philosophers and
Speaker 1: the rest of us have thought of empathy as a trait.
Speaker 1: You either have it or you don't. It's just fixed.
Speaker 1: And I ask people a lot, you know, to think
Speaker 1: of the most empathic and least empathic person they've ever known.
Speaker 1: And if I ask people, how did that individual get
Speaker 1: that way? They said, well, what do you mean? They
Speaker 1: didn't get that way. They were born that way, and
Speaker 1: they were that way of their whole life. And I
Speaker 1: think it's normal to see ourselves as fixed because we
Speaker 1: don't see ourselves changing, because we change slowly, and when
Speaker 1: something happens slowly, it's hard to see. It's also it's
Speaker 1: been true by the way of other parts of our mind.
Speaker 1: We used to think of intelligence as something that was fixed.
Speaker 1: We used to think of our personalities as totally fixed.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that people do change and we
Speaker 1: do move. In fact, the only thing that you can't
Speaker 1: do is stop changing evidence suggests that although some people
Speaker 1: are born more empathic than others, our experiences matter enormously,
Speaker 1: and some experiences can cause our empathy to grow and
Speaker 1: some can cause it to shrink and weaken. Ahead, Jamil
Speaker 1: gives us strategies to try and become more empathetic. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment with a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to talk about how it is that
Speaker 1: we can be more empathetic. Right, so you've built a
Speaker 1: strong case that, Okay, good news, folks. Empathy is more
Speaker 1: of a muscle than you think it is. It can
Speaker 1: grow with hard work and perseverance and effort and understanding.
Speaker 1: Now let's get into some of the tactics. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this podcast, I'm feeling motivated to be
Speaker 1: my best empathetic self. I didn't want to say most empathetic,
Speaker 1: by the way, because we'll get to why that might
Speaker 1: be problematic language in a little bit. But I want
Speaker 1: to be my best empathetic self. So the version of
Speaker 1: Maya that helps people in the most impactful ways possible.
Speaker 1: And one antagonist you say that gets in the way
Speaker 1: of feeling empathy is our tendency to engage in what's
Speaker 1: called tribal thinking. So there are those people who are
Speaker 1: members of our group, and then there are those people
Speaker 1: who are not members of our group. And you say
Speaker 1: that having in us and them mentality can sap us
Speaker 1: of our innate curiosity and our empathy for those who
Speaker 1: are not in our group. And so, given this, what
Speaker 1: are some strategies we can use to resist tribal thinking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a great question. Tribal thinking gets in
Speaker 1: the way of empathy. It even does more than that.
Speaker 1: In some cases, if we think of ourselves as having
Speaker 1: an in group sort of us, and an outgroup them,
Speaker 1: we might empathize less with people who we think are
Speaker 1: different from us. But the real problem comes when those
Speaker 1: groups come into conflict or competition with each other, because
Speaker 1: then the outgroup, the people who are you know them,
Speaker 1: aren't just different from us, they're a direct threat to
Speaker 1: our community. And when you get into that situation, whatever
Speaker 1: happens that's good for them is bad for us, and
Speaker 1: whatever is bad for them is good for us. So
Speaker 1: you get not only a lack of empathy, you get
Speaker 1: what my friend Mina Chakara calls shod in Freuda and
Speaker 1: She's studied this a lot. This is kind of savoring
Speaker 1: other people's pain. I feel these days that a lot
Speaker 1: of Twitter has become sort of a shod In Freud
Speaker 1: a buffet at this point, you know, But you get
Speaker 1: this reversal of empathy, and I think that there are
Speaker 1: ways that we can overcome this. The first is to
Speaker 1: understand who's really out there. We often have gross misconceptions
Speaker 1: of what the other side is like. We think that
Speaker 1: they are way more extreme, way more threatening, way more
Speaker 1: violent than they really are. So learning and trying to
Speaker 1: revive some curiosity about who's actually on the other side
Speaker 1: is quite helpful in reducing that sense of threat. Relationships,
Speaker 1: in a way, are a key that can unlock our
Speaker 1: openness not just to the people we connect with, but
Speaker 1: to people like them. And that's part of why it's
Speaker 1: so important for any buddy who wants to build their
Speaker 1: empathy to try to foster these individual connections, because they
Speaker 1: go far beyond just the two people who might be
Speaker 1: talking with one another. Yeah, and there's really interesting research
Speaker 1: corroborating what you've just said. Do you mind sharing some
Speaker 1: of the research in this area. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a
Speaker 1: study from almost twenty five years ago. That shows how
Speaker 1: empathizing with an individual can unlock our care and understanding
Speaker 1: for an entire group. So in this study, people were
Speaker 1: asked to read the story of somebody named Julie who
Speaker 1: was suffering from AIDS, and I should say the study
Speaker 1: conduct in the nineteen nineties, when there is still more
Speaker 1: stigma than there is now around AIDS. Some of these people,
Speaker 1: in reading about Julie were asked to empathize with her,
Speaker 1: to really try to understand what she's going through and
Speaker 1: what this might be like for her. Other people, while
Speaker 1: reading her story were told just be objective and detached.
Speaker 1: Now the people were asked to empathize, empathized with Julie.
Speaker 1: No shock, they're really But what's more interesting is what
Speaker 1: happened when the researchers then ask these people, well, what
Speaker 1: about folks who have AIDS in general? How should we
Speaker 1: think about them? How should society treat them? What support
Speaker 1: should we have in place for them? And it turned
Speaker 1: out that people who empathize with Julie didn't just care
Speaker 1: for Julie, they cared more about people with AIDS in general.
Speaker 1: So again, in this way, relationships aren't just connections between
Speaker 1: one person and another they're keys that unlock our ability
Speaker 1: to connect with all sorts of people and entire groups
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah. I find that to be such an
Speaker 1: inspiring takeaway because it feels like something that exists within
Speaker 1: our control to build empathy with an individual person that
Speaker 1: we know or we're reading about, and then to think
Speaker 1: that that can have all sorts of positive spillover effects
Speaker 1: for how we think about communities all over the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It just makes my heart happy that there's hope in
Speaker 1: this space. And I think think many of us have
Speaker 1: had this experience where we've connected with someone who's different
Speaker 1: from us and just learned so much so quickly, and
Speaker 1: we think of what we learn as I have this
Speaker 1: new perspective, I have this new knowledge, but I want
Speaker 1: people to realize that they're also learning emotionally. They're also
Speaker 1: learning what other people's worlds are like and what they
Speaker 1: care about, and that makes it easier for us to
Speaker 1: care about that too. Yeah. No, I love that. Another
Speaker 1: way that you say we can create more empathy in
Speaker 1: the world is to better establish empathy as a norm.
Speaker 1: And we know from lots of social psychology research that,
Speaker 1: of course we as people are highly influenced by how
Speaker 1: other people behave. We tend to follow social norms. And
Speaker 1: there's this very fun, charming study that was run on
Speaker 1: seventh graders in which empathy was established as the norm.
Speaker 1: So this is a particularly impressionable population. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: would you mind just talking a bit more about this study? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, seventh graders turned out to be
Speaker 1: the most conformist people on the planet by age, right,
Speaker 1: So if you map conformity against age at peaks in
Speaker 1: early adolescence, and I get it. I mean, shoot, when
Speaker 1: I was in seventh grade, I would have done anything
Speaker 1: to fit in with anyone at any time. Not that
Speaker 1: it worked, but that's a conversation from my therapist. But
Speaker 1: so I think, especially in adolescence, it's easy to think
Speaker 1: of conformity as pretty dangerous, as something that's going to
Speaker 1: lead people, lead kids to do things that maybe they shouldn't,
Speaker 1: to be mean, or to engage in risky behaviors. But
Speaker 1: just like with adults, adolescent conformity can be a force
Speaker 1: for ill or a force for good. And so we decided,
Speaker 1: in work with my graduate in Erica Wise to see
Speaker 1: if we could use conformity to build empathy among seventh
Speaker 1: grade classrooms. So we worked in four schools and a
Speaker 1: third of the students we worked with we put in
Speaker 1: what we called an empathic social norms condition, which basically
Speaker 1: means we tried to convince them empathy is cool. We
Speaker 1: really We showed them videos, and I should say all
Speaker 1: the videos were based on real data, so we were
Speaker 1: not deceiving these kids in any way. But the videos
Speaker 1: basically talked about how empathy is this real, powerful social
Speaker 1: skill that helps you make friends, and that seventh graders
Speaker 1: really value empathy, that they tend to gravitate towards other
Speaker 1: kids who are empathic. Again, this is all true. We
Speaker 1: then asked them to, based on what they had seen,
Speaker 1: write about why they valued empathy, and then we collated
Speaker 1: all their responses why so that when they came back
Speaker 1: to the classroom, we could give these kids a brochure
Speaker 1: of all of their friends and classmates saying why they
Speaker 1: value empathy. In essence, we're alerting them to a social
Speaker 1: norm that was all around them, but that they might
Speaker 1: not have realized. Was there the popularity of empathy among
Speaker 1: their peers. So we came back to these classrooms a
Speaker 1: month later and we asked students to nominate people in
Speaker 1: their class who were nice, who seemed compassionate, and did
Speaker 1: favors for other kids. And we found that kids in
Speaker 1: our empathic social norms condition who were more motivated to
Speaker 1: empathize a month later, we're more likely to be nominated
Speaker 1: by their peers as somebody who was acting kindly, which
Speaker 1: is to us not just an indication that this effect
Speaker 1: lasted a long time, but also that it showed up
Speaker 1: not just in kids' hearts and minds, but in the
Speaker 1: way that they acted towards one another. Yeah, in their
Speaker 1: behaviors and their expressions. Yeah, I love that outcome metric.
Speaker 1: Your final recommendation in your book, Jamil, around building empathy
Speaker 1: has to do with changing our own mindsets about empathy
Speaker 1: being something that is in fact malluable, that is something
Speaker 1: that we can change, And you say that it is
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy, right, Like, the more we believe
Speaker 1: that we can change our empathy, the more successful will
Speaker 1: be at empathizing with others. Do you mind sharing some
Speaker 1: of the work that you've done in this space. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is work with one of my scientific idols, Carol Dweck.
Speaker 1: Carol is uber famous for her work on mindsets. This
Speaker 1: idea that you're expressing. When people think that they can't change,
Speaker 1: they don't really try to, because why was the energy.
Speaker 1: When people know that they can change, they tend to
Speaker 1: work harder, which in turn makes it more likely that
Speaker 1: they really do change, and that turns out to be
Speaker 1: true for empathy as well. In a series of experiments,
Speaker 1: Carol and I, along with our colleague Karina Schumann, presented
Speaker 1: people with one of two essays. Some people read an
Speaker 1: essay that said empathy is a fixed rate. You can't
Speaker 1: really change it. Whoever you are now, you're going to
Speaker 1: be for the rest of your life. Other people read
Speaker 1: an essay that told them empathy is a skill that
Speaker 1: you can grow. It's up to you how empathic you become,
Speaker 1: at least to some level. And after people read one
Speaker 1: of these essays, we put them through an empathic obstacle
Speaker 1: course full of situations in which it doesn't always come
Speaker 1: naturally to connect with people, the very situations that sometimes
Speaker 1: put walls up against our empathy, like difference. For instance,
Speaker 1: we might ask people to listen to emotional stories that
Speaker 1: are told by someone who is a different race, or
Speaker 1: we would ask them to imagine a conversation with somebody
Speaker 1: they disagreed with politically and ask how much energy would
Speaker 1: you put into trying to understand this person in their perspective.
Speaker 1: These are the very cases where empathy doesn't always happen
Speaker 1: the way that we wish it would, where our biases
Speaker 1: get in the way, And that's why we were so
Speaker 1: curious about those very cases. He said, well, what if
Speaker 1: people know that they can grow their empathy? And it
Speaker 1: turns out that people who we had just taught that
Speaker 1: empathy was a skill worked harder at it, including in
Speaker 1: trying to overcome those biases. They spent more time listening
Speaker 1: to stories told by someone who is a different race,
Speaker 1: They put more energy into trying to understand someone who
Speaker 1: was different from them ideologically. They basically put in the
Speaker 1: work in cases where empathy takes work. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what mattered most to us about that study, is
Speaker 1: that it's not just that people work harder at empathy
Speaker 1: when it's really fun and easy, they work harder at
Speaker 1: it when it's hard. Think it's important to note in
Speaker 1: this conversation, and I imagine there are many listeners of
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans in particular that fall into
Speaker 1: this camp, which is having too much empathy. You note
Speaker 1: that it can debilitate us psychologically, it can prevent us
Speaker 1: from doing our jobs. And conventional guidance for people in
Speaker 1: high empathy professions in particular, so people like first responders,
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, etc. Is for them to engage in more
Speaker 1: self care. But you offer up another way of thinking
Speaker 1: about this problem altogether. And look, I think there are
Speaker 1: multiple solutions to obviously a single problem. I mean, for one,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have our first responders working sixteen hour shifts.
Speaker 1: That's in humane, and so we have to have protections
Speaker 1: for people. But there is a shift in mindset we
Speaker 1: can have around the kind of empathy we feel. And
Speaker 1: you talk about the fact that we don't want to
Speaker 1: rid ourselves that the empathy altogether, because certain types of
Speaker 1: empathy can actually be protective against burnouts. So walk me
Speaker 1: through some of this work because it might be a
Speaker 1: little counterintuitive for people. Yeah, I want to start by
Speaker 1: just thanking you for acknowledging the structural piece here. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so important that as a psychologist I focus on
Speaker 1: people's minds and their emotions, but the structure is and
Speaker 1: culture around us matters so much and so you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first step towards decreasing burnout is building
Speaker 1: a just system for the people who work within it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're getting three hours of sleep at night,
Speaker 1: only so much a mindset shift can do. Let's be
Speaker 1: reasonable here, please, right, please, there are limits on the
Speaker 1: power of the mind when it's severely sleep deprived and underfed.
Speaker 1: You know, in my book, I talk about my older
Speaker 1: daughter who had a very difficult birth and then was
Speaker 1: in in NIKKIU for a long time, and the people
Speaker 1: who cared for her and really cared for my wife
Speaker 1: and I as well. We're empathic superheroes. I mean, we
Speaker 1: needed them so much, and they were there for us
Speaker 1: at such a deep level. And as I got out
Speaker 1: of the fog of worrying about my daughter, I started
Speaker 1: to kind of worry about them because I thought, how
Speaker 1: do you do this every day? Go home to your
Speaker 1: own families, and then come back and do it again.
Speaker 1: So I ended up shadowing the nurses and physicians and
Speaker 1: texts on that unit, and I've found that many of
Speaker 1: them were empathizing so much that they were really losing themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I think many of us these days, even
Speaker 1: if we're not healthcare workers have this sense that we're
Speaker 1: drinking from a fire hose of human misery. They were
Speaker 1: doing it at their jobs. We might be doing it
Speaker 1: when we doom scroll at one in the morning. But
Speaker 1: there's just so much pain out there, and it's very
Speaker 1: easy to feel overwhelmed and shut down. One choice that
Speaker 1: we often feel we have to make is then to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: do I keep on empathizing and wear myself into a
Speaker 1: nub or do I stop? Do I shut off my
Speaker 1: empathy as a kind of self preservation mechanism. It turns out, though,
Speaker 1: that we don't need to see it in such black
Speaker 1: and white terms, that you don't have to choose between
Speaker 1: burning out and empathizing or protecting yourself by becoming callous.
Speaker 1: And this gets back to the same three pieces of
Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier. Yes, and you were
Speaker 1: talking about how emotional empathy is so palpable. It feels
Speaker 1: like that's what empathy is to many people. I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of people who care deeply for others
Speaker 1: think that the only way that they can express that
Speaker 1: care is by feeling what other people feel. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that that type of empathy is the easiest
Speaker 1: one to burn out. It's the path through which we
Speaker 1: get overwhelmed, and it's the path through which we end
Speaker 1: up feeling like we don't have anything left to give,
Speaker 1: whereas cognitive empathy and especially empathic concern turn out in
Speaker 1: medical professionals and healthcare workers to be protective against burnout.
Speaker 1: So it's amazing, right, I mean, empathy is not just
Speaker 1: one thing. It's complicated, and different pieces of empathy could
Speaker 1: either put you at risk or protect you from that
Speaker 1: very same risk. And you know, to dig into some
Speaker 1: of the risks of emotional empathy because it does me
Speaker 1: that when you are in cognitive empathy mode, when you're
Speaker 1: in empathic concern mode, it's a very other minded orientation
Speaker 1: where you're almost exclusively focused on relieving the other person's
Speaker 1: pain through problem solving. If you're in the emotional empathic space,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're now carrying a mental burden
Speaker 1: that you can be very eager to relieve yourself of,
Speaker 1: or you might look for a quick fix just because
Speaker 1: you're feeling distressed. Like I can just imagine it having
Speaker 1: distortionary impact. That's extremely insightful and well put because when
Speaker 1: you feel personal distressed, your goal changes. It's not any
Speaker 1: longer that I just need to be there for this person,
Speaker 1: It's I want to stop feeling bad right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But if you feel compassion, your goal is to help
Speaker 1: the other person, and that goal cannot be satisfied by
Speaker 1: merely doing whatever it takes to feel better yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So interesting. If we do suffer from turn out, if
Speaker 1: we do feel the burden of sharing in other people's emotions,
Speaker 1: what can we do to re orient ourselves towards more
Speaker 1: of a cognitive empathy empathic concern way of thinking. Like
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, I mean, it makes so much sense,
Speaker 1: but I'm trying to give people a means towards that
Speaker 1: end in case they're really eager to dive in. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of great contemplative practices that help with
Speaker 1: tuning our empathy away from personal distress and towards compassion.
Speaker 1: A lot of these drawn from sort of the Buddhist tradition,
Speaker 1: but there are these practices in mindful self compassion as well.
Speaker 1: You can find videos and scripts for this on YouTube
Speaker 1: all over the place that again help orient us not
Speaker 1: towards how we are reacting to somebody, but towards their
Speaker 1: reality and what we can do for them. And it's
Speaker 1: a slight change of mindset, but it's enormously important to
Speaker 1: basically the extent that we can realize that we are
Speaker 1: are not the ones going through this situation. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the nurses at the Nikku that I shadowed
Speaker 1: from my book had this practice of when she was
Speaker 1: with the family who was going through a tragedy or
Speaker 1: a really difficult time, she would be there for them,
Speaker 1: and then she would go to the kind of break
Speaker 1: room and just sit and repeat to herself, this is
Speaker 1: not my tragedy, And that's not at all to be callous.
Speaker 1: She cared enormously about those people, but in fact, she
Speaker 1: was more capable of caring for them effectively when she
Speaker 1: got herself out of the equation, when she focused on
Speaker 1: the good she could do for them instead of the
Speaker 1: bad that she was feeling. Hey, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: On next week's episode, we'll hear from writer Kelly Corrigan.
Speaker 1: Kelly shares how parenting her two kids went to exactly
Speaker 1: according to plan and still left her reeling it is different.
Speaker 1: It is over, like that part is over and it's fine,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to have a great forty years, but
Speaker 1: there's no denying that, Like the big page has been
Speaker 1: turned and I'm something else now. To them, I'm something different.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes
Speaker 1: our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 1: our sound engineer Drew Bastola, and our associate producer Sarah McCrae.
Speaker 1: Louise Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industry, So big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course, of very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker. I love that reflection, Maya. I
Speaker 1: think it's so critical when we reflect on our own
Speaker 1: empathic biases to not just say I tend to be
Speaker 1: more attractive. I'm sorry. That's one more time at Jamiel
Speaker 1: at the Truth. Okay,