If you regularly feel the emotions or understand the experiences of others, you probably possess high levels of empathy or you may even be an empath.
American citizens’ lack of empathy has become increasingly apparent throughout the pandemic. Some Americans don’t even bat an eye at the tragedies and death happening around them every day.
While empathy doesn’t require agreement or liking other people, it does require listening and learning to coexist. Leading with empathy can bring different groups of people together by understanding one another and building deeper connections.
Empathy is defined as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing feelings, thoughts and experiences of another from either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner, according to Merriam-Webster.
But let’s not confuse empathy with sympathy.
Sympathy is an emotion you experience when you care about and are sorry about someone else's trouble, grief or misfortune, according to Merriam-Webster.
When you’re sympathetic toward someone who is cold hearted, you feel pity for them.
However, being empathetic means you understand what could have made them cold hearted, you feel their pain alongside them and sometimes go as far as wanting to help them heal.
Our society’s problem is that too many people are sympathetic and not enough are empathetic.
A May 2010 study by the University of Michigan found that college students in the early 2000s were 40% less empathetic than college students in the ’80s and ’90s when measured by personality tests.
Almost 12 years later and empathy is still hitting record lows.
However, we have time to teach empathy and build a better society through compassion and responding appropriately to others behaviors.
Only about 10% of a human’s empathetic ability can be attributed to genetic variations, according to a March 12, 2018 University of Cambridge study.
In the study, researchers found genetic variants associated with lower empathy levels are also associated with a higher risk for autism.
Women on average are more empathetic than men. This difference is not linked to genetic factors but is a result of other non-genetic biological factors including prenatal hormone influence or non-biological factors including socialization, according to the University of Cambridge study.
The other 90% of our empathetic ability is determined by non-genetic factors including socialization and education, evidently showing that empathy can be taught, according to the same study.
In fact, empathy should be taught at a young age because children who empathize with each other are less likely to fight, according to Australian philosopher Roman Krznaric’s 2014 book, “Empathy: Why it Matters and How to Get It.”
Empathy is crucial for a society and it helps us thrive.
Look at doctors, for example: They require empathy as they are confronted with suffering day in and day out.
Doctors who turn off their feelings make patients more stressed and less cooperative, according to a 2017 study by Dr. Helen Reiss, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
This also makes their profession lonelier and leads to higher burnout rates.
Reiss is also the director of empathy research at Massachusetts General Hospital and created a program called Empathetics that teaches physicians how to improve empathy in patient-physician relationships.
Addressing an empathy-deficit is crucial anywhere but it can be especially important in the workplace because unempathetic leadership can have a negative influence in the atmosphere.
About 61% of people with highly empathetic leaders reported often being innovative at work, compared to only 13% of people with less empathetic leaders, according to a 2021 Catalyst study.
Catalyst is a global nonprofit that aims to help build workplaces that work for women, according to its website.
Empathy is a skill that needs to be practiced. It’s not easy but it’s possible and necessary.
Although empathy can be learned by anyone, some people are natural-born empaths. The difference is someone with empathy will have their heart go out to another person but an empath experiences those feelings more intensely.
A true empath is a person who’s highly sensitive and aware of the feelings of others around them to the point of taking others’ pain and agonies as their own, according to a June 8 Well+Good article.
Well+Good informs and educates communities and individuals in health to live well, according to its website.
True empaths make up 1-2% of the population, according to a 2018 study by Jamie Ward, director of Sussex Neuroscience.
Many people lack empathy because they’re afraid, they feel threatened or they’re unwilling to have their beliefs challenged because of pride or prejudice, according to a Feb. 5 blog post by author Mike Robbins.
People must practice empathy so our world can prosper.
Empathy is a tool we can all use to initiate a cultural transformation to peace. It’s not about agreeing with others but simply listening.
