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Radical empathy, the double bind, and moral trauma
A narrative is not a substitute for a philosophical argument; nor is a philosophical argument a substitute for a story. These are not substitutable for one another under descriptions that preserve truth. The matter is especially tricky if one is making a point or taking a position about human actions, preferences, or behavior in extreme situations. One can make a point or support a position by means of a logical argument. In an argument, one considers the relationship between the premises of the argument and the conclusion. Are the premises factually accurate? One interviews witnesses or assesses the available data. One can have an invalid argument from true premises. The premises are true but the conclusion does not follow from them. One can have a valid argument from false premises. The premises are false but the conclusion logically follows from them. Or one can have a conclusion that validly follows from true premises, in which case the argument is sound, the gold standard of reasoning. Once an argument contains a contradiction, then anything follows from it, including a true conclusion. It is just that the latter is logically unrelated to what comes before. And arguments are only getting started here. If one is dealing with a moral dilemma or nonstandard logics such as possible world scenarios, the premises become more complex, the technicalities fan out, and the alternative paths through the labyrinth of reasoning multiply rapidly. While human actions are sensibly understood to have both reasons and causes, these are taken to include motives and triggers that may be redescribed as “insane,” “deviant,” “anomalous,” “pathological,” and so on. Special cases, exceptions, and examples that are counter-intuitive, raise the spectrum that one is dealing with a phenomena that is not always a rational process.
Thus, one looks for alternative ways of making one’s case than marshalling the technical apparatus of formal and informal logic. One can make a point or support a position by telling a story. One trades off logical rigor in favor of a compelling narrative. “Let me tell ya what happened.” “You can’t make this stuff up!” “You are not gonna believe what he told her!” Without deciding whether or not reason is the slave of the passions (Hume 1739), storytelling exemplifies the struggles in which people engage in an attempt to attain personal satisfaction and fulfillment in the face of the conflict requirements of scarce reality, community standards, and earning one’s daily bread by the sweat of one’s brow, even if the sweat is due to the stress of working in a corporate empathy desert rather than plowing the field in the hot sun. [1]
For example, Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World (2019) presents a narrative that, in its outline, is similar to the overall structure of the moral dilemma known as “the Trolley Car Dilemma.” Before defining the terms of the story and of the philosophic dilemma in detail, it is useful to note, both offer rich possibilities for confronting human behavior and actions in extreme situations. Both offer possibilities for the practice of moral reasoning and of the practice of empathy. But only one put the reader and reasoner in the trolley car itself, facing the dilemma, and that, counter-intuitively is not the abstract statement of the dilemma in the trolley car problem, but the novel itself. (For details on the movie version of the novel see the New York Times Review.[2])
The story delivers the experiences of being caught in a double bind, moral trauma, soul murder, and cognitive-emotional-moral conflicts that make people so anxious they up at night unable to sleep due to intrusive thoughts. With the story, one is inside the experience of the dilemma in the sense of being viscerally gripped by it in way that is not the case if one is abstractly reasoning cognitively about motives and morals. With the story, one is grabbed by the throat, and is hard pressed to pretend that the dilemma does not matter. This matter of mattering is of the essence here. With the story, the dilemma is no longer able to be dismissed as a puzzling case or an irrelevant philosophical game without real world relevance. But the “mattering” here is not in the interest of expanding knowledge by confirming or refuting a quantitative hypothesis – that five people are more people than one person. The mattering is in order to get to one’s friend’s house in one piece – literally to go on being. Well-being. Personal flourishing. Survival.
That is different than being up at night because one is trying to disentangle a logical puzzle, the difference being roughly that between an obsessive preoccupation and post-traumatic stress. Neither is pleasant and both have the potential to keep one up at night. Though many exceptions exist and generalization is risky, treatment of the former is considered more predictable and simpler.
The Trolley Car dilemma is as follows. You are the agent on a runaway trolley car with broken brakes, which will run over five people unless you throw the switch to change the track, which, however, will result in running over one person. So far, everyone, including you, are innocent. Surely this is an engaging thought experiment, a philosophical fiction.
Our empathy for the agent starts out as requiring a decision that no one should have to make. The agent is forced to make a decision that neither he nor anyone else is authorized to make. But he has to make it anyway. Doing nothing is also a decision, and people are going to die. This is the definition of a double bind – damned if one does, and damned if one doesn’t. This is the kind of thing that drives people insane – insane with second guessing, insane with grief, insane with guilt. One can be both a perpetrator and a victim.
The problem of course is unsolvable without further background. When the philosophers Philippa Foot (1967) and Judith Jarvis Thompson (1976) first proposed a version of it, Foot wanted to present the dilemma as the difference between the utilitarian moralists such as Jeremy Bentham, committed to the greatest good of the greatest number, and the deontologists roughly represented by Immanuel Kant, for whom the motive for acting is itself the guide to the moral worth of the behavior in question. The solution is relatively easy for the utilitarian – save the greatest number. The utilitarian then must deal with the fact that the person who throws the switch becomes a perpetrator, killing the one innocent person. The Kantian is clear that the moral worth of an action is independent of the consequences of the action, which, in this life, are often unpredictable even when the outcome seems certain. The moral law does not allow throwing a switch in order to kill one person. The Kantian, casuistically inspired by Thomas Aquinas (see two paragraphs below), might argue back that the moral law does indeed allow throwing a switch to save five people. Or at least it does not prohibit one from saving five people, the motive being to preserve and further life. The casuistry is that one must turn a blind eye to the consequence of killing the one person, which for the Kantian is relatively easy to do because he excludes consequences from the moral equation. The consequence of killing the one person is entirely a regrettable accident. However, the person who throws the switch becomes a perpetrator nonetheless, killing the one innocent person.
Radical empathy reveals that one can be both a perpetrator and a survivor. What has been overlooked is the role of moral trauma. The driver of the trolly car, the agent, is put in a double-bind, in which, whatever the action, innocent people are going to suffer and die. In literature this has a name. It is called “tragedy.”
Radical empathy reveals the tragic dimension of the situation. The Trolley Car dilemma requires a story to complete it, and the story is an empathic, albeit, tragic one. Here “completion” does not mean that no one dies. It means that a person is forced to make a decision that no person is authorized to make – that no one should have to make – but one has to make it anyway. Doing nothing is the decision to let five die. Throwing the switch is intentionally to embrace the role of perpetrator and give up the illusion that one is innocent. Indeed in some jurisdictions, throwing the switch would technically qualify for manslaughter. Let the jury decide whether voluntary or not.
Nor is this merely the principle of double effect reasoning, in which a valid action has a harmful “side effect” as “collateral damage,” which Thomas Aquinas documented in Summa Theologica (Part 2 of II, Question 64, Article 7), his example being killing an aggressor in self-defense. There are no “bad guys” in the Trolley Car Dilemma. A closer analogue, probably known to Foot, would be the example of childbirth before modern medicine made a Caesarian Section a relatively safe, albeit radical, intervention. (Reader (trigger) alert: this not for the faint of heart.) A viable baby is backwards or badly positioned in the womb, and the baby is stuck. If one saves the mother, she may eventually give birth to five more sons and daughters. If one saves the baby, by performing the Caesarian, then the mother will bleed to death (probability .95). Action is required. The surgeon is the agent in the trolley car. If the surgeon does nothing, the baby dies, still in the womb; and the mother subsequently dies, probably of infection. One option is the surgeon decides to act to remove the stuck baby, usually by performing a craniotomy, cutting it apart. Technically speaking, when the baby’s head is crushed that is child abuse, soul murder. The alternative is to operate on the mother. The outcome was fatal to her at least up until the 1940s. The surgeon is both the perpetrator and the survivor in that he must grapple with moral trauma, the latter in the sense that he must live with the guilt that is experienced for killing the otherwise innocent, viable baby.
Childbirth is not war, though given the paragraph before last it may seem so. Moral trauma is common in war, though until recently it has not been recognized by the United States Veteran’s Administration as a cause of the mental health issues of “wounded warriors.” For example, in Iraq, a car is racing towards a security check point and fails to stop even after hand signals and warning shots. Believing the car to be a suicide bomb, the sergeant orders the corporeal to shoot at the driver – with a 50-caliber machine gun. It turns out to be a family racing to the hospital because the pregnant mother has gone into labor. The survivors are awarded $10K and an apology (Carlstrom 2010). The soldier who pulled the trigger is both a perpetrator and now trying to survive moral trauma. He is uninjured physically. He was a “normal” midwestern guy with brother and sisters and a pregnant wife of his own. The army does not debrief the team about what happened. He is not invited to talk about it. He really did pull the trigger, believing he was following a valid military order and defending his team against a suicide bomber. But, examining the car afterwards, and realizing what he and his team have done, he sinks back into himself, burdened by guilt at having killed the family. He becomes unresponsive to those around him, does not respond to orders, and is shipped back home without being debriefed and with a dishonorable discharge. He is no more responsive back in the States, and, does not want to talk about it. His marriage fails. He becomes homeless. A perpetrator in the technical sense, but also a victim and survivor.
Thus, the Trolley Car Dilemma is unsolvable without a corresponding story. In the story, “you” are there. You are there at the nonfunctioning controls. The track is racing towards one at high speed. The innocent persons come rapidly into view. You search desperately for an ax, a fire extinguisher, a suitcase to throw under the rapidly rotating wheels. None is available. You wish you had the courage for altruistic suicide, throwing yourself in front of the racing car to attempt derailment. One thought too many for effective action. You invoke the deity, say a prayer, call on God. He is busy elsewhere. No one is listening. You are in a double bind. Like Colonel Aureliano Buendia facing the firing squad, you cannot move. You can decide what to shout, but you have no control over the “Ready, aim, fire!” The “solution” is a story called “tragedy.” This is what tragedy feels like, looks like, sounds like. The solution is a tragedy.
The story “completes” the problem in the sense of showing how every action designed to avoid the tragic outcome (that innocence suffers and dies) advances the action in the direction of a tragic outcome – innocence suffers and dies. The agent who pretends to be innocent by taking no action becomes a perpetrator and descends into trying to live with and survive moral trauma; and the agent who embraces action becomes a perpetrator and descends into trying to live with and survive moral trauma.
Because the consequences of human action both escape us and, as in this case, are inescapable, radical empathy teaches that people are forced to make decisions that they should not have to make and must live with the moral trauma as survivors. Of course the example of the seemingly inevitable outcome is a counter-example as Colonel Aurelian Buendia faces the firing squad, as readers of Marquez know well, a revolution occurs and the execution is interrupted seconds before the order to “Fire!” is given. Buendia lives for another two hundred pages. So our finitude consists in knowing that “no one gets out alive,” but also that we do not know what the future will bring, the details of even the next few seconds, or the timing of the exit in spite of being so certain.
Radical empathy is defined formally in relation to standard empathy: Radical empathy deploys the same four minimal essential aspects of standard empathy – receptivity, understanding, interpretation, and responsiveness. The differences from standard empathy map to these dimensions. Empathic receptivity is “dialed down,” decreased to prevent empathic distress or compassion fatigue. “Dialed down” does not mean the listener becomes hard-hearted or unfeeling, but the vicarious aspect of the survivor’s experience is emphasized. The listener is aware that this trauma or tragedy is indeed a trauma or tragedy, but, for example, the listener is not on the Titanic, but watching the movie. (key term: vicarious experience.) The empathic understanding of possibility is radicalized in the sense that possibilities of the experience of pain, suffering, or high spirits exist that the listener’s imagination cannot necessarily grasp in advance. For example, in the Mephistopheles’ description of Hell in Mann’s Dr Faustus, words are used to described the indescribable;
Every compassion, every grace, every sparing, every last trace of consideration for the incredulous, imploring objection ‘that you verily cannot do so unto a soul’: it is done, it happens, and indeed without being called to any reckoning in words; in soundless cellar, far down beneath God’s hearing […] (1947: 245)
Empathic understanding of possibility confronts the survivor, who may indeed be skeptical that anything can make a difference, with the assertion. “No one was listening when you called for help – well, someone is now listening. Try me. Recovery is a possibility, skeptical though you, the survivor, may be.” If empathic receptivity is “dialed down,” empathic interpretation is “dialed up,” expanded. The folk definition of “taking a walk in the Other’s shoes” is most relevant in cognitively trying to imagine what the Other had to go through when the listener’s sense of the situation is limited. When the listener’s empathy gets “stuck,” blocked, inhibited, because the experiences of the self and the Other are so at variation, empathic interpretation, perspective shifting, is a proven way of cognitively “jump starting” the empathic process. Finally, the empathic responsiveness of radical empathy consists in eliciting an expression of the experience of the trauma from the survivor in the present situation of safety, acceptance, and toleration; processing that experience to the extent that it can be processed to drain the toxic emotions out of the trauma, defanging the snake, so to speak, to the extent that is possible; and saying what happened, thus, giving the survivor’s experience back to the survivor in a form of words that acknowledges and recognizes the survivor’s humanity.
[1] Plato dialogues are rich in logical reasoning about distinctions of meaning and they sometimes end up with a myth. When reasoning comes to an end, the dialectic changes from persuasion by logic into storytelling, which provides a different kind of persuasive engagement. For example, Plato’s Republic ends with the myth of Er (10.614–10.621); the Phaedrus ends with the myth of the winged soul; and the Timaeus includes a myth of the creation of the universe by a demiurge
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/movies/knock-at-the-cabin-review.html?searchResultPosition=2
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, Empathy in the Context of Literature (c) Lou Agosta, PhD
This post, web site, and all content (c) Lou Agosta, PhD
Top Ten Empathy Trends for 2023
Empathy is a practice and priority, not a mere psychological mechanism. Practicing empathy is a way of being in the world, creating a safe space of openness, acceptance and toleration. In the face of a contagion of Omicron, we need a contagion of empathy. Empathy is contagious. This is a condition you actually want to share with someone else, especially someone who seems to need some empathy – all the while being clear to set firm boundaries against bullying, delusional thinking, and compassion fatigue. Keep in mind this list is a top ten “count down,” so if you want to know what is #1, fast forward to the bottom.
Here are my choices and predictions for the top ten trends in empathy for the year 2023.
10 – Empathy for the jurors in the trial of the century. The prediction is that Mr T will stick to his story – “we was robbed” – even after he is indicated, believing there is no such thing as bad publicity. The prospective defendant is innocent until proven guilty and so on. However, it is noteable that a former-NSA analyst was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2019 for hoarding official documents [https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/07/ex-nsa-contractor-serve-9-years-hoarding-classified-information/158564/]. This seems open and shut. Nevertheless, this trend is about the jurors and not the defendant. This promises to be a long, headline-grabbing trial, and the jury will have to be sequestered, cut off from news, and, subjected to a lot of legal jargon. Being without Facebook and Twitter and other
is. While the challenges of finding an unbiased jury are not trivial, all that is needed for a fair trial are twelve people who are willing to set aside their opinions and look at the facts from the point of view of the law as defined for them by the presiding judge. That sounds like creating a space for critical thinking and taking multiple points of view, the latter the folk definition of empathy.
9 – Empathy in time of war becomes Red Team not kindness. All the empathy in the world is not going to help anyone if one country invades another with a list of intellectuals, business people, and politicians to be arrested and killed. That noted, the need for helping, compassion, and good works of all kinds is still on the critical path to building a better world. Yet in time of war or threat of war, the power of empathy consists in putting oneself in the shoes of the opponent, thinking like the opponent, and thereby anticipating and thwarting the opponent’s moves. Putting oneself in the opponent’s shoes requires taking off one’s own shoes first. Never underestimate the power of empathy – never – yet empathy does not work very well with psychopaths, bullies, totalitarian dictators, and the criminally insane. Many of these individuals will take the affective, bottom up empathy and use it against you. Therefore, empathic engagement must be limited to cognitive empathy – use critical thinking to try to figure out what the Other is thinking and feeling in order to intervene in a way that is useful according the standards of a humane community.
8 – Elon “44 billion up in smoke” Musk gets empathy for his employees, customers, and stakeholders. And if you believe prediction, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell to you. The empathic truth of this admittedly cynical prediction is that many of the things that make a person good at business make him or her relatively poor empathizers. Business leaders lose contact with what clients and consumers are experiencing as the leaders get entangled in innovating the technologies in new products and services, solving legal issues, reacting to the competition, or implementing the software required to sustain operations. Yet empathy is the ultimate Capitalist Tool. Empathy is on the critical path for serving customers, segmenting markets, positioning products (and substitutes), taking the perspective of the competition [not exactly empathy but close enough?], building teams and being a leader who actually has followers. Saying that the purpose of business is to make money is like saying the purpose of life is to breathe. Definitely do not stop breathing. The purpose of business is to deliver value and satisfaction to customers. Then the revenue shows up. When the ontology of empathy exposes it as the foundation of community, then expanding empathy becomes nearly synonymous with expanding business. For example, building customer communities, building stakeholder communities, team building, are the basis for brand loyalty, employee commitment, and sustained or growing market share. Can revenue be far behind? Sometimes leaders don’t need more data, we need expanded empathy, though ultimately both are on the path to satisfied buyers, employees, and stakeholders. “CEO” no longer means “Chief Executive Officer,” but “Chief Empathy Officer.” This time one can hear the groans—from the executive suite, not the cubicles.:
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6nngUdemxAnCd2B2wfw6Q6 Empathy is one of those things that are hard to delegate. This role shows up like another job responsibility with which the CEO of the organization is tasked—along with everything else that she already has to do. As if she did not already have enough alligators snapping at various parts of her anatomy, one has to be nice about it, too? But of course empathy is not niceness, though it is not about being un-nice. It is about knowing what others are experiencing, because one has a vicarious experience and then processing that further to expand boundaries and exercise leadership.
7 – Etiquette Gurus and celebrity life coaches go back to school to learn empathy. The latest poster child for this trend is Sara Jane Ho, who reportedly broke up with her boyfriend of four years over text, and rationalizes it with a meme about context, in which the context sounded like she was busy making a Netflix show. This is right up there with trend #8, getting fired by a Twitter tweet. The context, according to the author of the article, Maureen O’Connor, was that Ms Ho’s eyes were getting puffy from crying, and she would not “look good” on her Netflix show. Empathy is a high bar and one does not get there every day. If Ms Ho’s resume is to be believed, she is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Georgetown, Harvard (attended), and now a Netflix sensation. One speculates that she is a survivor of a Tiger Mom or Bootcamp Dad (or both), and may herself benefit from getting a good listening at the side of a committed mentor. Based on the review of Ms Ho’s project by Maureen O’Connor [ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/style/sara-jane-ho-mind-your-matters.html], she (Ms Ho) exemplifies the kind of etiquette which is a disguised application of sadism, hostility, aggression, and one-upmanship. While I do not know the details and maybe I am missing the humor, but so far, all these people are easy to dislike. You go to take off your coat and you can’t because there is a knife in your back. There is nothing wrong – but something is definitely missing – empathy.
6 – Empathy is a practice not a mere psychological mechanism. Empathy is the practice of authentically relating to the other person. The practice of empathy is a way of being – being with and in relation with others. Many of the misunderstandings of empathy – especially in the form of compassion, pity, emotional contagion – can be traced to treating the practice of empathy merely as a psychological mechanism. There is nothing wrong with this as such. However, what gets missed is the relational quality of empathy. Drive out bullying, hostility, aggression, bad language, and empathy naturally comes forth. People want to be empathic if given half a chance.
5 – Empathy expands for the True Believer, but not agreement with the conspiracy or delusion. The criteria for identifying the True Believer is he or she doubles down. When the space does not arrive from Alpha Centauri – or your candidate does not win – the True Believer does not say, “I might have been mistaken and maybe I need to look at my assumptions or inquire into other scenarios.” The True Believer doubles down – “We was robbed!” “We will catch the next space ship!” It does no good – none – to disagree with the True Believer or to argue or reason, because the delusion or conspiracy theory is holding together the True Believer’s personality. To give up the delusion would be to give up the personality, to risk the disintegration of who the person is. What to do about it? Teach critical thinking. Both empathy and critical thinking create a space of acceptance and tolerance in the context of which the power of the delusion starts to shrink. More on this in the next trend.
4 – Empathy and critical thinking form an alliance. It is a bold statement of the obvious that the ongoing breakdown in community standards bodes ill for a cultural and political and public conversation context in which disputants engage in near delusional disagreement on basic quantitative facts such as the rules of etiquette, basic science such as the biology of vaccinations, gender distinction (or not), the basic results of elections, and so on. Though it is not a quick solution, it is hard to think of a better one: teach skills in critical thinking such as assessing facts against sources, evaluating the reliability of sources, reporters, informants, and so on, against prior performance, checking validity and logic of arguments, and engaging enlarged thinking in taking the point of view of the other person, especially if the person (or group) disagrees with one. (See Jonathan Haber, (2020), Critical Thinking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.) Taking different points of view, of course, is the basic folk definition of empathy. But do not forget to take off one’s own shoes before trying on the other’s or one will get projection, not empathy.
3 – Translation replaces projection as the underlying model for empathy. “Translation” as in translating between languages or between different artistic media or different signaling systems. In short, psychologism – psychology in the negative sense – is replaced by the linguistic speech act of translating the other person’s experience into one’s own and then giving it back (empathically) to the other. This paradigm of empathy as translation is arguably at the same level of generality as empathy as projection, but remained undeveloped until the rise of hermeneutics along a separate trajectory. The modern innovators of interpersonal empathy such as Carl Rogers (1902–1987) might be read as leap-frogging back to the original sense of entering the other’s world in order to translate it into the first person, subject’s own terms. The translation model of empathy (credited to Johann Herder (1744 – 1803) of whom one rarely hears today) also fits well with what Gordon Allport (1897–1967) and Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) were doing in arraying empathy against racism and prejudice in expanding the boundaries of community by empathically translating between them. An entire possible alternate history of empathy, as yet unwritten, opens up at this point – empathy as translation between persons.
2 – Empathy for the Amazon rain forest grows and reaches a critical mass, but will its critical mass be enough or too late to overtake the “critical mass” of green house gases. The challenge is that global warming does not live like an actual possibility for most people, who cannot imagine such an outcome – for example, just as in December 2019 no one could envision the 2020 global pandemic. Empathy is oxygen for the soul. If the human psyche does not get empathy, it suffocates. Climate changes makes this metaphor actual. If humanity does not drown as the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheaths slide into the oceans, humans will suffocate as the levels of green house gases and heat overwhelm temperate habitats. There is no Planet B.Empathy is a bridge: The bridge between the gridlocked present and a seemingly impossible-to-imagine future is empathy. The empathic moment is an act of imagination. That is the interesting thing about empathy. It may seem like a dream; but the dream lives. It is inclusive. Lots more work needs to be done on this connection. For purposes of this list of predictions, this “shout out” will have to suffice. For specific actionable recommendations, see David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet, now streaming on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80216393
2a – Vaccine deniers get empathy and say: “Oh, I wish I were already experiencing the minor side effects of the latest booster shot instead of systemic organ breakdown!” People get the latest booster against Covid, parents get their children the measles and polio and other shots the children need for school, which gets into people’s arms at an accelerating rate. Vaccine deniers get empathy and say: “Oh, I wish I were already experiencing the minor side effects of the latest booster shot instead of systemic organ breakdown!” Biological science continues to produce small, medium, and large “miracles,” even as basic health care services for citizen’s struggle. People become medical doctors and nurses and enter the healthcare field because they want to make a difference. They experience an empathic calling to intervene to reduce the pain and suffering in the world. Then these same people get caught up in the faceless, unempathic bureaucracy of a healthcare system where capitation means doctors have to see an unworkable number of patients a day – four an hour for eight hours. Using empathy and medical ethics, the doctors push back saying: “I am required by medical ethics to spend as much time with the patient as is needed to get the patient the medical treatment they require – and are entitled to be paid for it.
2b – Men lead from empathy in the struggle against domestic violence (DV). When powerful men such as Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Gates, Biden, Milley, clean up their failures of leadership and take action saying “Violence against women anywhere – home or work or anywhere – is unacceptable and here are the resources for intervention,” then a breakthrough will occur. Men will find their voice and speak out even more loudly and provide leadership against domestic violence to those of their own gender who just do not get it.
While women have provided the leadership and will continue to do so, powerful men must step up and provide guidance to their fellows about proper boundaries and respect for them in relationships. This is ongoing. What is new: powerful men step up and speak out and provide leadership among men in establishing respect for boundaries in creating communication, affection, and affinity.
For data- and empathy-based innovations that have occurred in the past year in the fight against domestic violence see No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Some sixty percent of domestic violence (DV) victims are strangled at some point during an abusive relationship (p. 65): Big red flag that the perpetrator is escalating in the direction of homicide/Femicide.
Empathy almost always has its uses when tuned to the specific circumstances. Yet empathy is unhelpful in dealing with sociopaths, psychopaths, and [most] bullies. They take whatever empathy you give them and use it the better to manipulate. Top down, cognitive empathy – yes – to understand whether they are a threat and are going to escalate; but therapeutic empathy – “i get you, bro” – is often counter productive. What is productive? Set limits. Set firm boundaries – and enforce them.
Turns out that only some 15% of the victims in one study had injuries visible enough to photograph for the police report (p. 66). Most strangulation injuries are internal – hence, the title. Good news/bad news: The Fatality Review Board is an idea that is getting attention with law enforcement and the local states attorney function. More progress and action is needed in this area.
(1) People stop saying, “I just don’t get empathy” and commit to the practice of empathy. Empathy is a practice and, like all practices, it can be improved by training. Remove the obstacles to empathy such as cynicism and bullying—and empathy comes forth. Remove the resistances to empathy and empathy naturally and spontaneously expands. Most people are naturally empathic.
The one-minute empathy training is trending: Eliminate the obstacles to empathy and a space of acceptance and toleration spontaneously emerges.
Most people do not sufficiently appreciate this: people are born with a deep and natural capacity for empathy, but they are also born needing to learn manners, respect for boundaries, and toilet training. Put the mess in the designated place or the community suffers from diseases. People also need to learn how to read and do arithmetic and communicate in writing. But there is a genuine sense in which learning to conform and follow all the rules does not expand our empathy or our community. It does not help the cause of expanded empathy that rule-making and the drumbeat of compliance are growing by leaps and bounds.
The work at hand? Remove the blocks to empathy such as dignity violations, devaluing language, gossip, shame, guilt, egocentrism, over-identification, lack of integrity, inauthenticity, hypocrisy, making excuses, finger pointing, jealousy, envy, put downs, being righteous, stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, cynicism, censorship, denial, manipulation, competing to be the biggest victim, insults, injuries to self-esteem, and narcissistic merger—and empathy spontaneously expands, develops, and blossoms. Now that is going to require some work!
Teaching empathy consists in overcoming the obstacles to empathy that people have acquired. When the barriers are overcome, then empathy spontaneously develops, grows, comes forth, and expands. There is no catch, no “gotcha.” That is the one-minute empathy training, pure-and-simple.
References and Notes
“The One-Minute Empathy Training”
May I introduce myself? Here is a short introduction to who i am and my commitment to empathy, including a one-minute empathy training. Total run time: about five minutes. Further data: See also
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Review: Empathy and Mental Health by Arthur J. Clark
Empathy and Mental Health: An Integral Model for Developing Therapeutic Skills in Counseling and Psychotherapy. London: Routledge 2022 Electronic Version
As a young man, Arthur J. Clark heard Carl Rogers speak and was inspired to devote his life’s work to applying empathy in education, counseling, and talk therapy. This book is the distillation of years of experience and learning, and we, the readers, are enriched and even enlightened in this original synthesis of existing ideas on empathy. It is fully buzz word compliant, diligently calls out the limitations and risks of empathy, and guides the readers in expanding their empathy to make a difference in overcoming suffering and mental illness. It takes a lot of empathy to produce a book on empathy, and empathy is evident in abundance in Clark’s work.
As noted, Clark’s academic background is in education, as was Carl Rogers’, but the reader soon discovers Clarks’ work with empathy to be generously informed by Freud, Ferenczi, and Adlerian psychoanalysis. Thus Clark quotes [Alfred] Adler (1927): “Empathy occurs in the moment one individual speaks with another. It is impossible to understand another individual if it is impossible at the same time to identify oneself with him” (Clark: 20). At this same time this reviewer was enlivened by the application of distinctions to be found in the Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut and the latter’s colleagues Michael Basch and Arnold Goldberg. This brilliant traversal of the practice and conceptual landscape of empathy inspired Clark’s life work, and is on display here.
The book is filled with short segments of transcripts of encounters between counselor/therapist and client. To the point that empathy is much broader than reflecting feeling and meanings, examples are provided of empathic encouragement, empathic being in the here and now (immediacy), empathic silence, empathic self-disclosure, empathic confrontation, empathic reframing, empathic cognitive restricting, empathic interpretation. Clark’s work with empathic reframing, cognitive restructuring, and interpretation are particularly useful (Clark: 105 – 106).
“Empathy” is not so much a substantive as a modifier – a manner of being that applies across a diversity of ways of relating to the other individual. (It is a further question, not addressed by Clark, as to the status of these vignettes. Are they disguised, permissioned, ideal types, some combination thereof? Just curious. In any case, they work well and remind me of M. F. Basch’s vignettes in the latter’s Doing Psychotherapy.)
Clark makes reference to the celebrated video (e.g., widely available on Youtube) of Carl Rogers, interviewing the real-world patient “Gloria” about her relationship with her nine-year-old daughter “Pammy.” Rogers’ empathic listening skillfully turns the focus from Gloria’s presenting dilemma of how much information about sex to share with her inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Pammy, into a willingness on the part of Gloria’s to call out her own blind spots and conflicts over sex. Rogers’ empathic responsiveness shows the way for Gloria to recapture her own integrity around adult sexuality so that she can provide Pammy with the appropriate sex education the child needs, regardless of the details that may be relevant only to the adults. And Rogers does this in about twenty minutes, not months of therapy.
At this point, it is useful to give Rogers’ definition of empathy (p. 11): “To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ condition.” Rogers was definite about excluding the perspectives of the practitioner in conceptualizing empathy in his person-centered approach to therapy. In this regard, he stated, “For the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another’s world without prejudice.”
Clark’s integration of the diversity of approaches to empathy in history, theory, and practice distinguishes subjective, object and interpersonal empathy: “Subjective empathy encompasses a practitioner’s internal capacities of identification, imagination, intuition, embodiment that resonate through treatment interactions with a client and empathically reflect the individual’s experiencing. Objective empathy pertains to the deliberate use of a therapist’s conceptual knowledge and data-informed reasoning in the service of empathically understanding a client in a relational climate. Interpersonal empathy relates to comprehending and conveying an awareness of a client’s phenomenological experiencing and pursuing constructive and purposeful change through the application of a range of interventions” (Clark: xiv).
Clark started out as a school counselor and he gives the example of the student who comes in and says “I hate school!” The reflection is proposed to be something like “You are feeling angry about school.” This demonstrates just how important the tone in which a statement is made can be. This could indeed be an angry statement, which takes “hate” is a literal way. However, it could also be an expression of contempt, disgust, cynicism, resignation, sadness, or even fear (say, since the student is being bullied). The empathy is precisely to acknowledge that the listener is far from certain that he does knows what is going on with the student and to ask for more data. “Sounds like you are struggling with school – can you say more about that?”
Not afraid of controversy or tough topics, Clark’s contribution is thick with quotations from the founding father of psychoanalysis – Adler and Freud and the literature Freud has been reading such as Theodor Lipps, to whom we owe the popularization in Freud’s time of the term “empathy [Einfühlung]. The subsequent generation of ego psychoanalysts is also well represented Ralph Greenson, T. Reik, Jacob Arlow (and Beres).
Clark credits and recruits Ralph Greenson’s distinction of the therapist’s inner working model of the patient and uses it to enrich Rogers’ contribution to empathic understanding. “As empathic understandings evolve through therapeutic exchanges and assessment interactions, a model of an individual emerges that becomes increasingly refined and expansive. In turn, by ways of empathically knowing a client, the framework facilitates sound treatment interventions through the engagement of interpersonal empathy” (Clark: 88). Note that Clark aligns with the view that the countertransference is distorting/pathological as opposed to the total response of the therapist. There are many tips and techniques guiding the therapist diligently to monitor and control the countertransference neurosis.
Since this is not a softball review, I note some issues for productive debate. For example, if Clark had allowed that countertransference included the therapist’s entire reaction to the client, including personal reactions which are not necessarily conflicted or neurotic (on the part of the therapist), then Clark would have been constrained to spend more ink on his own individual responses, empathic and otherwise. Such disclosure, which Clark otherwise separately validates as appropriate in context (and if not this context, then which?), would have enriched a text which otherwise reads like a textbook (and perhaps that was the editorial and marketing guidance).
Also useful is the therapist’s being sensitive to cultural differences and dynamics. In a brief transcript of an interaction between a privileged white school counselor and an African American 8th grader attending the college prep private school (Clark: 42), we are supposed to see objective cross-cultural empathy based on the counselor’s reading of some articles (not specified) on cultural differences.
By all means, read up on cultural differences. However, I just see a rigorous and critical empathy (my term, not Clark’s), plain and simple. The counselor “gets it.” The student is afraid of being seriously injured or even killed by the criminal element in his neighborhood as he waits for the school bus. Is this breakdown of policing in the inner city really in the cultural article? The counselor also “gets it” that the student’s feelings are hurt by being laughed at by his more privileged classmates because his mom is a house cleaner rather than an executive or doctor or lawyer. It is the counselor’s empathic response based on her empathic understanding of the student’s specific fear and hurt feelings that enables the student to deescalate from his problematic acting out. Even though, like most 8th graders, the student would be the last to admit he has been emotionally “touched,” he was. Thus, Clark’s empathy shines through in spite of his style-deadening need to accommodate behavioral protocols, evidence-based everything, and the plodding style of delivery consistent with training in schools of professional social work and psychology.
“Objective empathy” may seem like “jumbo shrimp,” an oxymoron. Nor is it clear how dream work, with which Clark productively engages, falls into the “objective” rubric. Yet it is a highly positive feature that Clark emphasizes and explores in detail the value of dream work.
Let one’s empathy be informed by the context: “Consider, for instance, what are the daily struggles like for a client who meets the diagnostic criteria for a bipolar disorder or attention deficit [. . . .] When giving consideration to such challenges through a framework of empathic understanding, a practitioner calls upon reputable data and a spectrum of work with individuals from diverse backgrounds in order to generate a more inclusive and accurate way of knowing a client” (Clark: 35).
And yet this precisely misses the individual who is superficially described according to labels, but has his own experience of bipolar or attention deficit. Empathy is precisely the anti-essentialist dimension, the dimension that is so pervasive in psychiatry and schools of professional psychology that replace struggling humanity with “You meet criteria for – [insert label].”
While Kohut is properly quoted by Clark as one of the innovators in empathy and Kohut’s concise definition glossing empathy as “vicarious introspection” is acknowledged, Kohut’s other definition of empathy as a method of data gathering about the other individual is overlooked. However, it aligns nicely with Clark’s description of “objective empathy.” Maybe my close reading missed something but why not just say “taking the other person’s perspective” is “objective empathy” as opposed to vicarious introspection (“subjective empathy”)?
The subtitle promises “An integrative model for developing therapeutic skills [. . . ]” Clark substantiates the need for work in critiquing all those training program that model the skill of repeating back to the client words similar to those the client expressed. “In a meta-analysis of direct empathy training, Lam et al. (2011) found that the majority of 29 studies did not clearly conceptualize or define empathy, some did not describe training delivery methods, and almost all of the initiatives failed to present evidence demonstrating individuals’ propensity to behave more empathically after training” (Clark: 140). Clark’s discussion of reframing, cognitive restructuring, and empathic interpretation are relevant and useful in overcoming what amount to a scandal in psychotherapy training.
What Clark is trying to say is this: You think you are being empathic. Think again. A rigorous and critical empathy (my phrase, not Clark’s) is skeptical about its own empathy. That does not mean being dismissive either of one’s own empathy or the struggle of the other person. It means being rigorous and critical. Empathy is made to shine in the refiner’s fire of self-criticism and a radical inquiry into one’s own blind spots.
Clark does not escape unscathed from the behavioral and observation protocol dead end. The reader will seek in vain for self-criticism or inquiry into Clark’s own blind spots – instead the reader is awash in the extensive behavioral, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) attempts, albeit empathically deployed, to capture therapeutic encounters in a behaviorally observable or reportable protocol. Nor I am saying there is anything wrong with that as such. Yet might not the behavioral and observation protocol swamp precisely be the blind spot where the self-deception lives against which Rogers frequently denounces? To gather the honey of self-knowledge and empathic understanding one must risk the stings of distortion and disguise.
Clark’s would be a different work entirely if he explored the college of hard knocks in which he forged the empathic integration. He is trying to make what is largely an artistic practice into a rule-governed scientific algorithm. It is worth a try and the reader must judge the extent to which Clark succeeds. Spending a lifetime preparing articles for peer-reviewed publications in education, psychology, etc., does not generally bring life and vitality to one’s practice, manner of engagement, or writing style. However, Clark’s richness of material, wealth of distinctions related to empathy, and organizing virtually every aspect of empathic research and published references goes a long way towards compensating for Clark’s work not necessarily being a “page turner.” Clark’s writing reminds the reader more of the Diagnostic and Statical Manual (DSM) – Ouch! – more than (for example) of D. W. Winnicot, Christopher Bollas, Arnold Goldberg, Freud, who was an expert stylist (granted much is lost in translation), or even Carl Rogers himself.
Thus, Clark’s integrated approach calls for “a diagnosis [as from the DSM] that represents the lived experience of the individual.” Agree. Clark gives an example where the therapist is interviewing Omar who has low energy, lethargy, lack of motivation, and hopelessness about the future. The diagnosis encapsulates and integrates a lot of Omar’s experience, and, though Clark does not say so, Omar may even be relieved to hear/learn that he (Omar) is not to blame for his disordered emotions (“major depression”); and Omar should stop making a bad situation worse by negative self-talk, verbally “beating himself up” in his own mind. The treatment consists in getting Omar to do precisely what the depressed person is least inclined to do – take action in spite of being unmotivated. If one is waiting to be motivated, absent a miracle, it is going to be a long wait. Maybe the empathic response is precisely saying this to the client, acknowledging how hard it is (and may continue to be for a while) to get into action on one’s own behalf.
This is all well and good. However, narrowly or expansively empathy is defined it is the anti-DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual). The DSM has many uses, especially in aligning terminology such that the community is talking about the same set of criteria when it uses the word “generalized anxiety disorder.” It also has uses in requesting insurance reimbursements. In short, there is nothing wrong with the DSM-5 (2013) or any version – but there is something missing – empathy. In the case of empathy, the recommendation is to relate to the struggling human being who presents himself in therapy, not to a diagnostic label.
Thus, Clark makes the case in his own terms: “From a humanistic perspective with central tenets focusing on respect for the individuality and uniqueness of a person, employing the DSM to categorize clients through a labeling procedure is thought to impede the growth of authentic relationships and empathic understandings of a deeper nature. In this regard, in a human encounter, perceiving a client through categorical frames of reference and symptomatic functioning hinders an attunement with the individual’s lived experiences and personal meanings. Moreover, applying a label to a client possibly influences a practitioner to shape preconceptions that are objectifying and forecloses a mutual and open-minded exploration of the contextual existence of the individual” (Clark: 27).
Though Clark does not say so, almost every major mental illness involves a breakdown of empathy. The patient experience isolation. “No one ‘gets’ me.” “No one understands what I am going through.” This is the case with most mood disorders, thought disorders, as well as those disorders typically described as “disorders of empathy” such as some versions of autism spectrum and anti-social personality disorders.
One matter of editing detail may be noted, a consistent misspelling of the name of celebrated primate researcher, philosopher, and empathy scholar Frans de Waal. There are no “Walls” in de Waal’s name – or in his empathy! We will charge this wordo to the editors who otherwise perform an admirable job.
Returning to a positive register, one of the most important takeaways from engaging with Clark’s work is that short therapy in which empathy is the driving force is powerful and effective. Clark does not specify the elapsed treatment in most cases, but I did not find one that was explicitly called out as being longer than fourteen weeks.
The emphasis is on the use of empathy in relatively brief psychotherapy – which is a powerful and positive approach that pushes back against the assertion that one needs cognitive behavioral therapy for relatively time-constrained encounters. Empathy produces quick results when skillfully applied. It is true that one of the great empathy innovators, Heinz Kohut, had some famous long and multi-year psychoanalyses; but these individuals were significantly more disturbed than Clark’s example of Anna, whose presenting behaviors were largely social awkwardness.
A strong point of Clark’s work is his debunking of the caricature of Rogers definition of empathy (and indeed of empathy itself) as merely reflecting (i.e., repeating) back to the speaker the words that the speaker has said to the listener. There is nothing wrong as such with reflecting what the other person has said, especially if the statement is relevant or well expressed. However, the mere words are pointers to the other person’s experience and are not reducible to the mere words. This is not a mere behavioral skill of reflecting back language, but a “being with” the other in the complexity and depth of the other’s experience as refined in the therapist’s own experience, and that is something one can best learn in years of one’s own dynamic therapy. Additional processing of the other person’s experience is encapsulated by and captured in the other person’s words, but not reducible to the words. The aspects of empathic responsiveness, embodiment, acknowledgement, recognition, encouragement, immediacy, possibility, clarification, and validation of the other’s experience form and inform the empathic response and the reply to the other.
A rumor of empathy is no rumor in the case of Clark’s work – empathy lives in his contribution to integrating the diverse and varied aspects of empathy.
Edwin Rutsch interviews the author Arthur J. Clark:
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Left stranded when the music stops: What to do about the shortage of talk therapists actually available
An article in the Washington Post by Lenny Bernstein: “This is why it is so hard to find mental health counseling right now” (March 6, 2022) struck a chord with many readers.[1]
The article begins by describing an individual in the Los Angeles area who said she was willing to pay hundreds of dollars per session and called some twenty-five therapists in the area but was unable to find an opening. The person willingly shared her name in the article. Be careful not to blame the survivor or victim – the report is credible – and she maintained a spreadsheet!
One of the main points of the article is that after several years of pandemic stress prospective clients and patients are at the end of their emotional rope and providers (therapists) are over-scheduled and burned out too. No availability.
The problem is systemic. There seems to be no bottom in sight as regards the opportunistic behavior of insurance companies, the lack of behavioral health resources, and the suffering of potential patients. The WP article goes on to document other potential patients with significantly less resources who cannot even get on a wait list. The article documents third party insurance payers whose “in network” providers are unwilling to see prospective patients due to thin
reimbursements from the payer – once again, the individual is unable to get on a wait list or get help urgently needed; supply side shortages are over the top in the programs that train psychiatrists, a specialty in medicine. Psychiatrists, when available, are most often interested in lucrative fifteen-minute medication management sessions, but unless they are “old school” and were psychoanalytically trained in the “way back,” they are rarely available for conversations. This all adds up to a crisis in the availability of behavioral health services.
This leads to my punch line. Often time depression, anxiety and emotional upset are accompanied by negative self-talk, shaky or low self-esteem. One reaches out and asks for help but instead has an experience of powerlessness that is hard to distinguish from the original emotional disequilibrium. The conversation spins in a tight circle – “maybe I deserve it – no I don’t – this sucks – I suck – help!” The person resigns himself to alife of gentile poverty, thinking she or he is not worthy of financial well-being. The prospective patient is left aggrieved. This grievance is accurate and real enough in context, but it is hard to identify what or who can make a difference. Nevertheless, there is no power in being aggrieved. One still has to do the thing the person in distress or with shaky self-esteem is least inclined to do – invest in oneself because one is worth it!
I have spoken with numerous potential and actual clients who pay a lot of money for health insurance. However, when they want to use the insurance for behavioral health services, they find the insurance is not workable. Not usable. The service level agreement is hard to understand, and having a deductible of a couple of thousand dollars is hard to distinguish from having no insurance at all. If the client goes “in network,” the therapists are unresponsive or inexperienced. If the client goes out of network, the therapists are often more experienced and able to help, but onerous deductibles and copays rear their heads. Why don’t the experienced therapists go in network? There are many reasons but one of them is that the insurer often insists the therapist accept thirty cents on the dollar in compensation, and some therapists find it hard to make ends meet that way. In short, as a potential patient, you think you have insurance, but when it comes to behavioral health, you really don’t.
My main point is to provide guidance as to some things you can do to get the help you need with emotional or behavioral upset and do so in a timely way. Turns out one has to give an informal tutorial on using insurance as well as on emotional well-being. I hasten to add that “all the usual disclaimers apply.” This is not legal advice, medical advice, insurance advice, cooking advice or any kind of advice. This is a good faith, best efforts to share some brain storming and personal tips and techniques earned in the “college of hard knocks” in dealing with these issues. Your mileage may vary.
Nothing I say in this article should be taken as minimizing or dismissing the gravity of your suffering or the complexity of this matter. If you are looking for a therapist or counselor, it is because you need a therapist or counselor, not a breach of contract action against an insurance company. You want a therapist not a legal case or participation in a class action law suit, even if the insurance contract has plenty of “loop holes.” For the moment, the latter is a rhetorical point only.
When a person is anxious or depressed or struggling with addiction or other emotional upset, being an informed assertive consumer of behavioral health services is precisely the thing the person is least able to do. “I need help now! Shut up and talk to me!”
Notwithstanding my commitment to expanding a rigorous and critical empathy, here’s the tough love. Without minimizing your struggle and suffering, the thing you least want to do is what you are going to have to try to do. If one is emotionally upset, the least thing you want to do is be an assertive consumer of services designed to get you back your power in the face of emotional upset or whatever upsetting issues you are facing.
The recommendation is to speak to truth to power and assertively demand an “in network” provider from the insurance company or invest in yourself and pay the private fee for an experienced therapist whom you find authentically empathic, then you already be well on the way to getting your power back in the face of whatever issues you are facing.
If your issue is that you really don’t have enough money (and who does?), then you may need to get the job and career coaching that will enable you to network your way forward. An inexpensive place to start is The Two Hour Job Search by Steve Dalton. Highly recommended. Note the paradox here – the very thing you do not want to do keeps coming up. You definitely need someone to talk to. Once again, the very things with which you need help are what re stopping you from getting help
The bureaucratic indifference of insurance companies is built into the system. The idea of an insurance is a company committed to making money by spreading risk between predictable outcomes and a certain number of “adverse” [“bad risk”] events. It is not entirely fair (or even accurate) but by becoming depressed or anxious (and so on), you are already an adverse event or bad risk waiting to happen. You may expect to be treated as such by most insurance companies.
In a health insurance context, the traditional model for the use of services is a broken arm or an appendicitis (these are just two examples among many). You definitely want to have major medical insurance against such an unfortunate turn of events. Consider the possibility: Buy major medical only – and invest the difference saved in your therapy and therapist of choice.
But note these adverse medical events are relatively self-contained events – page the surgeon, perform the operation, take a week to recover or walk around in a sling for awhile. The insurance company pays the providers (doctors and hospitals) ten grand to thirty grand. That’s it. With lower back pain, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, autoimmune disorders, it is a different story. These are notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat. Yet, modern medicine has effective imaging and treatment resources that often successfully provide significant relief if not always complete cures for the patient’s distress in these more complex cases.
Consider similar cases in behavioral health. Start by talking to your family doctor. Okay, that is advice – talk to your family doctor for starters. Front line family doctors have the authority – and most have the basic training – needed to prescribe modern antidepressants (so called SSRIs), which also are often effective against anxiety, to treat simple forms of depression and anxiety due to life stresses such as an ongoing pandemic, job loss, relationship setbacks.
Even though I am one of the professionals who has consistently advocated “Plato not Prozac,” I acknowledge the value of such psychopharmacological interventions from a medical doctor to get a person through a rough patch until the person can engage in a conversation for possibility and get at the underlying cause of the emotional disequilibrium. Note this implies the person wants to look for or at the underlying dynamics. This leads us to the uncomfortable suggestion that it is going to take something on the part of the client to engage and overcome the problem, issue, upset, which is stopping the client from moving forward in her or his life.
There is a large gray area in life in which people struggle with relationship issues, finances, career, education, pervasive feelings of emptiness, chronic emotional upset, self-defeating behavior in the use of substances such as alcohol and cannabis (this list is not complete).
A medical doctor or other astute professional may even provide a medical diagnosis when the interaction of the person’s personality with the person’s life falls into patterns of struggle, upset, and failure. Insurance companies require a medical diagnosis. One thinks of such codable disorders as adjustment disorder or personality disorders (PD) such as narcissistic, histrionic, schizoid, antisocial, or borderline PD. These are labels which can be misleading and even dangerous to apply without talking to the person and getting to know them over a period of time. It’s not like the Psychology Today headline – top three ways to know if you are dating a narcissist. I am calling “BS” on that approach.
Nevertheless, if after a thorough process of inquiry, some such label is appropriate (however useless the label may otherwise be except for insurance purposes), then the cost will be right up there with “fixing” an appendicitis – only you won’t be able to do it in a single day – and it won’t be that kind of “fix”. An extended effort and of hard to predict duration must be anticipated, lasting from months even to years. This is not good news, but there are options.
My commitment is to expanding a rigorous and critical empathy in the individual and the community. I consider that I am an empathy consultant, though at times that is hard to distinguish from a therapeutic process and inquiry into the possibilities of health and behavioral well-being. Therefore, and out of this commitment, I have a sliding scale fee structure for my consulting and related empathy services. People call me up and say “I make a lot of money, and want to pay you more.” Of course, that is a joke. I regularly hear from prospective clients whose first consideration is financial. They do not have enough money. I take this assertion seriously, and I discuss finances with them. Between school debt and the economic disruptions of three years of pandemic, people are hurting in many ways including financially. One must be careful NEVER to blame the victim or survivor.
The best way for such financially strapped individuals to go froward is to find an “in network” provider. Key term: in network. But we just read the Washington Post article that furnishes credible evidence such networks are tapped out, in breakdown, not working. Those that are working well enough often deal with the gray area of emotional upset and life challenges by moving the behavioral health component to a separate corporate subsidy at a separate location to deal with all aspects of behavioral health. (See above on “bad risk.”) When I had such an issue years ago, I had to search high and low to get the phone number, web site, or US postal address. You can’t make this stuff up. This is because ultimately, the issues that come up are nothing like an appendicitis or even hard to diagnose migraines. Moving the paying entity to a corporate subsidy is also a way that the insurance company can impose a high deductible and/or copay by carving out that section of the business and claims processing. There are other reasons, too, but basically, they are financial.
You may be starting to appreciate that many health insurance contracts are not really designed to provide behavioral health services (e.g., therapy) the way they are designed to address a broken leg or appendicitis. There is a way forward, but it is more complex (and expensive in terms of actual dollar, though not necessarily time and effort). I will address this starting in the paragraph after next, because, sometimes in the case of behavioral health, people who have insurance do not really have useable, workable behavioral health insurance. For all intents and purposes, they think they have insurance, but, in this specific regard, they have a piece of paper and a phone number that is hard to find. I hasten to add I am not recommending going without major medical health insurance, inadequate though it may be in certain respects.
This brings us to those individuals who decide to go without insurance. What about them? Such individuals choose to take the risk. They are living dangerously because if they do break an arm or incur an appendicitis, then they are going to have another $30K in medical debt [this number is approximate and probably low], along with a mountain of school debt, credit card debt, and bad judgment debt (this list is not complete). These good people need insurance, not so much to get therapy – because, as the accumulating evidence indicates, it really doesn’t work that way – as to be insured against a major medical accident. Many people are not clear on this distinction, but I would urge them to consider the possibility.
I spoke with this one prospective client who began with a long and authentically moving narrative that she did not have enough money and could not afford therapy. This is common and not particularly confidential or sensitive. As part of a no fee first interview to establish readiness for therapy, I acknowledged her courage in strength in reaching out to someone she did not really know to get help with her problems. I acknowledged that one of her problems was she did not have enough money. A bold statement of the obvious. I asked if there was anything else she wanted to work on. It turns out that she was a survivor of a number of difficult situations and would benefit from both empathy consulting, and talk therapy – and I might add job coaching. Here’s the thing – when a person is hurting emotionally, they do not want to look for another job – or a better job that pays more money. But one just might have to do that, at least over the short term, with someone who can provide that kind of guidance to those who are willing. I encouraged her to be assertive with her insurance company and I heard she found someone in network at a low rate.
And if you are a therapist who believes such job coaching compromises the purity or neutrality of the therapy, I would agree. However, never say never. In the aftermath of World War I, when the victorious allies maintained a starvation blockage on Germany and Austria even into 1919, Freud (that would be Sigmund) was reportedly seeing a client in exchange for a substantial bag of potatoes. I have no facts – none – but I find it hard to believe they were discussing matters pertinent to individual and collective survival. So far no one has offered me a bag of potatoes (I am holding out for a quantity of olive oil and basil to make pesto), but see the above cited article from the Washington Post.
We circle back to where we started. If the individual named in the Washington Post article has not yet found a therapist, then I believe there are many in the Chicago area would welcome the opportunity to make a difference for her. She has a budget for therapy, she says. If you have a budget, the work goes forward. It can be confronting and difficult to contemplate, but if you were buying a car, you would look at your budget. If you were planning a vacation, you would think about your vacation budget. If you were thinking of going back to school, you would look at your education budget. You get the idea. What is your budget for empathy consulting, counseling, talk therapy, cognitive retraining, life coaching, or medication management services (this are all distinct interventions, appropriate in different circumstances)? Zero may not be the right number. Just saying. Of course, if the client is in LA and the empathy consultant is in Chicago, it would be a conversation over Zoom. That starts a new thread so I may usefully clarify that I prefer to meet with people in person – the empathy is expanded in person – but the genie is out of the bottle and online can be good enough in some circumstance. (See my peer reviewed article “The Genie is Out of the Bottle”: https://bit.ly/37vxJ0L.)
The insurance system is broken as regards behavioral health (as evidenced by the WP article). There is a vast gray area of people with modest emotional disregulation who genuinely need help. These are not only the “worried well,” but people whose understandable lack of assertiveness in navigating an indifferent (and it must be said unempathic) bureaucracy leaves them high and dry with their moderate but worsening emotional, spiritual, and behavioral upsets. These people deserve help, and are entitled to it even under the specific terms of their insurance contracts. Indeed they are entitled to help even if they do not have insurance, though the revenue model is simpler in that case, though not less costly.
The insurance company has been unable to make money off of this gray area – therefore, the insurance company does what it does best – it turns to making money off of you. But you need health insurance against a major medical event or accident. You want a therapist, not a breach of contract case in small claims court (where the small claim often goes up to $100k). Therefore, it does little good to document having called ten or twenty-five in network providers with no result. Or does it? You – or a class action attorney firm – have a case for breach of contract. Go out of network and forward the invoices to the payer by mail with a tracking number, requesting that the full therapy fees be treated “in network” for purposes of reimbursement, and, therefore, no or low deductible and copay. Of course, one would have to have funds for that upfront, and lack of money is where this circle started. Back to expanding one’s job search skills?
This is crazy – and crazy making behavior – though only as a function of a system that is crazy. You see the problem. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the insurance payer, when confronted with an actual summons to small claims court, would then find you a therapist – of course, the therapist might be relatively inexperienced or someone who (how shall I put it delicately?) is less motivated than one might hope. Thwarted again!
As I wrap up this post, it occurs to that while it would be crazy for an individual to seek legal redress – it might even be “acting out,” there might be a basis for an enterprising law firm to establish a system wide “class action” for breach of contract. This will not solve your problem of getting help in the next two weeks, but it might be a necessary step to benefit the community. You know the insurance company has the money!
As noted above, your grievance in being over sold unworkable behavioral health insurance may be [is] accurate and real. Nevertheless, I am sticking to my story: the guidance: there is no power in being aggrieved. You still have to do the thing the person in upset or with shaky self-esteem is least inclined to do – dig down, including into your pockets, and find self-confidence – or enough self-confidence for the moment – and invest in yourself because you are worth it!
The one minute empathy training – runtime is actually five minutes, but a personal introduction is included: https://youtu.be/747OiV-GTx4
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/06/therapist-covid-burnout/
Empathy in Time of War – Red Team, Red Team!
Empathy in time of war means two words – Red Team.
In time of war or threat of war, the power of empathy consists in putting yourself in the shoes of the enemy, thinking like the enemy, and thereby anticipating and thwarting the enemy’s moves.
“Red Team” also happens to be the title of an eye opening, engaging book by Micah Zenko, Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy (New York: Basic Books, 2015: 298 pp.). Though it has been around for seven years, it is very timely – and, in many ways, a page turner. Time to catch up on our reading.
“Red Team” is a drill first developed by the US military to fight simulated war game battles in the Persian Gulf or western Europe during the Cold War. In the simulation, Blue Team is the US – “the good guys.”. Red Team is the other side. Zenko tells how the head of the Red Team really was named “Paul Van Riper.” He was.
Zenko narrates Van Riper’s assertiveness in questioning assumptions and how he brought forth the power of the Red Team in conducting asymmetrical battle, refusing to fight on the enemy’s terms, and acting unpredictably. Van Riper also spoke truth to power in calling out the improprieties of going outside the chain of command to “order” the Red Team not to shoot down the Blue Team aircraft. When the simulation was replayed with more equitable rules in place, the results were eye opening. Red Team was winning – decisively. The “authorities” decided to stop the simulation because the Red Team’s successes were getting to be embarrassing to the “good guys.”
Zenko provides engaging background on Red Team training and thinking at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies (UFMCS). Instructors and participants are taught how to distinguish the traps of social conformity and the “mind guards” and “blockers” who enforce it. The idea is to find and shed a spotlight on one’s blind spots beforeencountering the enemy. Zenko writes:
Students are taught the basics of cultural empathy and semiotics (i.e., the philosophical study of signs and symbols), without which a red teamer cannot identify and understand the values and interest experienced by those within a targeted institution [in the simulation] [. . . .] The four pillars that UFMCS curricula are based upon are critical thinking, groupthink mitigation, cultural empathy and self-awareness (pp. 38. 39).
Each of these pillars maps to a dimension of empathy or a breakdown in empathy (my view, not Zenko’s). Critical thinking counters the breakdown in empathy described as emotional contagion. Groupthink is the above cited conformity that blocks empathic understanding of what is possible for the other group (“side”). Self-awareness is not specific to empathy and is always relevant to understanding others, enabling an empathic response based on the context, not preconceptions. Cultural empathy is precisely taking a walk in the other’s shoes with the cultural appreciation of differences.
Such top-down cognitive empathy is not limited to the military, but is highly relevant to business, sports, and any situation in which information asymmetries exist in a context of zero sum game competition. Business is an obvious application. Most executives think of themselves as intrinsically better than their rivals. Such commitment to being right is all-too-human and, in certain ways, may even contribute to success – for a while. Thus, we generally find it extremely difficult to understand or empathize with rivals (p. 168). Zenko writes some things that are not flattering to executives;
Virtually all of the research that has been conducted on business decision-making finds that executives are distinctly uncreative, deeply myopic, and overconfident both in themselves personally, and also in their company’s ability to beat its competitors (p 235).
While it is easier said than done, the recommendation to perform red teaming promotes the leader as a fearless skeptic with finesse and a willingness to hear bad news and act on it. As a leader, if you don’t mind problems but really hate surprises, then red teaming is the way forward. Another way of saying that is to have your surprises simulated in a Red Team exercise rather than on the battle field, in the market place, or while trying to land the airplane.
Let us take a step back because, with a title such “Empathy in Time of War,” the reader may expect calls “to bind up the […] wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.” And, to be sure, one can do worse than quote Lincoln’s second inaugural address delivered in 1865 at the end of the American Civil War. Still, this was delivered at the end of the war. The 600,000 were already deceased, and it would soon be 600,001 when Lincoln himself was assassinated.
Empathy has many dimensions, four to be exact, in both times of war and peace. Different dimensions of empathy come to the foreground in different situations. This discussion looks at all dimensions of empathy, but the one most relevant is that of putting oneself in the other’s shoes. This is the folk definition of empathy – perspective taking – with the other’s motives and context, insofar as one has access to them. Take a walk in the other’s shoes – in this case, the shoes of one who is out to do you no good – the enemy. (An enemy is defined as an individual or institution that is committed to behaving in such a way as to do, enact, or cause physical, emotional, moral, developmental, or spiritual harm to another person or group.)
Speaking personally, I cannot believe that anyone would try to force a choice between empathy and compassion. The world needs more of each. Why would that celebrity psycholinguist from Yale try to force a choice? (And if you do not know his name, you will not read it here.) Still, if as a thought experiment, one had to choose, go with empathy.
Let us consider a use case. The NY Times reports that Russia has a list of prominent Ukrainian intellectuals, journalists, business persons, politicians, and government officials to be killed or detained as Russian forces sweep across the country.[1] The Red Team empath who takes a walk in the opponent’s shoes knows what he is dealing with – mafia style totalitarianism. What do you do when assassination is central to your opponent’s business model? Don’t expect any mercy. Man the barricades! The compassionate person may still use the rational part of cognitive ability (and perspective shifting) to arrive at the same conclusion, but the compassionate Red Team decision maker doesn’t really know what to say, at least not from the perspective of compassion. The Russians love their children too (to quote Sting)? It is only a small segment of the Russian regime that proposes to kill everyone in sight? Even psychopaths have a soft spot for children and pets (except that they do not)? This is not a zero-sum game? Actually it is a zero sum contest if the Russian team is attempting to “de capitate” the Ukrainian government.
It is quite possible that compassion, rational or otherwise, is just not a good fit for certain types of conflicts unless one can rework the situation so it is not a zero-sum game. Once the first stone flies or the first bomb goes off, both compassion and empathy are a lot less useful. Yet never underestimate the power and pertinence of empathy. That is the point of the Red Team initiative – empathy helps one survive in a hostile environment into which one is thrown due to circumstance and live to fight another day.
It really does seem that Putin and his generals did not Red Team the invasion of the Ukraine, now in its third day (2/25/22) thing very well, which, of course, does not mean that the Russian forces cannot still flatten Kyiv with artillery barrages.
Let us consider another use case. Russia threatens to invade the Ukraine – this is prior to Russia’s actual invasion. The Ukrainian team conducts a war game playing both sides. Since the Ukrainians are outnumbered, out gunned, have limited air power, and limited air defense, they are not expected to win. This is of course the reverse of the war games conducted by the US Military where the “blue team” is the USA, and the other side is generally outgunned, which of course why it was so surprising when Paul Van Riper and his red team scored a knock out. In the war game, the Ukrainian Blue Team allows the Russians to enter the country, since they cannot stop them. Then the Ukrainians blow up the bridges behind the Russian Red Team. The explosives need to have been set in advance (which seems not to have occurred in real life).
The Russians resupply struggles and some of their units run out of gasoline. These are set upon by small units equipped with antitank weapons that were hiding out in decommissioned ICBM siloes. Note that Ukraine was briefly the world’s third largest nuclear power before surrendering their nuclear weapons in 1996 in exchange for security assurances from Russia and The West. (Big mistake. But that is another story.) However, the Ukrainians still have hardened infrastructure, including bunkers, and siloes, albeit empty of missiles. They use this infrastructure to allow the Russians to drive buy, then pop up from the rear and inflict damage. The Ukrainians are defending their homeland, their families, and their lives. Red teaming takes such factors into consideration. Of course, the Russians have elite special forces, but the Russians are also relying on conscripted twenty somethings who have been told that they are going for training but are actually being sent off to war. You can’t make this stuff up. Under this scenario, the Russians expected to accept the Ukrainians surrender in three days. The Russians have enough fuel and resupply for nine days. If the Ukrainians can hold out for ten days, they win.
Update: This just in (12:30 PM CDT 2-27-2022). Unconfirmed reports state that some teenage Russian conscripts (soldiers) are surrendering in tears. Ukrainian authorities are allowing them to borrow cell phones to call their mothers, who are reportedly already lobbying Putin to stop the madness. The power of mothers should not be underestimated! Stand by for update. Meanwhile,,,
Empathic interpretation is a redescription of cognitive, top-down empathy. Engaging the empathic process as cognitive empathy is especially usefully and powerful in the Red Team situation of thinking like the enemy. But do not stop there. Even if one does not have enemies, if one gets stuck and does not have a good feel affectively as to what is going on with the other person, say one’s best friend, then mobilizing an intellectual operation to shift perspective cognitively can free up one’s possibilities for relating and interacting. If I find another person distant or emotionally remote or “on the spectrum,” one may usefully consider what one knows about what the other person had to survive or the challenges the person is facing or what one knows about the person’s role or aspirations or history. All this become grist for the mill of “jump starting” empathic relatedness where relatedness is missing.
Earlier in the discussion, empathy was described as having four dimensions and the third dimension (3) of empathic interpretation, taking a walk in the other person’s shoes was called out. The other three dimensions include (1) empathic receptivity – be open the feelings and thoughts of the other as a vicarious experience that distinguishes self and other (2) empathic understanding – engage the other as a possibility in his shared humanity (4) empathic responsiveness – acknowledge the other in a form of language or gesture that recognizes the other’s struggle, contribution, or issue. One can easily appreciate how the “bottom up” aspects of affective empathy become less relevant or useful in the context of war. Less relevant, but not completely irrelevant, since, as Lincoln pointed out in the opening quote, even long wars eventually have an outcome and the healing properties of empathy (and compassion) return to the critical path.
This is highly relevant to psychotherapy, psychiatry, empathy consulting, and life coaching. Only here “the enemy” is not the client, but the person’s disorder, diagnosis, or blind spot. It is truly a “love the sinner but hate the sin” moment (to mix in a spiritual metaphor with the clinical one). Here one must work to form an alliance with the client against an aspect of himself that keeps him attached to his own suffering. Though the suffering is real, it can be sticky and becomes an uncomfortable comfort zone.
It is not appropriate to diagnose public figures based on their crazy statements and behavior, nor do I propose to do that here. Yet there is a concerning parallelism between delusional behavior and the political fabrications (i.e., lies) and fake news of demagogues, fanatics, and fellow travelers of the Big Lie. Politicians as a class have never been known for their rigorous integrity in honoring their word, yet the success that some demagogues have in persuading the people to follow them – often off a cliff – must give one pause.
Such influence often comes from the would-be charismatic “leader” believing his own lies and fakery. It does lend a force to the fanatic’s message and comes to resemble, without however being the same as, the delusional person’s self-delusion. Though there is too much suffering to bear between where the world is at right now (2/25/22) and some end point = x, the most likely outcome is Putin is finished. Putin is done – a shell of a human being, ravaged by the neurological consequences of power and Covid. We do not know how suicidal he is – think of Hitler in his bunker. Not a comforting thought. The question is whether Putin decides to take the rest of the world with him in a nuclear holocaust, and whether saner minds in the Kremlin can stop him. Red Team that!
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/world/europe/us-russia-ukraine-kill-list.html
Empathy: Top Ten Trends for 2022
A new year and a new virus variant? Being cynical and resigned is easy, and the empathy training is to drive out cynicism and resignation – then empathy naturally comes forth. If given half a chance, people want to be empathic. The prediction is that with a rigorous and critical empathy (and getting a very high percent of the population vaccinated), we are equal to the challenge.
Setting priorities is an art, not a science. It is clear that empathy is a priority, not a mere psychological mechanism, a practice and a way of being in the world, creating a safe space of openness, acceptance and toleration. In the face of a contagion of Omicron, we need a contagion of empathy. Empathy is contagious. This is one you want to give to someone else, especially someone who seems to need some – all the while being clear to set firm boundaries against bullying, delusional thinking, and compassion fatigue. Keep in mind this list is a top ten “count down,” so if you want to know what is #1, fast forward to the bottom.
Here are my choices and predictions for the top ten trends in empathy for the year 2022.
(10) Delays in the empathy supply chain continue to thwart the expansion of empathy in the community.
This does not refer to the distribution of cat food or toilet paper. Empathy is available. There is enough empathy to go around, but the empathy is poorly distributed due to politics, in the pejorative sense. For example, most medical doctors are empathic and they become MDs because they want to make a difference in relieving human suffering. But the corporate transformation of American medicine means they are given onerous “capitation” quotas – they must see thirty patients a day. The coaching and push back is based in empathy: It is a breach of professional ethics not to give a given patient the time and attention s/he deserves, and there is only time to see twenty two patients a day.
(9) Republicans and Democrats will start conducting Empathy Circles where they get together and listen to one another and respond empathically.
And if you believe this, I have a famous bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you. Yet the key to expanding empathy is to drive out cynicism and resignation. Be open to the possibility: On a more realistic note, the responsibility of leadership, whether in the political or corporate jungle, requires teaching critical thinking. Critical thinking includes skills to analyze conflicting articles in the press, chasing down media reports to their sources and assessing the sources for reliability. Most importantly, critical thinking includes temporarily taking the opponent’s point of view, which is a version of cognitive empathy. One does this not to agree with the opponent, but to have a productive disagreement. Empathy brings workability to political, business, and personal relations. It is like oil to reduce friction and produce results that benefit the entire community. (Edwin Rutsch and The Culture of Empathy are going to like that one!).
(8) Being empathic is hard within the Patriarchy. This does not go away.
The dystopia of Patriarchy (systematic unspoken sexism) crushes the empathy and compassion out of all of us. This is an issue because: in the face of so much gender violence (the vast majority of which is men perpetrating boundary violations against women), can we find or recover a shred of our humanity? I do not need to say “shared humanity,” because “unshared humanity” is not humanity.
It gets worse: the company formerly known as Facebook re-launches as Meta and the Metaverse, a virtual reality world. A quote from the New York Times (12/30/2021): “But as she waited, another player’s avatar approached hers. The stranger then simulated groping and ejaculating onto her avatar, Ms. Siggens said. Shocked, she asked the player, whose avatar appeared male, to stop.” He shrugged as if to say: ‘I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the metaverse — I’ll do what I want,’” said Ms. Siggens, a 29-year-old Toronto resident. “Then he walked away.”” (I do not want to give Metaverse its own trend.) [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/technology/metaverse-harassment-assaults.html] A specific proposal includes: establish a Desmond Tutu style Truth and Reconciliation commission in the Metaverse where perpetrators can tell the survivors what they did and ask forgiveness. Another proposal: establish empathy circles in the Metaverse (Edwin Rutsch and The Culture of Empathy are going to like this one too!).
Recall that instead of a civil war, South Africa and the late Desmond Tutu innovated a Truth and Reconciliation program for the perpetrators of apartheid to tell the truth about what they did to the victims and to ask forgiveness. The survivors then got to say if and/or what they could see there to forgive. That would be a practical, albeit utopian response. I am no fan of forgiveness, which I consider overrated. But I bought Tutu’s book based on the title, No Future Without Forgiveness. How can there be? It both requires empathy and expands empathy. Empathy is both the cause and the effect. I hasten to add that it does not mean being nice; it means establishing firm boundaries. It does not even mean going in with a forgiving attitude, but actually striving for actual truth and reconciliation tribunals, seeing if the truth on the part of the perpetrator(s) can show forth some shred of humanity and maybe, just maybe, highly unlikely though it is, point to a future of cooperation, communication, and community in which both parties flourish. I am not looking for moral equivalence, clever slogans, or easy answers here, I am looking for expanded empathy!
(7) Along the same lines as (8), the so-called “incel” (“involuntary celibate”) gets empathy, backs away from the ledge, gets in touch with his inner jerk and stops being one. (What the heck is an “incel”?)
Now I hasten to add that as soon as a person, whether incel, Don Juan, or one of the Muppets, picks up a weapon, a date rape drug, or proposes to act like the incel and mass killer Elliott Roger, that is no longer a matter for empathy, but for law enforcement. (For more on what is an incel – this is genuinely new – see the blog post and book review: The Holocaust of Sex: The Right to Sex by A. Srinivasan (reviewed) (https://bit.ly/3EACv7W).
After incarcerating or canceling or cognitive behavioral theraputizing the incel, let us try engaging him with – empathy. Key term: empathy. Let us take a walk in his shoes. Knowing full well that the incel is like a ticking bomb, let us engage with one prior to his picking up a weapon. I cut to the chase. It is not just sexual frustration, though to be sure, that is a variable. There is also a power dynamic in play. This individual has no – or extremely limited – power in the face of the opposite sex. He is trying to force an outcome.
Here we invoke Hannah Arendt’s slim treatise On Violence. Power down, violence up. Whenever you see an individual (or government authority) get violent, you can be sure the individual (or institution) has lost power. The water cannon, warrior cops, and automatic weapons show up. The incel embraces his own frustration like Harlow’s deprived Macaque monkeys embraced their cloth surrogate mother, even though it lacked the nipple of the wire-framed one.[3] Now I do not want to make light of anyone’s suffering and incels are definitely suffering. Yet it is tempting to enjoy a lighter moment. The incel’s dystopian life points to his utopia, which consists in two words: “Get laid.” I would add: this applies to consenting adults, and don’t hurt yourself!
(6) Burned out MDs, teachers, flight attendants dealing with delusional angry unvaccinated and sick people don’t get no empathy – how does empathy make a difference?
Set boundaries with and against bullies. At least initially, establishing boundaries is not about having empathy for the bully; it is about being firm about damage control and containing the bullying. Ultimately the bully benefits even as the community is protected from his perpetrations; but more in the manner of a three year old child, who, having a tempter tantrum, benefits from being given a time-out in such a way that he cannot hurt himself or others.
Without empathy, people lose the feeling being alive. They tend to “act out”—misbehave—in an attempt to regain the feeling of vitality that they have lost. Absent an empathic environment, people lose the feeling that life has meaning. When people lose the feeling of meaning, vitality, aliveness, dignity, things “go off the rails.” Sometime pain and suffering seem better than emptiness and meaninglessness, but not by much. People then can behave in self-defeating ways in a misguided attempt to awaken a sense of aliveness.
People act out in self-defeating ways in order to get back a sense of emotional stability, wholeness and well-being—and, of course, acting out in self-defeating way does not work. Things get even worse. One requires expanded empathy. Pause for breath, take a deep one, hold it in briefly while counting to four, exhale, listen, speak from possibility.
(5) Nursing schools and schools of professional psychology and medical schools begin offering classes in empathy.
Yes, it is a scandal you cannot take a course entitled “Empathy Dynamics” or “Empathy: Concepts and Techniques” in any of these schools. I know, because I checked the catalogs [Q3 2021]. I even got hired once or twice to fill in because they could not get anyone else to do it. You may say, “Well, every course we have teaches empathy” and in a sense, it does – or at least ought to. But that is mainly wishful thinking – if you don’t practice empathy, you don’t get it right or wrong – and if you don’t get it wrong, at least occasionally, you don’t expand the skill.
(4) Combine empathy with critical thinking – the result is a rigorous and critical empathy.
I got this distinction – a rigorous and critical empathy – from Xavier Remy, who I hereby acknowledge. What does that mean? You think you are being empathic – think again. It may be empathy or it may be narcissism or rational compassion or pity or self-congratulations or a whole host of things related to empathy, but not empathy. How do you tell? Empathy tells you what the other person is experiencing – be open to their experience, understand the possibility – take a walk in their shoes – acknowledge the shared humanity. Empathy tells what the other person is experiencing – critical thinking tells you what to do about it.
(3) Empathy builds a bridge over the digital divide and encounters resistance to empathy online and in-person.
With the pandemic of 2020, many in person services such as psychotherapy, life coaching, empathy consulting, and others went online. When the provider is having a conversation, then an online session is often good enough – and is definitely better than ending up in the hospital on a ventilator.
As the pandemic wanes and virus variants (hopefully) actually become more like a bad case of the flu (which indeed kills the most vulnerable), the issue becomes when to stay online, meet in person (with fully vaccinated clients), and how to tell the difference?
The disturbing trend that I see amongst (some) behavioral health professionals is that online “better than nothing” becomes “better than anything.” Going online is very convenient, and since, as the saying goes, inertia is the most powerful force in the universe, providers prefer to stay home rather than risk being vulnerable in creating a space of acceptance and tolerance in being personally present physically. The latter is a definition of empathy in the expanded sense – being fully present with the other person – in person and unmediated by a screen.
Now when I call out this conflict of interest, generally based in financial and time considerations (and time is money), most providers acknowledge that the commitment is not to online versus in-person, but rather to client service, delivering empathy, and making a positive difference for the client.
Clients whose mental status is “remote” even in-person in a physical, shared space present a challenge to the therapist’s empathy and are not initially a good choice to work with remotely online. However, after a warming up period the empathic relatedness migrates quite well to the online environment.
“Better than nothing” versus “better than anything” is a choice that needs to be declined: both online and in-person physical therapy coexist and help clients flourish using empathy to bridge the digital divide.
(2) Empathy and climate change. Empathy is oxygen for the soul – individually and in community.
In a year when the lead off comedy is about the destruction of the Earth by a killer comet – and a metaphor for global warming – empathy is oxygen for the soul. This is supposed to be funny (think of the film Dr Strangelove (1964)), in both cases, featuring an arrogant clueless President, played by Meryl Streep (instead of Peter Sellers). Empathy builds ever expanding inclusive communities – empathy is oxygen for the soul – and the planet.
“Beggar thy neighbor politics, economics, and behavior do not work.” They did not work in the Great Depression of 1929 – they did not work in the Great Recession of 2008. Do not take a bad situation and make it worse. Take a pandemic – now fist fights break out on airplanes, hospital emergency rooms, and retail stores. Hmmm.
It is a common place that empathy is oxygen for soul. If the human psyche does not get empathy, it suffocates in stress and suffering. Climate change makes the metaphor actual. If we do not drown as the Greenland and Antarctic ice fields slide en masse into the oceans, we are surely doomed to suffocate as the levels of carbon dioxide and heat overwhelm temperate habitats. Most people are naturally empathic and they an expanding appreciation of empathy suffuses the community.
The problem is that this eventuality does not live like an actual possibility for most people, who cannot imagine such an outcome – for example, just as in December 2019 no one could envision the 2020 pandemic. The bridge between the gridlocked present and a seemingly impossible-to-imagine future is empathy. The empathic moment is an act of imagination. That is the interesting thing about empathy. It may seem like a dream; but the dream lives. It is inclusive. Lots more work needs to be on this connection. For purposes of this list of tasks, this “shout out” will have to suffice. For specific actionable recommendations, see David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet, now streaming on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80216393
And, [drum roll] the number one empathy trend for 2022 is: –
(1) There is enough empathy to go around – people get vaccinated, boosted, and – get this – people get what seems like a version of the common cold – the pandemic “ends,” not with a bang but a whimper.
This relates to issues with the empathy supply chain, but deserves to be called out on its own. Granted, it does not seem that way. It seems that the world is experiencing a scarcity of empathy – and no one is saying the world is a sufficiently empathic place. Consider an analogy. You know how we can feed everyone on the planet? Thanks to agribusiness, “miracle” seeds, and green revolution, enough food is produced so that people do not have to go hungry? Yet people are starving. They are starving in Yemen, Africa, Asia – they are starving in Chicago, too.
Why? Politics in the pejorative sense of the word: bad behavior on the part of people, aggression, withholding, and violence. The food is badly distributed. Now apply the same idea to empathy.
There is enough empathy to go around – but it is badly distributed due to bad behavior, politics and interpersonal political in the pejorative sense. The one-minute empathy training? Drive out the aggression, bullying, shaming, integrity outages, and so on, and empathy naturally comes forth. (For further particulars, see the video cited in the References.) People are naturally empathic, and the empathy expands if one gives them space to let it expand.
Empathy is not a mere psychological mechanism (though it is that too), but is an enlarged concern for the other person – one’s fellow human being on the road of life. Empathy has been criticized for working better with one’s own family than with strangers – but these critics do not know my family – okay, joke – but, even if accurate, the solution to lack of empathy for strangers is expanded empathy. Be inclusive. Be welcoming. Expand the community of inclusiveness. All of this is consistent with people with underlying medical conditions needing to take extra precautions. In that sense, people who get vaccinated, boosted, and mask up, are doing it to keep their neighbors from getting sick. And, so, out our concern for others – our fellow humans – we get vaccinated, boosted, masked-up, and the pandemic ends – but – aaahhh, cooh! – the common cold continues to live on.
References / Notes
[1] Harlow, H. F. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13(12), 673–685. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047884
“The One-Minute Empathy Training” [https://youtu.be/747OiV-GTx4: May I introduce myself? Here is a short introduction to who i am and my commitment to empathy, including a one-minute empathy training. Total run time: about five minutes. Further data: See http://www.LouAgosta.com]
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 3): Let’s do the numbers
Listen to this post on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6nngUdemxAnCd2B2wfw6Q6
Empathy by the numbers
I have been known to say: “We don’t need more data; we need expanded empathy.” But truth be told, we need both.
In an April/May survey by the human resources company Businessolver of some 1,740 employees, including 140 CEOs and some 100 Human Resources (HR) professionals, respondents reported:
37% of employees believe that empathy is highly valued by their organizations and is demonstrated in what they do.
Of the other 63% of employees, nearly one in three employees believe their organization does not care about employees (29%).
One in 3 believe profit is all that matters to their organization (31%).
Nearly one in two believe their organization places higher value on traits other than empathy (48%).
The evidence supports a conclusion that a significant deficit exists between experience and expectations relating to empathy. On a positive note, 46% of employees believe that empathy should start at the top. This opens the way for business leaders to articulate the value of expanding business results through empathy. The same survey indicates that the three most important behaviors for employers to demonstrate empathy include:
listening to customer needs and feedback (80%);
having ethical business practices (78%);
treating employees well, including being concerned about their physical and mental well-being (83%).
Three behaviors that demonstrate empathy according to the Americans Businessolver Survey:
listening more than talking (79%);
being patient (71%);
making time to talk to you one-on-one (62%).
The five behaviors that demonstrate empathy in conversation include:
verbally acknowledging that you are listening (e.g. saying, “I understand”) (76%);
maintaining eye contact (72%);
showing emotion (70%);
asking questions (62%);
making physical contact appropriate for the situation (i.e. shaking hands) (62%).
All this is well and good. But is it good for business? The survey reports that 42% of the survey respondents say they have refused to buy products from organizations that are not empathetic; 42% of Americans say they have chosen to buy products from organizations that are empathetic; 40% of Americans say that they have recommended the company to a friend or colleague. The answer to “Is empathy good for business?” is “Yes it is!”
“Corporate empathy” is not a contradiction in terms
This section is inspired by Belinda Parmar’s article “corporate empathy is not an oxymoron.”[i] Belinda Parmar is one of those hard to define, engaging persons who are up to something. She is founder of the consultancy The Empathy Business. She is an executive, a self-branded “Lady Geek,” public thinker, woman entrepreneur evangelist, and business leader.
According to Parmar, her consultancy’s corporate Empathy Index is loosely based on the work of the celebrated neuropsychologist Simon Baron-Cohen’s account of empathy.[ii] Parmar states in the newly revised 2016 Empathy Index, “empathy” is defined as understanding our emotional impact on others and responding appropriately. How does one map this to the four dimensional definition in Figure 1 (see p. 41 above)?
This captures what our multi-dimensional definition of empathy has called “empathic interpretation.” Parmar’s definition also calls out both the aspects of “understanding” and “responding,” which nicely correspond to empathic understanding and responsiveness, respectively, but misses empathic receptivity. Thus, three out of four. Not bad. How these get applied is a point for additional discussion.
Parmar and company’s Empathy Index aims at measuring a company’s success in creating an empathic culture on the job. This is not just a spiritual exercise. Parmar reports that the top 10 companies in the 2015 Empathy Index increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10, and generated 50% more earnings according to market capitalization.[iii] Now that I have your attention, a few more details.
The Empathy Index reportedly decomposes empathy into three broad categories including customer, employee, and social media. These contain further distinctions such as ethics, leadership, company culture, brand perception, public messaging in social media, CEO approval rating from staff, ratio of women on boards, accounting infractions and scandals. Over a million qualitative comments on Twitter, Glassdoor, and Survation were classified and assessed as part of the process of ranking the companies. Impressive. There is also a “fudge factor.”
The Empathy Index used a panel selected from the World Economic Forum’s Young Global leaders, who were asked to rate the surveyed companies’ morality. Note that Belinda Parmar was herself one of these leaders at some point, though presumably not for purposes of her own survey. Further conditions and qualifications apply. The company must be publicly traded and have a market capitalization of at least a billion dollars. The companies were predominately companies in the US and UK, a few Indian and no Chinese (due to difficulty getting the data). All the companies on the index had large numbers of end-user consumers (see “The Most Empathetic Companies,” 2016, Harvard Business Review for further details on the methodology). [iv]
Presumably the absence of steel mill, oil service, and aero-space-defense companies is not a reflection on their empathy, but simply indicates the boundaries of the survey. The 2015 index is widely available publicly and will not be repeated here. Suffice to say that the top three companies in 2015 were LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Audi. Google was at 7; Amazon, 21; Unilever, 38; Uber, 59; Proctor & Gamble, 62; IBM Corp, 89; Twitter, 93; and 98, 99, and 100 were British Telecom Group, Ryanair, and Carphone Warehouse, respectively. Interesting. My sense is that being on the list at all and relative ranking on the list in comparison with companies in a similar industry is more important than any absolute value or the numeric score as such, though the absence of a intensely consumer-product-oriented company such as Nestlé does give one pause. It is a deeply cynical statement, but an accurate one, that you know the pioneers by the arrows in their backs.
The truth of this otherwise politically incorrect observation is that innovators do not get the product or service perfect the first time out, and competitors are strongly incented to criticize and try to improve on the original breakthrough. Therefore, I acknowledge the value of the Empathy Index, and I acknowledge Belinda Parmar’s contribution. Empathy is no rumor in the work Parmar and her team is doing. Empathy lives in the work she and her team are doing.
How shall I put it delicately? The challenge is distinguishing empathy from ethics, niceness, generosity, compassion, altruism, social responsibility, carbon footprint, education of girls (and boys), and a host of prosocial properties. As this list indicates, lots of things correlate with empathy. Lots of things are inversely correlated with empathy. Empathy is the source of the ten thousand distinctions in business, including correlation with improved revenue, and meanwhile empathy gets lost in the blender.
The Empathy Index is a brilliant idea—and I am green with envy in that I did not implement it. In a deep sense, the only thing missing in my life is that my name is not “Belinda Parmar.”
Yet the reduction to absurdity of corporate empathy progresses apace with the Empathy Index as carbon footprint, reputation on social media, and CEO approval rating get included.
This index was designed prior to the revelation that social networking systems had become a platform for a foreign power (Russia) to publish exaggerated, controversial positions designed to ferment social conflict over race, economics, and extremist politics in the USA. Presumably further checks and balances are needed prior to accepting the reputations culled from such networks, unless one wants to include the approval rating of Russian trolls. Nothing wrong with approval ratings as such, but I struggle to connect the dots with empathy. Empathy is now a popularity contest to drive reputation and, well, popularity.
An alternative perspective on corporate empathy
I acknowledge the engaging and powerful work being done by Belinda Parmer and associates to expand empathy in the corporate jungle. The challenges of engaging with empathy as a property of the complex system called a “corporation” should not be underestimated. However, I propose to elaborate an alternative point of view regarding corporate empathy.
Corporations are supposed to be treated as individuals under law, which makes sense if one restricts the context to having a single point of responsibility for the consequences of the corporation’s actions.
Thus, for example, the accounting department cannot say, “It’s not our fault; marketing made promises we were unable to honor while manufacturing cooked the books behind our back.” That is not going to work as an excuse. Whoever did it, the corporation is responsible. However, empathy in a corporate context is not additive in this way.
The empathy of the corporation is not the sum of the empathy of all the individuals. It is true that a single individual who becomes known as “unempathic” has the potential to “zero out” the empathy of the entire organization; but for empathic purposes, “corporate empathy” is the integral of the seemingly uncountable possibilities, interpretations, and responses of leaders, workers, stake-holders, across all the functions in the organization.
For example, when IBM says “everyone sells,” IBM does not mean that the geek in the software laboratory has a sales quota. That would be absurd. IBM means precisely that the geek in the lab sells by writing software code so great that it causes customers actually to call up the account (sales) representative and ask for it by name. This puts me in mind of Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction saying: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Likewise, with empathy: the customer may not directly experience the empathy of the geek in the back office, but the commitment, functionality, and teamwork “back there” is so over-the-top, that the sales person’s empathy with the customer is empowered in ways that seem magical.
In this alternative perspective, a corporation is an individual that positions itself on the continuum between “empathy in abundance” and “empathy is missing” by enacting four practices: (1) listening (2) relating as a possibility (3) talking the other person’s perspective (4) demonstrating all of these—listening, relating as a possibility, and walking in the other’s shoes—such that the other person (customer, employee, stake-holder, general public) is given back the person’s own experience in relating to the corporation in a way that the person recognizes as the person’s own.
It has been awhile since the mantra of empathic receptivity, understanding, interpretation and response has been reiterated, so the reader is hereby reminded to check on Figures 1 and 3 in the previous chapters for a review as needed (see pp. 41, 89). Empathy is not something “owned” by the executive suite, marketing, human resources, or sales, to the exclusion of other roles. Everyone practices empathy.
Stake-holders may include the general public, whose well-being and livelihoods are impacted by corporate practices (or lack thereof). For example, the general public was profoundly affected (and not just by the price of gasoline) by the failure of an off-shore oil well in 2010 that sent some 205.8 million gallons of crude oil pollution into the Gulf of Mexico.
It is never good news when one’s corporate break down becomes a major motion picture—in particular, a disaster movie such as Deep Water Horizon. Note also this implies that empathy is not a method of waging a popularity campaign on social media.
If the corporation is British Petroleum (BP), then the empathic response might well be an acknowledgment that your experience of us is: “The only thing more foul than our reputation is the pollution perpetrated on the coastlines of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida and the lives and livelihoods of the millions of people who live there.” And BP has to do this even while defending itself in court against major legal actions where anything one says can and will be used against you.
What does it mean for a corporation to listen? Ultimately customers, employees, stake-holders must decide if a corporation has been listening by the way the company’s representatives respond. At the corporate level, empathic receptivity (listening) and empathic responsiveness are directly linked.
“Empathically” means respond in such a way that boundaries between persons are respected and respectfully crossed, agreements with the other person (or community) are honored, the other is treated with dignity, the other’s point of view is acknowledged, and the other is responded to in such a way that the other person would agree, even if grudgingly, that its perspective had been “gotten.”
People test whether others have been listening by examining and validating their responsiveness. Responsiveness includes the questions that they ask and the comments that they make in response. Most importantly it includes follow up and follow through actions.
Once again, breakdowns point the way to breakthroughs. A less dramatic example than Deep Water Horizon? From a customer perspective, here is an example of an everyday breakdown: “Corporations to customers: Stop Calling! Go to the web instead. Fill out the form, and wait for a response”—usually in an undefined time. The experience is one of being left hanging.
Today many corporations prefer that the customer interact with them through their web site, because web sites are less expensive than call centers. Phone numbers are disappearing from web sites; and even when a phone number is present, it may not be the proper one. The phone number at the bottom of a press release causes the phone to ring in the marketing department, not customer service.
Even when a phone number is available, the wait time is long and the service representative, who is a fine human being, is poorly informed. What is the experience? No one is listening. That is not a clearing for success in building an empathic relationship.
What then is? An ability to assess quickly what is the break down, suggest a resolution, and have a defined process of escalation to open an inquiry into the problem. The breakthrough is when the customer call is acknowledged and the equivalent of the help desk trouble-shooter calls the customer back at the number provided to the automated system with the solution or proposed action. The technology to do this has existed ever since the call center was invented, but until Apple thought of it, no one configured it to work from outbound call center to customer.
From an employee perspective, an employee will experience the corporation as listening if the person who sets his or her assignments (“supervisor”) is a listener. That means creating a context in which a conversation between two human beings, who are both physically present, can occur. Given that one person may report to someone in a different city, teleconferencing has a great future as does a periodic in-person visit.
However, if the one person is multi-tasking, working on email while supposedly having a conversation with the other person, that is not listening. Eliminate distractions. Set aside emails. If one is awaiting an urgent update regarding an authentic emergency, then it is best to call that out at the start of the conversation. “I might have to interrupt to take a call from Peoria, where the processing plant has an emergency.”
An “open door” policy can mean different things, but I take it to mean that “anyone can talk to anyone” and not have to feel threatened with retaliation. An “open door” is a metaphor for “listen” or “be empathic.”
If an employee is having trouble focusing on the job, something is troubling her or him, and the listener demonstrates empathy by asking a relevant question or providing guidance that brings the trouble into the conversation: “Say more about that” or “Help me understand” can work wonders. As soon as the employee believes that someone is really listening, out come the details needed to engage in problem solving.
If we are engaging with what might be described as employee “personal issues” such as the ongoing need to care for a disabled parent or child, substance abuse, mental illness, corporations realize that managers are not therapists. Smart corporations marshal external resources that operate confidential crisis phone lines and referral services. It is not entirely clear what “confidential” means here, since if the employee is missing most people notice it; but presumably such an absence does not directly feed into the employee review process. Such personal assistance centers are able to make referrals to providers of medical, mental health, or legal services. The benefit for the corporation is that employee stress and distraction are reduced. The employee is able to continue contributing productively as an employee. It is an all around win-win.
Yet the employee and his crisis are predictably going to show up in the manager’s office at the end of the business day before a holiday weekend. This is perhaps the ultimate test of the manager’s empathy. He or she is now being addressed as a fellow human being by another human, all-too-human, human being.
This is an empathy test if there ever was one; and this is where practice and training can prepare the manager to respond appropriately by marshaling resources on short notice. In a crisis on Friday afternoon at 4 pm before a holiday weekend, managers can create loyalty for life in the commitment of the employee, who was assisted in a way that made a profound difference. “Above and beyond” recognition awards for the empathically responding manager are appropriate too.
Let us shift gears and take the conversation about corporate empathy up a level with a particular example. Nestlé has a portfolio of popular and even beloved brands that literally come tumbling out of the consumer’s pantry and refrigerator when one opens the door. Some 97% of US households purchase a Nestlé product, which extend from chocolate to beverages to prepared foods to baby food to frozen treats to pet products and beyond. You might not even know it, but Perrier, Lean Cuisine, Gerber, and Häagen Dazs are Nestlé brands. So are Purina pet products..
Nestlé is so committed to sustainability in nutrition, health, and wellness that it produces a separate annual report dedicated to identifying, measuring, and reporting on its progress against literally dozens of sustainability goals. After reviewing this material, as I did, the reader can hardly imagine that Nestlé has any commitments other than social responsibility, though Nestlé is a for profit enterprise and doing very well as one.
Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Nestlé is a strong contender to be the most empathic corporation on the planet, regardless of how one chooses to define empathy. Yet it did not even get on Belinda Parmar’s Empathy Index. What gives? A single blind spot in the 1970s, in which Nestlé leadership thought it saw a long term growth opportunity in infant (baby) formula, got in the way. Given the population growth in parts of Asia and Africa, Nestlé thought it could steal a march on the competition.
Nestlé had been a force in infant formula, especially for those babies whose mothers are unable to nurse due to illness or when it comes time to wean the infant. Yet it looks like corporate planners projected first world infrastructure onto the third world in an apparent breakdown in empathic understanding and interpretation. A world of good work and good will was destroyed or at least put at extreme risk.
Nestlé’s marketing of baby formula has created an enduring controversy. Starting in the 1970s Nestlé has been the target of a boycott based on the way that Nestlé marketed baby formula in the developing world.[i] From a public relations perspective, it has been a breakdown, if not a train wreck. The initial issue was supposedly that Nestlé was too aggressive in marketing baby formulation as a substitute for breast feeding. However, when one looks at the details, the issue really seems to be empathizing with the practice of breast feeding, given life in many third world countries. A breakdown in empathy?
The third world often lacks clean water, reliable power for sterilization of baby bottles, instruction labels in local languages that can be read and understood and followed by possibly illiterate or partially literate mothers. If the mother is healthy and lactating, breast feeding is a strong candidate to be the preferred method of infant feeding.
I have been known to say: “We don’t need more data, we need expanded empathy.” But, truth be told, both are required here.
Infant morbidity and mortality is reportedly three to six times greater for those infants using formula than for those who are breast fed.[ii]Nestlé responds—with a stance whose empathy is questionable—with a defensive conversation about compliance. Nestlé states that it fully complies with the 34th World Health Assembly code for marketing infant formula.
Nestlé’s Annual Review 2016 states with expanded empathy:
We support and promote breastfeeding as it is the best start a baby can have in life. In cases when breastfeeding is not possible due to medical or physical conditions, infant formula is the only breast-milk substitute recognised by the World Health Organisation. Nestlé Nutrition provides high-quality, innovative, science-proven nutrition for mothers and infants to help them start healthy and stay healthy during the critical first 1000 days.[iii]
But the matter is complex. IBFAN (the International Baby Formula Action Network) states that Nestlé distributes free formula in hospitals and maternity wards in the third world. This seems literally like manna from heaven; but the free formula lasts only long enough for lactation to stop (“lactation,” of course, being the naturally occurring production of breast milk after the woman gives birth).
After leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because lactation has ceased, the family must buy the formula. Gotcha?! IBFAN also asserts that Nestlé uses “humanitarian aid” to jump start markets and does not label its products in the language spoken in the country where the product is sold. “Humanitarian aid” is not marketing, but then again maybe such “aid” has similar, if unintended, consequences as “free samples” in marketing. Further, IBFAN asserts that Nestlé offers gifts and sponsorship to influence health workers to promote its products.
Nestlé denies these allegations, and states that it is responsive, and ongoing steps are being taken to remedy the situation.[iv] Never was it truer that empathic interpretation is a dynamic process.
One person’s empathic responsibility is another person’s unempathic irresponsibility. Note that the duck-rabbit (see Figure 4, cited above, p. 182) maps to a single continuous line on the page. It is the “objective” reality of the line itself that starts resonating, flipping back and forth, when it encounters the human perception system. Perhaps it was just too complicated and controversial to include Nestlé in the Empathy Index, formulated by Belinda Parmer’s process.
Any corporation that commits to practicing empathy will find its commitment challenged in ways that an Empathy Index (as currently defined) cannot imagine—or capture.
So popularity contests are likely to remain the preferred method of expanding empathy in marketing departments, especially among those who are—you guessed it—popular! The easy way out? Among those who decide to do the tough work of empathy, acknowledging inauthenticities and cleaning up integrity outages, a corporation can practice empathy at a high level and also have a reputation that is (in)distinguishable from the tar-like asphalt that randomly washes up on the beach after an oil spill.
Empathy in the corporate environment is “trending,” but remains a work-in-progress with many trade-offs and opportunities for debate. Still, the battle is joined.
The challenge is to see the empathic forest for the trees. Corporate empathy means many things. In corporate speak, “empathy” becomes a synonym for “employee benefits,” “social responsibility,” “executive ethics,” “favorable feedback from employees,” and “team building.” For example, input to Parmar’s Empathy Index includes “carbon footprint,” “number of women on the Board,” and reputation on social networking media. Carbon footprint?
Connecting the dots between empathy and carbon footprint is definitely a work-in-progress.
Follow the money. Definitely. But do not follow it off a cliff.
Stake-holders—people who buy stocks or bonds in a publically traded company—give money to the company. They want money back in turn—cash flow or profit or both. Don’t tell me about empathy; show me the money!
Although some investors are interested in social responsibility, most investors are interested in profit. They are not asking for empathy or even particularly interested in empathy, unless they decide it can make money for them. As Chris Janson, country western, singer says: “They say money can’t buy happiness. [Pause.] But it can buy me a boat—and a truck to pull it.” Funny. The suspicion is that the good ol’ boy doesn’t get enough empathy from the supervisor down at the saw mill, and needs to get away to go fishin’, which, in turn, simulates an experience like stress reduction, a major result of empathy.
Saying that the purpose of business is to make money is like saying the purpose of life is to breathe. Keep breathing—and make money—by all means. But the purpose of life is to find satisfaction in one’s work, raise a family, write the great American novel (it’s good work if you can get it!), experience one’s efforts as contributing to the community and making a difference.
Likewise with business. Business is about delivering human value and satisfying human demands and goals, whether nutrition, housing, transportation, communication, waste disposal, health, risk management, education, entertainment, and so on. Even luxury and conspicuous consumption are human values, which show up as market demands.
The customer with a complaint is an example of supply and demand. The customer is “demanding” a product or service that satisfies the real or implied service level agreement. What is often not appreciated is that the customer is also often demanding empathy as part of the service level agreement.
Which direction is the empathy travelling? From employee to customer? From supervisor to employee? From executive to stake-holder? The one who gets paid the money provides the empathy along with the produce or service. Even fairly abstract financial instruments such as insurance and hedging future prices in commodities such as wheat or oil have a valid function in risk management and so have an empathic core of managing hope and fear about the future. The one exception I can think of? Trading derivatives and derivatives of derivatives becomes a formal financial form of gambling. Absent empathy, some people find that gambling provides them with the stimulation they require to feel alive.
One may argue that transportation does not require a Lamborghini and that a Honda Civic will do quite well, thank you; but the debate is still about the experience of brand equity, which is a proxy for empathy like “carbon footprint.” The purpose is to create satisfied customers, suppliers, buyers, sellers, and partners. Review the above-cited quote from Jack Welch that “shareholder value is a result, not a strategy” (see p. 274 above). If one does these things well, addressing a demand in the market, the money shows up.
In conclusion, business people “get it”—empathy is good for business. Profit is a result of business strategy, implementation, and operations, not “the why” that motivates commercial enterprise. And if profit shows up that way (as the “the why”), then you can be sure that, with the possible exception of index derivative hedging, it is a caricature of business and a limiting factor. Business prospers or fails based on its value chain and commitment to delivering value for clients and consumers. However, as noted, some of the things that make people good at business make people relatively poor empathizers.
Business leaders lose contact with what clients and consumers are experiencing as the leaders get entangled in solving legal issues, reacting to the competition, or implementing the technologies required to sustain operations. Yet empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time or place for it. This is a challenge to be engaged and overcome.
What to do about it? Practice expanded empathy. Empathy is on the critical path to serving customers, segmenting markets, positioning products (and substitutes), psyching out the competition—not exactly empathy but close enough?—building teams and being a leader who actually has followers. Empathy makes the difference for contributors to the enterprise at all levels between banging on a rock with a hammer and building a cathedral. The motions are the same. When the application of empathy exposes and strengthens the foundation of community, then expanding empathy becomes synonymous with expanding the business.
Building customer communities, building stakeholder communities, building teams that work, are the basis for product innovation, brand loyalty, employee commitment, satisfied service level agreements, and sustained or growing market share. Can revenue be far behind? Sometimes leaders don’t need more data, leaders need expanded empathy, though ultimately both are on the path to satisfied buyers, employees, and stakeholders. If the product or service is wrappered in empathy, has an empathic component as part of the service level agreement, gets traction in the market, and beats the competition’s less empathic offering, then we have the ultimate validation of empathy. We do not just have empathy. We have empathy, capitalist tool.
[i] Belinda Parmar. (2016). Corporate empathy is not an oxymoron, Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2015/01/corporate-empathy-is-not-an-oxymoron [checked on June 30, 2017]. This article includes the complete list of 100 companies.
[ii] Simon Baron-Cohen. (2011). The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. New York: Basic Books (Perseus).
[iii] Belinda Parmar. (2016). The most empathetic companies. 2016. Harvard Business Review, 12/20/2016: https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-most-and-least-empathetic-companies-2016 [checked on June 30, 2017].
[iv] Parmar 2016.
[i] Anonymous Contributors. (nd). Nestlé boycott, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé_boycott [checked on August 15, 2017].
[ii] Ibid., Nestlé boycott, Wikipedia
[iii] Nestlé Annual Review 2016: https://www.nestle.com/asset-library/documents/library/documents/an nual_reports/2016-annual-review-en.pdf: 20 [checked on 12/11/2017]. Note that Nestlé produces three (3) corporate annual reports every year. One for Nestlé International; one for Nestlé USA; and a third on Nestlé’s measurable commitments to social responsibility.
[iv] Op. cit.: Nestlé boycott, Wikipedia.
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 1): The Empathy Deficit in Business is Getting Attention
The empathy deficit in business is getting attention
Listen to podcast on Spotify or via Anchor: https://anchor.fm/lou-agosta-phd/episodes/Empathy-Capitalist-Tool-Part-1-The-Empathy-Deficit-in-Business-is-Getting-Attention-e18tlcn
Children and parents get it. Nurses and doctors get it. Teachers and students get it. Couples get it. Consultants and clients get it. Neighbors get it. What about business people? Do they “get it”—that empathy produces results? Practicing empathy is a neglected opportunity in business. The qualities, practices, and behaviors that help a person build a business sometimes work against expanding the person’s empathy.
An executive’s ego, opinion, expertise, and attachment to being right raise the bar on empathizing with others, who may have diverging mind sets. Hard charging entrepreneurs find it hard to let go of their status or set aside the lessons learned as they came up through the ranks. Executives and managers lose touch with the experiences, perceptions, and perspectives of customers, employees, and stake-holders.
The urgent drives out the important. Management effort and time are monopolized responding to competitive pressures, compliance issues, legal challenges, and solving technology problems.[i] For example, according to a report from Businessolver, a human resources and talent consultancy, some 60% of executives believe that their organizations are empathic, whereas 24% of their employees agree.[ii] An empathy deficit?
The stress of operating the business—deadlines, financial issues, staffing crises, software breakdowns, competition, litigation—drive out empathy and a deep appreciation that a commitment to empathy is good for business. The disconnect is substantial between perceptions in the executive suite and in the cubicles of workers and the front line, customer-facing staff.
Ironically, the empathic practices such as the receptive, interpretive, and responsive processes described in detail in this work (as opposed to compassion) are what are most urgently needed in dealing with customer demands, employee crises, negotiations with competitors, vendors, clients, and one’s own budgeting authorities and board, optimally resolving conflicts with reduced cost and impact.
When I ask business leaders what is their budget for empathy training, the response is often a blank stare. Zero. However, when I ask the person what is the budget for expanded teamwork, reduced conflict, enhanced productivity, commitment to organizational goals, taking ownership of outcomes, product and service innovations, then it turns out that budget exists after all. Empathy makes a difference in connecting the dots between business skills and performance. Empathy contributes to results in a powerful way by engaging the staff’s energies and commitments at a fundamental level.
While every business has its own distinct commitments, in many ways, the basic empathy training in business is the same as empathy training in every other context.
The training consists in surfacing and driving out the cynicism, denial, shame, implicit threats, and pressure that many business people experience in their communications. Empathy then spontaneously comes forth and expands the space of possibilities to do business. This does not mean that businesses do not have their own blind spots when it comes to empathy. They do. Therefore, let us take a step back and look at what it is going to take.
An appreciation of the value of empathy to promote breakthrough results often starts in sales. In business, the sales people get it. Developing empathy with customers is good for business.
Even the cynical sales person recognizes that putting oneself in another person’s shoes is a good method of selling them another pair.[iii] The sales person gives the prospect some empathy. Shazam! The customer calls you to close the deal. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Yet the basic idea is straightforward. When the customer appreciates that the sales person is interested in the customer’s requirements, that the sales person is listening, then the customer is likely to open up and candidly share what is stressing him—budget, deadlines, internal politics, market dynamics, or the competition.
When the prospective customer feels that the sales person has understood him, the chance is significantly expanded that he will prefer to purchase the product or service from the empathic representative. Once the customer feels the sales person is listening, the customer will share details about his needs, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings, including those about which he might otherwise be defensive, enabling the sales person to position the product or service as a solution to the perceived problem.
This is not “new news.” In 1964, in the Harvard Business Review—not exactly an obscure, backwater publication—David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg called out the two basic qualities that any good sales person must have: empathy and ego drive. These authors define “empathy” as the central ability to feel as other people feel in the context of selling them a product or service.
In Mayer and Greenberg’s article, the sales staff were trained to interrupt themselves when they found that they were reacting defensively to customer complaints, whether legitimate or not, whether solvable or not. Stop—hit the pause button before responding. Instead of reacting to the complaint, the sales person was trained to “get” the complaint and to communicate back to the customer that he “got it,” namely, that the customer was upset (or whatever the customer was self-expressed about).
The sales person was trained to acknowledge that a breakdown had occurred. Key term: breakdown. The sales person was trained to acknowledge the complaint by calling it out: “This is a break down!” Even if the customer is inaccurate or wrong in his complaint about some detail, the customer is always—the customer.
By definition, the breakdown in the product or service occurs against the expectation of customer satisfaction. The relationship between the buyer and seller is itself in breakdown against the expectation of satisfaction. This does not rule out the possibility that additional training is needed on the part of the customer about product features or the service level agreement; but such training is substantially different from a defensive reaction.
The next step is repairing, fixing, or at least managing the cause of the complaint: the respondent then solicits additional feedback and details as to the complaint, i.e., what went wrong. The empathic response includes what one is going to do about the breakdown and by when.
The committed listening, that is, empathy, creates a clearing for communication, improving the sales process, and restoring authenticity to the relationship when integrity has gone missing. While there are no guarantees, customers treated in such a way tend to stick. Repeat business, maximizing revenue over the lifetime of the relationship, is one of the outcomes. [iv]
The empathic leader meets “economic man”
Development Dimensions, Intl., (DDI) identifies empathy as one of the critical success factors in executive leadership. One of the leading talent development corporations in the market, DDI’s report on High Resolution Leadership identifies empathy as an emotional quotient (EQ) “anchor skill.”
Empathy provides the foundation for interpersonal leadership skills such as developing subordinates, building the consensus for action, encouraging engagement, supporting self-esteem, and taking responsibility.[v]
In the DDI study, listening and responding with empathy were demonstrated by 40% of executives profiled (as opposed to 71% whodemonstrated taking responsibility or 54% who demonstrated building agreement on actions to take).
The conclusion is that, as regards empathy, the majority of leaders have room for expanding their performance. The good news is that, using interventions designed to expand empathy, the empathy skills needed to drive business results are within reach. [vi]
Thus, the empathy deficit in business is getting attention. Empathy is moving to the foreground. The role and contribution of empathy to business results is penetrating the awareness of leaders, managers, staff, and stake-holders.
Closely related to the challenge of closing the empathy deficit in business is the challenge that “economic man” is significantly different than man as such. Let’s define our terms.
The person who conducts transactions in the market is defined in business school as economic man—homo economicus. The latter is significantly different than man, the human being as such. The person (man) in the economic theory is rational, selfish, and her or his tastes do not change.
Business practices assume the organization is engaging with customers, employees, stake-holders, and leaders who fit the model of economic man. Human beings, on the other hand, do not. Most people in business do not know anyone who fits the description of economic man. Why then are we so busy trying to do business with him when he does not even exist?
Unlike the person described in economics in business schools, humans are limited in their reasonableness. Humans are diverse and inconsistent in their preferences. Humans are even limited in their selfishness, being generous and compassionate in unpredictable ways.
The issue? Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker’s rational choice theory (preference theory) in economics has been extended to many other aspects of life. Becker’s rational choice theory has been extended to areas as diverse as marriage, crime, and discrimination.
Generalizations from rational choice theory to the social sciences at large have been a growth industry in the social sciences. From the rich mixture of inconsistencies and contradictions that most people really are in life, the human being was translated into a function of rational, self-interested, and allegedly consistent preferences. The human as such has been simplified and redescribed as a rational, calculating engine of human behavior.[vii]
People are supposed to be consistent in their preferences and tastes. People are supposed to be logical and consistently obey the rules. But finding counter-examples is easy.
For example, if a person prefers coffee to hot chocolate and the person prefers hot chocolate to tea, then, according to this logic, the person is supposed to prefer coffee to tea. [Think: coffee > hot chocolate > tea; therefore, coffee > tea, according to the transitive rule, in which “>” means “prefers.”] But, no, it doesn’t work that way. Given all these personal preferences as indicated, the person still chooses tea instead of coffee. The person just prefers tea to coffee. The individual is from London!
Nothing inherently illogical exists in preferring coffee to hot chocolate and tea to coffee while also preferring hot chocolate to tea. Nothing unless one insists on making a dynamic network into a transitive sequence. So much for rational choice theory.
The lesson? Empathy as well as logic are required to understand decision making. Without allowing for the possibility of empathy, economics produces some strange results. People are not natural born statisticians, logicians, or gamblers, though the discipline of economics sometimes seems to assume so.
Still, testing a person’s decisions and preferences using probabilities, bets, and lotteries is an engaging exercise, and nothing is wrong in doing so. However, unless one also adds empathy to the mixture of economics and logic one misses something essential—the person!
Now, I apologize in advance to the reader for the technical terms, but in economics the chance of winning a bet is expressed as an “expected utility.” “Expected utility” is technical talk for “satisfaction” or “happiness.” (But nothing more than arithmetic is needed to get this. )
For example, in economics the expected utility of a 10% chance of winning a million dollars is $100K [.10 x 1,000,000 = 100,000] [note: K = 1,000]. If Jack and Jill both end up with a million dollars, they should enjoy the same expected utility, no? Remember, Jack and Jill are supposed to be rational, selfish, and consistent in their preferences. Now consider a counter-example:
Today Jack and Jill each have a million dollars.
Yesterday Jack had zero and Jill had two million dollars.
Are they equally happy? (Do they have the same utility?)
You do not need an advanced degree to know that today Jack is very happy and Jill is in despair. Yesterday Jack had zero; now he has a million dollars. Hurrah! Yesterday Jill had two million dollars; now she has only one million. Ouch!
We must be able to put our ourselves in the shoes of Jack and Jill and get a sense of their expectations. Sounds familiar?
These expectations, in turn, constrain their experience of satisfaction (i.e., happiness). To grasp the outcome in terms of their individual experiences, we need an empathic anchor or reference point in their expectations from which they begin. Empathy gives us access to an anchor point in their respective experiences.
Our empathy shows that outcomes are linked to feelings about the changes of one’s wealth rather than to states of wealth. The experience of value depends on the history of one’s wealth, not only the current state of it.
Yet another bold empathy lesson: People are strongly influenced by hope and fear. Empathy indicates that people attach values to gains and losses, and these are weighted differently than logical probabilities in decision making. This is not just saying that people are irrational, though that may be true enough at times, too. This says that people (and their behavior) frequently do not conform to the pattern of rationality, selfishness, and consistency in preferences.
Still, the matter is not hopeless for those committed to pattern matching in economics. People are frequently surprising, but sometimes in predictable ways. People are sometimes inconsistent, but one can sometimes predict those inconsistencies if one learns one’s empathy lessons.[viii] For example:
(1) People are risk averse due to fear of disappointment and regret. The empathy lesson is that people try to avoid risks even in situations where taking a risk is a good bet. “A good bet” is determined according to the probability calculation.
Consider: if a person had a 90% probability of winning a million dollars, he ought to accept $900K as a “sure thing” settlement, which settlement is logically equivalent to a 90% probability of winning the million dollars [.9 x 1,000K = 900K]. The 10% probability of not winning is an unlikely outcome, but still possible. The “unlikely outcome” often determines the result.
For example, law suits in cases of accidents and contract disputes produce settlements in trial law indicating that people will “settle for” $800K or even $750K for the possibility of knowing the outcome with certainty. For most people that is still a lot of money, and the possibility of having to live with the regret of missing the pay-off due to an unlikely outcome gets most people out of their comfort zone. They decide to settle.
Empathic receptivity to the possibility of disappointment and regret may usefully “override” the rational, self-interested, and consistent preferences that the purely economic person brings to the negotiations.
(2) People are risk seeking in the hope of getting an even larger gain instead of accepting a modest settlement.
This is why people bet on the state lottery where the chance of winning is vanishingly small. Such a bet is illogical, but common. We need expanded empathy to get a clue what is going on here.
The empathy lesson indicates that people are not buying a chance to win a big pot of money. Rather people are buying a chance to dream of the possibility of winning the big jackpot. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of,” said Shakespeare. The value is in the dreaming, that is, precisely in the possibility of the big jackpot, not the jackpot itself. That such a dream would more likely be the dream of a poor person rather than an affluent one is a further problem that invites attention.
If one looked rationally at the odds, one would not buy the ticket. No way. Clearly lotteries are popular, especially with the poor and “have nots.” The possibility of escaping from poverty is being manipulated in a cynical way by the establishment, and we citizens have all become “addicted” to the revenue stream.
The lottery budget and effort would be better devoted to job training and instruction in basic financial management, except now lotteries have become a source of revenue for local government and education. This is a breakdown in empathic understanding, which gives us our possibilities. It is hard not to become a tad cynical in considering that the poor are paying for education through lottery revenue, though they are often unprepared to benefit from or hindered from accessing the educational opportunity.
(3) People are risk seeking in the hope of avoiding a loss in situations in which simply stopping a project altogether would enable cutting their losses (rather than incurring additional likely losses). Defeat is difficult to accept. The empathy lesson is that people are attached to an ideal, in this case a losing cause, for reasons extending from perseverance, egoism, greed, risk aversion, fear of the unknown, all the way to idealism, romance, blind hope, and just plain stubbornness.
People (and businesses) facing a bad outcome manage to turn a survivable (but painful) failure into a complete meltdown. Desperate gambles often make a bad situation worse in exchange for a small hope of avoiding the loss at all. Businesses, individuals, and even countries, continue to expend resources long after they should blow the bugle, lower the flag, and leave, implementing an orderly retreat. Instead people (and organizations) persist in a lost cause until a rout becomes inevitable.
Business accounting teaches the basic idea of a “sunk cost.” Suppose Octopus, Inc., (OI) is building a new software system for $100 million dollars. OI has already spent $150 million. The project is over-budget. It is estimated to take another $55 million to complete the job. Suppose further that evidence of a new, breakthrough technology really exists. It would enable OI to develop the system from scratch for $25 million. What should OI do? The money already spent is a “sunk cost.” It should not influence the decision. Given the evidence that the new technology really works, the OI project leader should throw away the over-budget system and build the new one from scratch, spending $25 million and saving $30 million against the projected completion cost of the project. However, that is not what most project leaders would do.
Due to a sense of ownership of the over-budget project and a fear of the unknown in engaging the new technology, many project leaders double down on the investment in a losing proposition. In a breakdown of empathic interpretation, they continue to project their hopes and fears onto the old technology and, as the saying goes, throw good money after bad.
(4) People are risk averse due to a fear of a large loss and may rationally and usefully bet on a small chance of (avoiding) a large loss. This is why people buy insurance. The empathy lesson is that people are not merely buying protection against an unlikely disaster; they are buying peace of mind, the ability to get a good night’s sleep. If the negative event would have catastrophic consequences, creating a risk pool, in which everyone participates, spreading the risk in a manageable way, makes compelling sense. Note that certain risks such as war and civil insurrection (or a giant asteroid hitting the earth) are uninsurable. Insurance is a calculation, not a gamble against undefined odds. In general, the insurable risk must relate to individuals or subgroups and the occurrence of the risk should not destroy the infrastructure of the entire community, which needs to be intact to cover the insured risk.
Insurance was a brilliant business innovation that emerged at about the time of the European Renaissance as traders in the Netherlands—those frugal Dutch—were sending valuable but fragile ships to fetch precious cargo in far away lands. The risks and rewards were great. How to even out the odds? Insurance was born.
In our own time, one can see the irrationality, the unempathic response, and gaming of the system by special interests in health insurance in the USA where attempts were made to exclude the sickest people from the insurance pool through penalties for preexisting illnesses, combined with charging monopoly rents to the healthiest participants.
Insurance is often a “good bet” when an outcome that is highly unlikely but catastrophic can be managed by everyone (or a large group) incurring a small cost to spread the risk. But how to get everyone at risk into the pool? When told that people have no health insurance, some politicians are supposed to have said: “Let them pay cash!” In another context, in one the most spectacular breakdowns in empathic responsiveness in modern European political history, the French Queen, Marie Antoinette, was told that the people had no bread, and she is supposed to have said: “Let them eat cake!” Same idea?
Saying that the purpose of business is to make money is like saying the purpose of life is to breathe. Keep breathing—and make money—by all means. But the purpose of life is to find satisfaction in one’s work, raise a family, write the great American novel (it’s good work if you can get it!), experience one’s efforts as contributing to the community and making a difference.
Likewise with business. Business is about delivering human value and satisfying human demands and goals, whether nutrition, housing, transportation, communication, waste disposal, health, risk management, education, entertainment, and so on. Even luxury and conspicuous consumption are human values, which show up as market demands.
In conclusion, business people “get it”—empathy is good for business. Profit is a result of business strategy, implementation, and operations, not “the why” that motivates commercial enterprise. And if profit shows up that way (as the “the why”), then you can be sure that, with the possible exception of index derivative hedging, it is a caricature of business and a limiting factor. Business prospers or fails based on its value chain and commitment to delivering value for clients and consumers. However, as noted, some of the things that make people good at business make people relatively poor empathizers.
Business leaders lose contact with what clients and consumers are experiencing as the leaders get entangled in solving legal issues, reacting to the competition, or implementing the technologies required to sustain operations. Yet empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time or place for it. This is a challenge to be engaged and overcome.
What to do about it? Practice expanded empathy. Empathy is on the critical path to serving customers, segmenting markets, positioning products (and substitutes), psyching out the competition—not exactly empathy but close enough?—building teams and being a leader who actually has followers. Empathy makes the difference for contributors to the enterprise at all levels between banging on a rock with a hammer and building a cathedral. The motions are the same. When the application of empathy exposes and strengthens the foundation of community, then expanding empathy becomes synonymous with expanding the business. Building customer communities, building stakeholder communities, building teams that work, are the basis for product innovation, brand loyalty, employee commitment, satisfied service level agreements, and sustained or growing market share. Can revenue be far behind? Sometimes leaders don’t need more data, leaders need expanded empathy, though ultimately both are on the path to satisfied buyers, employees, and stakeholders. If the product or service is wrappered in empathy, has an empathic component as part of the service level agreement, gets traction in the market, and beats the competition’s less empathic offering, then we have the ultimate validation of empathy. We do not just have empathy. We have empathy Capitalist Tool!
Notes
[i] Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard. (2012). Empathy on the edge: Scaling and sustaining a human-centered approach in the evolving practice of design, IDEO:
http://liphtml5.com/gqbv/uknt/basic [checked on 03/31/2017].
[ii] William Gentry. (2016). Rewards multiply with workplace empathy, Businessolver: http:// http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/brand-connect/businessolver/rewards-multiply-with-workplace-empathy/ [checked on 03/31/2017].
[iii] Roman Krznaric. (2014). Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It. New York: Perigree Book (Penguin): 120.
[iv] C.W. Von Bergen, Jr. and Robert E. Shealy. (1982). How’s your empathy? Training and Development Journal, November 1982: 22–28: http://homepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2012/11/Hows-Your-Empathy.pdf [checked on 03/31/2017].
[v] Research Staff. (2016). High Resolution Leadership, Data Dimensions, Intl.: http://insight. ddiworld.com/High-Resolution-Leadership [checked on 03/31/2017].
[vi] William Gentry, Todd J. Weber, Golnaz Sadri. (2007). Empathy in the workplace: A tool for effective leadership, http://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EmpathyInTheWorkplace.pdf [checked on 03/31/2017].
[vii] Bernard E. Harcourt. (2015). Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[viii] Daniel Kahneman. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Empathy versus bullying: Part 2: Online bullying and what to do about it
Listen as a podcast on Spotify (via Anchor): https://anchor.fm/lou-agosta-phd/episodes/Empathy-versus-bullying-Part-2-Online-bullying-and-what-to-do-about-it-e17hj9j
The cyber bully: The rule of thumb is that whatever a person does in life offline, the person does online, too. Whatever the person does in the non-electronic world of personal encounters, the person also does online in social networking. Therefore, people who are mean in person, will be mean online. People who are cruel in person will be cruel online. However, the impersonality of the online milieu can amplify the tendency. The lack of context of the online environment can intensify the upset and impact all around.
Prior to social media such as Facebook, bullied kids could find a haven from a heartless world at home. Now the kid who is the target of the bullying, having survived the day at school, survived the ride home on the bus, gets home, naively turns on the computer and (wham!) experiences additional, hurtful boundary violations. The unsophisticated kid, who does not know when to “power down” and hit the off button for her or his own mental health, can become quasi-hypnotically obsessed with checking and rechecking for devaluing comments.
No, the mere passage of time does not cause insulting online comments to go away. Social media make it possible for people to “pile on” and accumulate more “likes” for a hurtful remark. Furthermore, cyber-bullying can be perpetrated relatively anonymously with pseudonyms.
Fake accounts on Google or Facebook eventually get unmasked and deleted; but it takes time; and new fakes seem to spring up just as fast as the old ones get identified and deleted. If giant corporations, supposedly sophisticated politicians and business persons, major law enforcement organizations, the US government, and the US population at large, can be “faked out” by faked identities and misleading “news,” pity the middle school kid in the face of anonymous, hurtful language directed at her or him.
As the latest debunking of the pretensions of Facebook unfolds on the front page of the Wall Street Journal [no progressive rag, that publication!], the susceptibility of online platforms to fake everything is taking its place among the unintended (and deeply disturbing) consequences of technology that will live on.[i]
Figuring out who is doing what to whom online and when they are doing it requires a forensic inquiry of significant subtlety, time, and effort. School administrators are flummoxed, because the bullying is initiated off-campus.
How is it then that the school resources, already stretched thin, now must be marshaled to establish responsibility for policing such misbehavior? The target of the bullying may be asked to demonstrate that the abuse is affecting her or his school work. More blaming the victim?
Of course bullying is not a logical process. An ultimatum from a bully to her or his minion is itself a form of bullying: Call some prepubertal girl a “slut” or we won’t be friends anymore. Hello? If this were a logical process, then the would-be minion would already know that the friendship ended with the very request, since friendship is not conditional on hurtful (and unethical) words or behavior.
To many kids “friendship” means something quite different than “share wholesome experiences.” It means laugh at my jokes even if they are not funny, say my hair looks great even if it doesn’t, sit with me in the cafeteria at lunch, and do not flirt with the boy in whom I am interested this week. These young people do not know that book Nine of Aristotle’s Ethics is on friendship. The expectation that such an explanation would elicit any response from the young person other than eye rolling is doubtful. Still, it may be worth a try.
Given that cyber bullying has exploded as a form of online pathology, let us take a look at proper online conduct even in the absence of bullying.
The genie is out of the bottle—the genie is social networking
Social networking is not going away. Humans invented computers and smart interfaces. Let’s be smart is using them. When the child is interacting through Internet video with a family member living on another continent, then such an interaction is a boundary expanding and richly rewarding experience. When a parent and child are playing a game together using a computer screen, the benefit is in the parent-child interaction as such. The rich computer graphics are a bonus.
The paradox is the anti-social nature of social networking. The computer screen isolates the person even as the person is trying to connect. The contrary is also the case. The screen connects the person when the person wants to be alone, rudely announcing an incoming message by beeping, demanding one’s attention. Sometimes the screen brings out the anti-social tendencies instead of the pro-social ones, enabling one to be inauthentic, hiding behind a false self. [ii]
It is perhaps a symptom of the broader issue that the online world even calls forth innovations in punishment. Taken to its logical conclusion, the savvy, harried parent steals a march on the technology. The ultimate method of grounding? Take away the child’s electricity, thereby having a “time out” on the use of electronic devices. However, during the time out do something positive. Read a book! Play a board game with your sister. If the latter seems too much like a punishment, paint a picture or go for a bike ride.
The challenge is to find a balance that allows our humanity its due.
The rule of thumb is easy to say but hard to do: Seek balance in time and emotional equilibrium between online and offline engagement. Trial and error is a part of the process. By the time you get it just right, the kids will be going off to college, and they will have the skills they need to manage the online jungle on their own.
As the New Yorker cartoon famously observed about a dog sitting at a computer, “on the Internet no one knows you are a dog.” People who have issues with their self-esteem are both attracted and entrapped by the lure of being whatever they want to be online. Nothing wrong with fantasy as such. Many of us build castles in the sky. But only a few of us try to move into them; and those that do so are headed for trouble for so many reasons.
Children have to be 13 years or older to sign up for Facebook, and it is on that platform that we will concentrate here. The risks to children of all ages are real: online “cyber bulling,” vulnerability to predatory adults, sharing too much information, identity theft, and exposure to age-inappropriate content from advertisers, news, or stranger danger. The possibilities of getting paranoid about stranger danger are very real, but, as has been noted repeatedly, just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get ya.
As regards the age limit, I am grateful for it, and I see it as a useful reason to deny access to children of tender age, who lack readiness for the risks of the online world: “I did not make the rule, and it seems sensible to me.” Unless the child is actually working on a project with NASA, I see no reason to make an exception for children under 13. “But Susie’s mom lied to help her get an account!” As my mother used to say when I wanted to play in traffic like the other kids: “Yes, everybody is doing it; but you shall not!” The challenge is to figure out where is the boundary and how to navigate it.
A word of caution to policy makers: Do not make a rule prohibiting that which you cannot enforce. A heavy hand is counter-productive.
For example, thousands of adults did not even know they were interested in drinking alcohol until the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited it in 1919. Then drinking alcohol suddenly became strangely attractive. Likewise, Susie did not even want to get online until someone told her that she could not do so. The prohibition creates the desire.
To make matters even more challenging, the boundary lines keep changing. Such is the case with social networking. Computers, tablets, and smart phones are widely available, and unless you are planning on moving the family “off the grid,” youngsters need to be taught how to use social networking sensibly, safely, to have fun, and be productive with it.
To err is human, really to mess up requires an Internet connection.
Imperfect but empathic human beings try to navigate unempathic, imperfect social networks. This in itself is the business case for empathy-centered design of human and system relatedness. This is sometimes called “usability” testing. The computer system must be useable by error prone human beings. This points to another parental rule of thumb: if one’s experience of the computer is not useful or productive or if it is not fun, then a “time out” is in order. Say three words. Not “I love you,” but “Pull the plug.” Same idea.
Empathy lessons for parents of kids going online
What are the empathy lessons for parents around screen time, devices, and the relationships of kids with personal technology? Closely related to this question about how much time online is too much, is the issue of how best to manage the time children do in fact spend engaging with computer devices.
Children are great imitators. They want to be just like the adults, who seem constantly to have their noses buried in their electronic devices or a phone glued to their ear. Even when parents are at home, they are not fully present. Think about it. Grown up behavior speaks volumes to the children.
The good example parents set in laying aside electronic devices and relating in person to other persons speaks volume to the children. So does any behavior that demonstrates a parent’s commitment to drama or using social media to drive personal conflicts.
The authority with which a phone call, text, or email arrives from work, and the parent drops what she or he is doing to attend to it, says everything to the child. The rest is just a lecture that lands like “blah, blah, blah.”
On the spectrum of guidance extending from empathy all the way to tough love, here is the tough love for parents regarding the amount of time spent online, on screens: Look at your own example.
If you interrupt your conversation with your child to attend to a call, email, or text, you are an enabler. You were perhaps expecting the child to behave otherwise? You have demonstrated, clearly nothing is more important than attending to beeping, barking electronic appliances. The text or call is more important than your child. Your empathy is in break down. Ouch! Clean up your act.
A recurring theme of these lessons is that authenticity is the foundation of the work we are doing on empathy, and so before talking to the children about their use of electronics, come clean about your own electronic inauthenticities.
The empathy lesson? Set boundaries. Look for balance. Be responsible. Own it. Manage the amount of time children and young people spend on their screen by empathic parenting. Children of all ages are sensitive to any discrepancies between what grown ups say and what they do. Empathic parenting is about boundary setting. With older children, “first you do your homework, then you go to the mall (or play a computer game).” Children of all ages will inevitably test the boundaries, so have an explanation that privileges what you value about community, healthy personal relations, and friendship.
With electronic devices, rather than set an arbitrary number of hours that probably cannot be enforced, begin by creating an electronic device free zone. Start with dinner if your family is able to eat together or perhaps designate a time on the clock such as 8 to 9 pm to quiesce the electronics. This is good sleep hygiene too.
Rather than be negative, think positively. It is not just turn off the computers; but, especially for children of tender age, turn off the computer and let’s read a story book together. Turn off the computer and let’s play blocks. Turn off the computer and let’s play catch (weather permitting). Visit with friends in person. For older kids, dance lessons, gymnastics, science club, chess club (where you sit across from a real person), organized sports, hobbies, or arts and crafts. This will surface the parent’s ultimate inauthenticity. Just as in the days of old, when the parent used to sit the kid in front of the TV as a form of baby sitting, likewise with computer games.
Nothing is wrong as such with harried parents pushed down into survival occasionally using screens as baby sitters. Just be aware that something is missing from the virtual reality milieu—the first person relatedness of a human being with another human being. Within limits, nothing is wrong, but something is missing—empathy. I doubt that virtual reality is like the “good enough” parent. When virtual reality crowds out real reality—authentic human presence, then the time has come to call a “time out” on the use of devices.
For young people who are teenagers, the idea is similar. Don’t be negative; rather substitute something positive—and then turn off the device. Sports? Dance lessons? Cooking lessons? Tai Chi? Jogging? Volunteering at the Jaycees? An ice cream social? Window shopping in person? The opportunity is to teach social skills that require relating to another human being who is present at hand in person.
The mirage of popularity migrates online, too, especially as children enter middle and high school. The details differ, but the psychology of puberty does not. The influence of peer groups, which are emotionally (though not financially) more important to the teenager than family, is a standard part of the developmental process of separating from parents and leaving home to contribute to the community at large. The volatility of emotions due to hormones combines with experimentation, resulting in a high level of stress (for all): “I hate you! Drop me off at the mall?” This too shall pass.
Teenagers are experimenting with identity, emerging sexuality, and boundaries of all kinds. Why should they not experiment with online boundaries, too? The guidance is the same: “Check in! Don’t hurt yourself.”
At least prior to going away to college, the 13–17 year old group continues to require guidance and limit setting. If the teenager is involved in after school activities, is attentive in doing her or his homework, and has some friends who periodically show up in person, then the teenager is developing in a wholesome way. There is limited time for online networking and online misadventures.
The isolated individual, the socially awkward teen, for whom being online is a substitute for getting out of her or his comfort zone, is the concern. Perhaps the individual has experienced shaming or bullying. Or the individual is so sensitive that thoughtless statements that bounce off of most kids are experienced as hurtful. Here the amount of time spent online is the symptom of a problem, not the cause. I repeat: the symptom, not the cause.
When the child clings to his device and cannot be separated from it as if it were the beloved teddy bear, then, speaking personally, I start associating to the disturbing experiments with severely deprived macaque monkeys of Harry Harlow.[iii] Separated from their biological birth mothers, these monkeys clung desperately to the piece of cloth on the wire surrogate mother, even though it did not have a nipple. They would rather go hungry than forego contact with the cloth, surrogate mother. Heart breaking.
Restricting online access when that may be the main thing holding the teenager’s shaky sense of self together is likely to cause more conflicts, breakdowns in relatedness, withdrawal, and expanding isolation, not emotional equilibrium or empathy. Restricting online access does not provide the longed for balance. Further upsets and disagreements are predictable.
The challenge is that the teen is precisely at risk of re-enacting online an emotional upset similar to that with which he is struggling offline. What then provides the emotional equilibrium and deescalates the conflict?
If the parent has a relationship with the teenager, it is time for a heart-to-heart conversation—actually a series of them. Something is troubling the teen, and a grown up needs to find out what it is and take corrective action. Trouble at school with academics? With peers? If it is trouble at home—serious illness in the family, pending divorce, or financial setbacks—then these have to be surfaced, called out, and acknowledged. If the teenager is still unresponsive to parental overtures, then professional intervention may be required.
So much for the tough love. Now for the empathy. For children, especially of tender age, play is serious business. Group activities—whether play dates for younger children or organized clubs for older ones—activate and develop social skills, including empathy, whereas screens tend to isolate. That is so even if the screen is networked to include other players, who, however, do not necessarily show up as anything other than a function of the computer system.
The child’s job is to develop her emotional and cognitive abilities through the productive imagination activated in play. In so far as computer games and explorations can promote play and be integrated into play, all well and good. Yet the screen is intrinsically limiting, appealing to the reproductive, repetitive imagination. Still, many kinds of play do not require a screen.
For example, the graphics and images of the Magic School Bus are engaging, especially for children of tender age. The school bus becomes a space ship (or submarine or time machine and so on) voyaging out to explore the planets in the solar system, undersea world, or the inside of the human body.
However, every kid knows how to play at being a rocket ship or air plane without electronics: you stick out your arms, make a rocket motor noise, and run around the dining room table—to a neighboring solar system. The child’s entire body is fully engaged in motion. The child’s mind is fully engaged in fantasy. The child’s full self is active. The child’s mind is expanded. My only concern is that the child does not think that one needs an electronic device to fly. Make believe does the job very nicely, thank you. The productive imagination knows no limits of screen size.
Do not underestimate the power of a large cardboard box such as one might use to deliver a washing machine or refrigerator. Cut a couple of holes in it, and it becomes a space ship or the bridge of the RMS Titanic. Given some crayons or felt tip pens, it can be decorated with the markings of NASA or a personally invented team. Cut another hole in it, and it becomes the castle in which Sleeping Beauty is a prisoner or it becomes the Spirit of Saint Louis making the first solo transatlantic flight. If the computer game promotes imagination and innovation, then take the game and act it out by playing “make believe” with an actual cardboard box that Carmen the Explorer can use as a motor boat to sail up the River Nile. Bon voyage!
How to understand the child’s and the teen’s relationships with technology?
How should parents understand the relationship that children have with their devices in terms of empathy or lack thereof? Just as a teenager would not be allowed to drive a car without lessons and passing a test, access to the fun features of social networking comes with responsibilities. In both cases, one can hurt oneself and others. I am not advocating licensing online users—which would be an unconstitutional restriction of free speech (we can’t go there now!). However, new privileges imply new responsibilities. For teenagers and emerging adults, “Don’t hurt yourself (or others)!” remains essential guidance at all times.
The teenager needs to understand that there are some people “out there” in cyberspace who are not only not nice but dangerous in rather unpleasant ways. Do not click on communications that seem to arrive with authority from an unknown source or supposedly from a friend, but something just doesn’t seem right. What to do? Ask a grown up? Find someone who is computer savvy. The Help Desk should tell you: “Don’t click. Delete. If it’s important, they will pick up the phone or send a letter.”
As with any privilege, teenagers test limits. Recommend the Golden Rule: Treat others as you yourself want to be treated online and off. If it seems mean, do not do it. That means no devaluing language, no being mean to those who may be struggling with family or school issues, and speaking with integrity.
Kids immediately get it that “on the Internet no one knows if you are a dog.” Why is the creation of fantasy (i.e., fake) identities online any different from when kids used to brag, “I got more stuff from Santa Claus than you did!”? It is harder to get caught? Perhaps. Even if parents have their children’s passwords and access to their online resources, no one has time to monitor all the back-and-forth drama to which teenage life is prone. No one aspires to operate a mini-NSA (one of the spy agencies). Rather trust—but verify. Verify empathically. Spot check. Listen empathically for signs of upset or devaluing language. Watch for unexplained changes of mood and so on.
I repeat: trust—but verify empathically. Manage by exception—and if an exception shows up, then express concern and ask for her or his side of the story. Give a warning that the unacceptable behavior must stop—if the child is the perpetrator—whether cyber bullying or cheating or spending hours gossiping. If the questionable behavior does not stop, then see above—pull the plug. Confiscate the electronic appliance for a specific time period and until a commitment is forthcoming to change the behavior.
However, what if the electronic device is a smart phone and the child needs it to “check in” or coordinate pick up after school? If the family is affluent enough for the child to have a smart phone, then the family is affluent enough for the parent to swap out the smart phone for a flip phone or dumb device that enables a simple phone call. Take the SIM card out of the one and put it in the “dumb” phone. I wish there was an easier way, and, yes, it has come to that! Take away the teenager’s electricity, the ultimate form of “being grounded.”
Now after this significant digression into cyberspace and its challenges, we take the conversation back up a level, returning to the work of expanding empathy in the world of authentic human interactions, of which none are more important than those with our children. Many adults and teenagers will benefit from these recommendations, but they are initially for children of tender age.
Empathy lessons with children
(1) Lead by example: When parents demonstrate the ability to take the point of view of other people in solving problems, children learn by example. When parents demonstrate emotional drama and complaining, children learn by example. Be the role model that you want to see your children imitate. Be an example of the change you want to see.[iv]
(2) Speak in the first person: Use “I” as a way of establishing a firm boundary between self and other. “I don’t like it when you that word ‘x’. It hurts my feelings. Please stop it.”
(3) Validate the feelings of other people: “Sally is feeling angry because you took her ball. Please give Sally her ball back and then pick another one to play with.” In other cases, validation does not necessarily mean agreement; but it means recognizing that the other person does indeed feel the way she feels. Validate by finding the grain of truth in the other person’s perception.
(4) Use play to get access to how other’s feel: Talk with children of tender age about feelings and empathy as you play. For example, you might have your child’s stuffed dog say that he does not want to take turns with his friend, the stuffed tiger. Then ask your child: “How do you think tiger feels? What should we tell this silly dog?”
(5) Empathize with your child: As a parent you are a significant source of insight into what your child is experiencing. “Are you feeling sad that Sally cannot come over and play? That is a disappointment. She wanted to come; but she got sick and has to stay home. She can come next Friday. In the meantime, we can call your friend Jane and see what she is up to.”
(6) Suggest how children can be empathic: “Let’s make Sally a ‘Get well soon card’ and send it to her in the mail.”
(7) Validate your child’s upsetting emotions: Help the child understand what he or she is experiencing. Instead of immediately trying to substitute a positive emotion for anger, sadness, or fear, acknowledge that feelings can be upsetting. Identifying and validating upsetting feelings helps children to manage them: “You are really angry that I turned off the computer. I understand. You were playing your race car game. It’s okay to feel angry. When you are done being angry, you can join me fixing a sandwich for lunch.” Thus, children learn that feelings are important, but feelings do not have to run our lives. Feelings make us human and show us interesting things too.
(8) Be responsible for one’s actions and the consequences: Instead of rushing to have the child of tender age say “I’m sorry” when he has hurt another child, hit the pause button. Many children do not even know the meaning of the words “I’m sorry.” Rather invite the child to look at the consequences for the other child’s feelings and well-being. “Jane, why do you think Sally is crying? What happened? She skinned her knee when you pushed her. Let’s see if she is okay. Let’s get her some first aid. Here is some petroleum jelly and a bandage.” Sometimes the consequences of our actions escape from us. Help the child make the connection between the action (pushing) and the consequences (a skinned knee and crying).
(9) Be patient: Practice patience if a toddler or a child of tender age does not get it right the first time out. The parent may not even know whether or not the child of tender age literally understands what is being said. Be prepared to wait before judging and assessing based on ongoing, future behavior. Indeed throughout many of these examples, the cynical take away may be: “Hey, these parents seem to have time to relate to their children. Wouldn’t it be nice?” Empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it.
(10) Teach the child to identify feelings and emotions: Provide guidance in how to recognize emotions in others. We try to teach a child, who fusses and bangs on his high chair because he wants more milk, to say the words: “More milk, please!” The words are not a description of his feeling of hunger or impatience; rather the words substitute for the expression of hunger or impatience. Likewise, the word “pain” is not a description of the sensation of throbbing when the child has jammed his toe, it is an articulation in human speech that expresses upset and provides an alternative to screaming.
We teach our child well to use sentences like “I hurt my toe!” as a substitute for crying in pain. Shouts of distress are the natural expression of pain, but are notoriously unhelpful in determining the particulars. We substitute expressions such as “my toe hurts” for natural expressions as tears or cries of pain.
Given the nuances of human experiences and emotions, and the relative lack of explicit training in expressing them, it is not surprising that many people lack skill in identifying and communicating feelings and emotions.
Simultaneously, we work with children on recognizing such experiences in others. It is often easier to see that Sally is in distress, crying due to a scraped knee, than when that happens to the child himself (who is then preoccupied with his own “owie”). We work from both the outside in and from the inside out, and eventually meet in the middle, being able to communicate our experiences and emotions to others and ourselves. Meanwhile, when relationships have become weaponized, as in bullying then the issue has to be how to implement a disarmament plan. The issue is how to de-weaponize relationships. In the following and third post in this series, I directly address students, parents, and teachers/administrators with recommendations.
[i] September 18, 2021: “The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation,” Jeff Horwitz, Keach Hagey, Newley Purnell, Sam Schechner, Emily Glazer: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039?mod=hp_lead_pos7 See also: Mike Isaac and Scott Shane. (2017). Facebook’s Russia-linked ads came in many disguises, The New York Times, Oct 2, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/technology/facebook-russia-ads-.html [checked on Oct 15, 2017].
[ii] I express my thanks to Firas Nakshabandi, MD, for conversations, ideas, and input on social networking and raising children. Very thoughtful; very empathic.
[iii] Harry F. Harlow. (1958). The nature of love, American Psychologist, 13, 673– 685.
[iv] These recommendations, liberally adapted with acknowledgement and thanks to Claire Lerner and Rebecca Parlakian. (2016). How to help your child develop empathy, Zero to Three: Early Connections Last a Lifetime: https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/5-how-to-help-your-child-develop-empathy [checked on June 26, 2017].
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
Resistance to Empathy and How to Overcome it (Part 1: Organizational Resistance to Empathy)
You don’t need an expert to practice empathy
Every parent, teacher, doctor, social worker, sales person, person with customers, first responder, consultant, neighbor, or taxi driver already knows a lot about empathy. They would not be successful, much less survive, if they did not practice empathy. You may need a license to be a barber and cut hair. However, outside totalitarian state, no one can require that you have a license to do what comes spontaneously to the vast majority of human beings—be empathic. However, an expert can be helpful in clarifying distinctions, providing tips and techniques, and modeling the empathy you want to get or apply and expand.
Parents are naturally empathic towards their children; teachers, towards their students; medical doctors, towards their patients; business people, towards their customers, consultants towards their clients, and so on. Even if a person is clumsy and does not get empathy quite right, people can’t stop doing it. Yes, that’s right—people can’t stop being empathic; but then fear stops them—fear of experiencing vicariously another person’s pain, struggle, conflict, or suffering—and a breakdown occurs in their empathy. There must be something wrong here! Blame starts flying around. They blame themselves. They blame the other person. They blame empathy.
Even if doctors are trained to “tune down” their spontaneous empathy until it becomes “detached concern”—and good reasons exist for doing that at times—empathy naturally breaks through, and they often relate authentically to their patients as one human being to another in spite of themselves.[i]
The really useful thing is that in learning to contract one’s empathy, one is also learning expand it, because one is learning to regulate and manage empathy. Contracting one’s empathy also means being able to expand it. “Dialing down” empathy also means being able to “dial up” empathy.
“Dialing down” empathy does not mean “stop listening,” “be unkind,” “blame,” “make wrong,” “reject,” “be hostile,” “use devaluing speech,” or “feign thoughtlessness.” Such a response would be absurd.
There is a sense in which a feeling may be socially appropriate or inappropriate—for example to laugh at a funeral when nothing is funny—feelings are valid in themselves in that they always are what they are.
A feeling may be an inarticulate judgment—fear being the judgment that one should run from danger—especially if a mountain lion is coming around the bend. The fear is an absolute given in the moment.
One may wish that one felt differently than one does in fact feel in the moment; but that one feels a certain way is an absolute given.
The best way to turn fear into an out-an-out panic attack is to say to oneself: “This (fear) should not be!” But of course it is, so that means what? One has lost control. Panic!
The recommendation? Accepting the feelings as what’s so does not make an unpleasant feeling any easier to bear, but it takes away its power, drains the upset out of it, and gives one space to be in equilibrium with oneself again. Thus, radical acceptance of the feeling is an effective method of “dialing down” one’s empathy.
Most people are naturally empathic, but they lack practice. They set about practicing empathy, but are clumsy. Or they had a bad experience in relation to their own empathy or someone else’s (lack of) empathy. They develop a “flinch reflex” when it comes to practicing empathy. For such individuals, resistance to empathy replaces their spontaneous empathy. Most people use empathy every day, and do not need an expert to tell them what it is. Olympic athletes get a coach, but it is not because they are not good at what they do. They are good at what they do; and are striving to get to the next level of excellence. Few people claim to be really good at empathizing. Those persons who are practiced in empathy can be useful coaches in helping one to clarify definitions, engage the hard cases, and distinguish how to transform breakdowns of empathy into breakthroughs that make a difference.
Using empathy—practicing empathy—sometimes means being used by empathy. Yes, empathy uses us.
“Being used by empathy” means that the person has trained in being empathic, so that the person has a level of mastery that allows the person to be empathic (or not) without thinking too much about it. Empathy has become practiced, habitual, and automatic.
There’s what we know we know about empathy. There’s what we know we do not know about empathy and hope to find out. Where did the word come from? What are mirror neurons anyway? How does one expand one’s empathy?
Finally, there is what we do not even know we do not know about empathy. The third area is where this book and its training operates—what we do not even know we do not know: our blind spots about empathy; our vulnerability, shame, and cynicism in relating to others; and our resistance to empathy.
Empathy requires that one get “up close and personal” with other people. Other people can be notoriously difficult, irritable, dishonest, manipulative, apathetic, too pushy, or contrary. Other people resist being on the receiving end of empathy, because being understood makes them feel vulnerable.
If someone understands me, really understands me, then he can use what he understands about me to take advantage of me. Now an authentically empathic person would not do that, but the world is not known for being filled with authentically empathic people.
Well-intentioned persons sometimes simply misunderstand what empathy is and are resisting something else that they happen to call “empathy.” They mistake the breakdown of empathy in emotional contagion, conformity, projection, distortion, mind reading, or lack of responsiveness, for empathy proper, and throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water. The empathy lesson in confronting resistance to empathy is direct: remove the resistance to empathy, and empathy comes forth, develops, and blossoms. Empathy expands.
Overcome resistance to empathy: empathy expands
Another person’s blind spots are easy to see, but one struggles to catch a glimpse of one’s own. Thus, one of my own blind spots about empathy comes into view, albeit in my peripheral vision. When I do not get my way, I have the thought that the other person (or the world) is unempathic. This is of course absurd and self-serving, though, heaven knows, empathy is unevenly distributed in the world. The empathy lesson? Wherever there is empathy, can narcissism be far away? (No.) Thus, I clean up the thought—give it up, distinguish it as not helpful, let it go. But no matter how may times I give it up, the next time I am frustrated, it seems like there is that thought again, coming into view like the grin on the Cheshire cat. Only now it becomes an inside joke, and a challenge to earn my empathic wings everyday.
This lesson is easy to express, hard to do. The devil is in the details. One has to descend into the hell of one’s empathy breakdowns in order to emerge from the refiner’s fire of self-inquiry with renewed commitment to empathy, relatedness, and community. This sounds too hard. No one said it would be easy.
How to start? One begins by introspecting. Acknowledging one’s own lack of integrity and inauthenticity in the matter of empathy. Like the labors of the mythical hero Hercules, there is a whole lot of shoveling of manure to be performed.
Cleaning up broken interpersonal relationships is on the agenda. Repairing integrity outages and inauthenticities is in order. Empathy training includes the requirement to go out into the world of one’s relations with other persons and engage and practice.
The very idea of resistance to empathy inspires resistance. The idea of resistance to empathy requires motivation.
What could that even be? Resistance to empathy seems to make no sense. It sounds like resisting motherhood, puppies, or apple pie.
The idea that some people would resist empathy is surprising. Very surprising. What’s not to like about empathy? A great deal it seems. Even within this way of talking, appearances can be deceptive. Puppies make a mess on the new carpet. Apple pie is delicious, but it makes one fat. Mothers are wonderful people. The human race owes its existence to those who are mothers both individually and as a community; but motherhood is a damn tough job, not withstanding its many rewards. Mothers require a lot of support. Volunteers?
In general, receiving empathy is like getting a gift; providing empathy requires effort. Getting empathy is a benefit. Providing empathy requires listening to the other person, attending to one’s introspective reaction to the other person, managing the increase in tension, living with the uncertainty of being open to the other person, being vulnerable, and risking misunderstanding. This is why providing empathy inspires resistance. It requires work.
On the other hand, receiving empathy from a committed listener has been compared to sinking back into a warm bath. It is relaxing. It reduces stress. It is restorative of one’s emotional equilibrium. However, even in a one-on-one conversation, receiving empathy sometimes feels like being publicly acknowledged and recognized at a banquet. It has its uncomfortable side.
It is not always easy to be explicitly acknowledged and recognized for one’s contribution. One may feel ambivalent about being exposed and vulnerable. So even receiving empathy, though properly regarded as a benefit, has its conditions and qualifications; and some people are made painfully self-conscious by being acknowledged.
Whether one is giving empathy or receiving it, empathy has its dark side. If one is committed to giving empathy—being empathic—one is vulnerable to burnout, empathic distress, or “compassion fatigue.” If one is on the receiving end of empathic receptivity, though a restorative experience, one is still exposed in one’s potential weaknesses and limitations. One feels vulnerable to misunderstanding by the other person, to whom one has exposed oneself emotionally.
At a deeper level, resistance to empathy lives in our individual and collective blind spots about our dear self. Where there is empathy, can narcissism be far away? “Narcissism” is a way of relating to oneself. The mythical Narcissus was an attractive young man. He was so enamored of his own reflection in the mirror-like surface of the pond—this was before the invention of “selfies”—that he did not see the dangers of his surroundings. In different versions of the myth, Narcissus either fell into the water, drowning in his own image of himself, or he was consumed—metaphorically eaten—by the lion of his narcissistic desires, who also frequented the watering hole.
The empathy lesson of the myth of Narcissus? Empathy requires de-emphasizing “the dear self.” Even for someone committed to giving empathy such a de-emphasis of self-love is not automatic. When the empathy being delivered includes recognition, people struggling with self-esteem issues—either too much or too little—find it challenging just to accept the acknowledgement. “Naw, it wasn’t nothing—just doin’ my job.” It is not easy to be acknowledged, and therein lies resistance to empathy, too. Though receiving empathy feels good, it is not easy to open up to another person and acknowledge one’s personal issues, sufferings, sources of shame, or struggles.
In every instance of resistance to empathy, the empathy lesson consists in identifying, engaging, reducing, managing, or eliminating, the resistance to empathy by interpreting the resistance; driving out cynicism, shame, guilt (and so on); saying what is missing the presence of which would make a difference (such as respect for boundaries or contribution); and being open to the possibility—of expanded empathy.
When the resistance is reduced, empathy has space to expand, which it does so spontaneously as well as through providing explicit practices, tactics, strategies, and training.
The qualities that make organizations successful are not always the qualities that enhance their empathy. I am so bold as to assert this generalization applies whether the institution is a tax paying public one, listed on the stock exchange, or a nonprofit, community organization. Whether the corporate mission is to deliver value in manufacturing automobiles or to serve the community by collecting and distributing whole human blood to sick people, the ultimate truth is: no money, no mission.
Yet to say that the purpose of one’s business is to make money is like saying the purpose of life is to keep on breathing. Well, okay. The two are closely related. Definitely, don’t stop breathing. But somehow “don’t stop breathing” is not very useful as life guidance; and, likewise, “make money” is not a useful business strategy.
The ongoing process of living—or doing business—should not be confused with the purpose, vision, strategy, and meaning of the activity in the direction of excellence, whether in business or the community.
In most successful organizations, expanding revenue is a result of a successful strategy—applications and implementations that deliver value—and satisfy the demands of the customers, employees, and stakeholders. The expanded revenue is the effect of getting the vision and implementation just right, not the cause of it.
Successful enterprises of all kinds have to handle navigating an intricate, complex network of rules assigned by government, law enforcement, taxing authorities, and non-governmental special interest groups. Business and nonprofit enterprises must contend with competing organizations that assert and authentically believe that they can provide the product or service at lower cost or higher quality. Within the enterprise itself, the organization must balance the personalities of the leaders, individual contributors (workers), and stake-holders, who make up the organization.
An inherent challenge exists in building organizations and crafting an administrative structure that actually functions; and then getting the administrative structure—the bureaucracy—to act in a responsive and balanced way to customers, employees, and stake-holders.
Economies of scale that require fitting people into functions that can be substituted for one another to increase efficiency rarely expand empathy, because empathy consists in recognizing differences in individual contributions.
Hear me say it, and not for the last time: the things that make us good at business, including the corporate transformation of American medicine and education, do not always expand our empathy. What to do about it? The battle is joined. The recommendation?
Let your customers, constituents, or stake-holders train you in empathy: Realize that if you do not respond empathically, the customers are just going to go quietly to the competitor that does. Empathy is good for business. If the customer has a complaint that he is having trouble expressing, then use one’s listening skills to get to the bottom of things.
If the customer expresses anger, know that empathy is one of the best methods, bar none, of deescalating conflict and soothing anger. “Gee, it really does sound like you have not been well treated. Let’s see what we can do to make things better” [or words to that effect].
Still, I do not know of a single organization that as of the date of publication of this book, when making decisions, serving customers, documenting complaints, closing sales, managing conflicts of interest, asks: “What would the empathic response be?”
To be sure, aspects of the empathic response are included in such common factors as “be respectful to customers,” “be helpful to clients,” “keep one’s agreements,” “strive to deliver value.” Empathy is already in the mix, and many customers are willing to pay a premium for empathic services even if they do not use the word “empathy.”
The astute businessperson, committed to expanding the enterprise, knows that “if you want to gather honey, do not knock over the bees’ nest.” This is distinct from empathy, but not by much. Thus, the task is to nurture the seeds of empathy already present in abundance, but lying in hiding in cynicism and denial, while making the case that smart organizations build and deliver value empathically.
The legendary Marshall Field, one of the inventors of the department store, on which the sun is now setting, and a kinder, gentler robber baron of capitalism, is famously quoted as saying, “Give the lady what she wants.” It made Field rich, and his workers well off. It is perhaps a sign of the times that Field’s was purchased by Macy’s some years ago, which has struggles of its own in a world in which retail, having been “Amazoned,” is not what it used to be. So the tenuousness of the market value of empathy can be measured by the mark down of the once storied Field’s Enterprises in the face of Internet shopping.
An alternative redescription of the fire sale of Marshall Field’s flagship stores is that individualized, personalized, customized one-on-one service has moved to the ultimate free market, the Internet, once again, disintermediating the disintermediators. I would not rule out expanded empathy in online cyberspace, but, even allowing for the convenience of shopping naked, it is a work in progress.
Even in mild and efficient bureaucracies, people misuse organizational rules and paper work to create resistance to empathy. Passing the buck, “Not my job,” “I’ll have to get back to you,” “We received no such request,” “I don’t know, and I can’t tell you when,” are common responses. Bureaucrats (which used to mean “office worker,” but is now a devaluing term) address such pseudo-answers not only to customers, but also to their coworkers and managers.
Resistance to empathy uses organizational rules and regulations to build protective walls, instead of teamwork. Without concern for the other person, bureaucracy unwittingly creates obstacles that prevent workers from being present with one another.
Mutually implementing and contributing to agreements with the organization and one another is not a priority. Perpetuating the bureaucracy is. Managing permissions and gaming the system occur to avoid work, rework, and overwork. The threat of uncompensated overtime and overwork consumes the energy required to get the job done.
People automatically and unwittingly fall into resistance to empathy, exploiting the tendency to be territorial.
The organization itself can show up as the unempathic authority figure—like the unempathic parent, who leaves the child feeling devalued, depressed, and de-energized. In response, an individual pushes back against the organization and its rules, disagreeing and speaking truth to power.
Rarely does the organization respond empathically to the individual, but rather urges the individual to conform. The individual asks for an accommodation. “Power” exhorts the individual to comply. “Power” says, “I did not make up the rules—I just enforce them.”
The individual states that the organization exists to serve the stake-holders, not to perpetuate its own rule-making. But rule-making has a way of becoming habit forming, if not addictive. Whenever a problem, issue, or breakdown occurs, the tendency is to try to formulate a rule to cover the new case. If the individual continues for any amount of time in a state of non-compliance, then “power” tends to experience a loss of authority, which is deeply threatening and unacceptable to “power.” Power escalates efforts to force compliance. Power imposes sanctions, increasing the cost to the individual. Empathy struggles to make a difference and be heard.
Compliance is definitely trending. This is the age of compliance. And there is nothing wrong with compliance as such. Stop on red; go on green. Yet sometimes so many “shoulds” exist that doing one’s job can end up on a slope of diminishing returns. Filling out the required paperwork takes an increasing percentage of the workday.
For example, some people train to become nurses because they care about other people, and they want to take care of them and their health. However, when virtually every patient encounter has to be documented to satisfy compliance regulations, then an eight-hour workday includes hours of electronic documentation. Many nurses are saying, “This is not what I signed up for.” Engagement—a synonym for empathic nursing encounters—struggles for space to make a difference.
“Compliance” includes conforming to acceptable boundaries and limits. No one is saying break the rules. No one is saying disregard boundaries. Rather one is saying relate to rules and boundaries empathically. But what does that mean? Even if the light is green, look both ways for emergency equipment or an inattentive driver running the light. Don’t be dead right. And as applied to empathy?
Empathy is about traversing boundaries between individuals. But these include not only boundaries between the self and the other, but boundaries between those in a position of authority and subordinates, between insiders and outsiders in communities, and between those who are insiders and those who feel left out—or are actually marginalized and have become invisible.
Humor and empathy versus cynicism
Cynicism and denial are the enemies of empathy. The empathy lessons are simple: Empathy up, cynicism down. Humor up, empathy up. Yet in the face of life’s challenges, setbacks, and struggles to survive, everyone gets cynical on a bad day.
Ground zero of cynicism and humor is Scott Adam’s Dilbert cartoon. It is wickedly funny, because it expresses more than a grain of truth about dysfunctional, anti-empathic organizations.
In one classic example, the pointy-haired boss says that from now on the organization will assign job functions based on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test (MBPT). For those readers who may not know, the MBPT is the test that distinguishes introversion and extroversion, thinking and feeling, and related categories. The boss continues: “For those of you who do not have a personality, one will be assigned by the human resources department.”[ii] I must say that I am deeply ashamed of myself—I can’t stop laughing.
In humor, stress and psychological tension are created by violating a standard—saying people in corporate cubicles have no personality—and then the stress is released in laughter by the mechanism of the joke such as a pun, double meaning, or violation of expectations.
Humor is closely related to empathy in that both humor and empathy cross a boundary between the self and the other. However, unlike empathy, in which the boundary crossing occurs respectfully, with acknowledgement of the other person’s contribution or struggle, and with recognition of humanity, in humor the boundary between self and other is crossed with aggression, put down, or (in other cases) sexuality. The rule? The more objectionable the joke is, the funnier it is. The put down, “If you do not have a personality, one will be assigned by HR” is indeed wickedly funny; but it is also deeply debunking of the corporate world (and shaming of the individual), in which people come to feel like a gear in an inhuman mechanism.
So empathy for the long suffering inhabitants of corporate cubicles, whose personalities are at risk of being erased, does come to the surface after all. The laughter largely dissolves the cynicism. It is a commonplace in the organizational world that people function as replaceable cogs in a well-oiled machine. Therefore, the cartoon is an example of what not to do. Cynicism and shame drive out empathy; and, more importantly, driving out cynicism and shame create a space into which empathy stands a chance and can expand spontaneously.
How then does one drive out cynicism, shame, denial, and so on? The short answer is by calling it out, acknowledging it, interpreting it, and offering an alternative point of view. Not “alternative facts,” which have come to mean “spin” and “deception”; but an alternative perspective. It is now cynicism versus empathy in the organization.
For example: “Given the challenges we are facing, it is easy to become cynical. However, I have an alternative point of view. If we adhere to our commitments, then the way forward is clear. Not easy, but clear. We have to … remember who we authentically are, serve the customer, be inclusive, expand the community, be guided by our empathy (and so on). We have to live up to our commitment that everyone who comes in contact with the organization, even if we cannot completely solve their problem, is left whole and complete, treated with dignity and respect (and empathy).”
In the face of pervasive cynicism, it takes courage for a person to responds empathically. Such a person may be perceived as a threat to the prevailing, default attitude of “I won’t call you on your lack of authenticity if you don’t call me on mine.” Such a committed person is at risk in standing out from the crowd; but such a person just might provide the leadership, gather the power to make a difference, get the job done with grace and ease under pressure—and get a promotion.
One does not even have to stop being cynical, since it is so pervasive, but one has to adhere to one’s commitment to making a contribution, work to make a positive difference, and deliver value on one’s agreements.
Cynicism is shown up for what it is: taking the easy way out. The practice of empathy is hard work.
It is not only the executive suite, but also the front and back office and every part of the supply chain in between that are staffed by harried people pushed down into survival mode by a cruel gig economy where empathy is not a priority. Of course, empathy gets paid lip service. Please pardon the double negative—one dare not not pay empathy lip service.
However, all-too-often, empathy is too messy. It is too complex. We are not even sure what empathy would mean in an organizational context. We need results now. Suck it up. Get over it. Conform! Nor is there anything wrong with conforming as such. Submit your expense report on time. Even the customer wants to conform, if only he could get the product to function as designed. It is just that empathy is too time consuming, which means—it is too costly.
Yet never was empathy more important than when it seems there is no time for it. Positively expressed, as with most forms of resistance, the method of overcoming it is to call it out and interpret it. Once visible and explicit, it is less formidable.
The empathy of cross-functional teams, managing by walking around, making a contribution, building the bigger team, being inclusive of all the stake-holders, communicating goals and connecting the dots between individual accomplishments and the objectives of the entire organization—these create a clearing in which empathy shows up and makes a profound contribution to the success of the organization.
In addition, one’s employer is not one’s parent. Remember the sign in the common kitchen that says “Your mother does not work here—clean up your dirty dishes!”? Of course your mom told you that, too, and she did “work here” at home, and it still hasn’t snuck in.
Notwithstanding the rich comic possibilities, one’s employer and its leaders do indeed “work here.” Leaders provide powerful examples to whom we look for inspiration. This must give one pause about the state of leadership today. Just as children have to get empathy from their parents before they can give it to others, employees have to see and experience examples of empathy from their leaders to be effective in their own roles as individual contributors. The idea is not to be paternalistic, but to lead by example, the example of empathy.
The difference between banging on a stone and building a cathedral
Executives of all kinds have varying degrees of empathy and different attitudes towards it. It may sound like yet another burden that the CEO now also has to take the role of “Chief Empathy Officer.” This comes up for detailed discussion below in the chapter on the empathy application to “Business and empathy, capitalist tool.”
Meanwhile, when I am bold and ask executives what is the budget in the organization for empathy training and empathy consulting, they usually look at me with a blank stare or just say “zero.” However, when I ask what is the budget to reduce conflict, enhance teamwork, innovate and improve productivity, inspire participation, cause the staff to take ownership of the mission and honor their agreements, then the leaderships sees possibility where none had previously been present and makes it a priority to obtain a budget.
Simply stated, empathy training consists in surfacing the resistances to empathy, the pervasive fear and cynicism (and so on) in the organization that lurks just beneath the surface; interpreting the resistance, and driving it out: “It is perfectly understandable that you would be cynical, given what you have been through, but that is not who you (we) authentically are. Rather we are the possibility of [health, transportation, nutrition, education, retirement, housing, recreation, and so on (according to the mission of the organization)].”
What would it take to design agreements that overcome resistance and commit to aligning organizational and individual goals and then taking action to implement the agreements on an ongoing schedule? The empathy training consists in engaging in a sustained dialogue for possibility around agreements that work for everyone in delivering value.
In particular, overcoming resistance to empathy, expanding empathy, is on the critical path to eliminating or at least reducing organizational conflicts and dysfunctional behaviors. When staff, executives, stake-holders, and so on, expand their empathy for one another and for customers, they are able to deescalate confrontations and negativity; they avoid provocative and devaluing language; and they are able to head off dignity violations, all of which reduce the conflicts that literally suck the life out of organizations.
When employees appreciate the possibilities of empathy, they even try to replace office politics with professional behavior. Staff get more done because they can concentrate on doing their jobs, working smarter, and serving customers and coworkers rather than struggling with departmental politics.
In addition, expanding empathy—overcoming resistance to empathy—is on the critical path to building teams. Empathy is the foundation of community, and the team is nothing if not a community. In empathy, people practice giving acknowledgment and recognition for their contribution to the success of the team and the organization. Being inclusive does not always come naturally or easily to us humans, territorial creatures that we are. We oscillate between closeness and distance like a pendulum.
However, no organization can succeed without including every contributor and turning him or her loose to do the job at hand. Even in hierarchical organizations, where departmental boundaries are rigid, empathy works to demonstrate that good fences makes good neighbors but that gates are needed in the fences through which empathy can be practiced.
Expanding empathy is also on the critical path to innovation and enhancing productivity, because people feel gotten for whom they are as a possibility and as a contribution. They stop withholding and working in quasi-competitive isolation. When they get in touch with one another as possibilities, the business results take off.
Successful leaders know the importance of drawing on the talents of every contributor. When employees get a sense of how their role and contribution fits into the whole, they work to deliver on their commitments.
That is the key to improved productivity. People are generous in sharing their ideas for process and product improvement, because they feel confident their contribution makes a difference and is recognized. For example, two workers are going through the same motions, making the same gestures. An empathic milieu makes the difference between the one, who is banging with a hammer and chisel on a chunk of stone, and the other, who is building a cathedral. The worker’s gestures are exactly the same. The one is sentenced to hard labor; the other participates in greatness.
[i] Jodi Halpern. (2001). From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[ii] Scott Adams. (1996). The Dilbert Principle. New York: Harper Business.
Lou Agosta, Ph.D., Listening With Empathy 