Quotes About Empathy

We have gut feelings, but we also have the capacity to override them, to think through issues, including moral issues, and to come to conclusions that can surprise us. I think this is where the real action is. It's what makes us distinctively human, and it gives us the potential to be better to one another, to create a world with less suffering and more flourishing and happiness. There

As Cicero said about the merits of friendship—but he could just as well have been talking about close relationships in general—it "improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." I would prefer that those who care about me greet my panic with calm and my gloom with good cheer.

Being a good person likely is more related to distanced feelings of compassion and kindness, along with intelligence, self-control, and a sense of justice. Being a bad person has more to do with a lack of regard for others and an inability to control one's appetites.

The idea I'll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling—whatever one chooses to call this—is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we're better off without it.

Or take bullies. There is a stereotype of bullies as social incompetents who take their frustrations out on others. But actually, when it comes to understanding the minds of people, bullies might be better than average—more savvy about what makes other people tick. This is precisely why they can be so successful at bullying. People with low social intelligence, low "cognitive empathy"? Those are more often the bullies' victims.

It's not that empathy itself automatically leads to kindness. Rather, empathy has to connect to kindness that already exists.

How much money and time—and attention and emotional energy—should we spend on ourselves, on those close to us, and on strangers?

If your suffering makes me suffer, if I feel what you feel, that's empathy in the sense that I'm interested in here. But if I understand that you are in pain without feeling it myself, this is what psychologists describe as social cognition, social intelligence, mind reading, theory of mind, or mentalizing. It's also sometimes described as a form of empathy—"cognitive empathy" as opposed to "emotional empathy," which is most of my focus.

I am particularly impressed by the research of Tania Singer, a cognitive neuroscientist, and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk—two scholars working together to explore the distinction between empathy and compassion.

The fifth chapter is about evil, looking skeptically at the view that lack of empathy makes people worse. The final chapter steps back to defend human rationality, arguing that we really do have the capacity to use reasoned deliberation to make it through the world. We live in an age of reason.

For just about any human capacity, you can assess the pros and cons. So let's give empathy the same scrutiny.

Empathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does.

For every specific problem, lack of empathy is seen as the diagnosis and more empathy as the cure.

In contrast to empathy, compassion does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other's well-being. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other

If you can imagine an alternative world, then you can see things through someone else's eyes, even if their sense of reality doesn't match your own. This makes possible perspective-taking, empathy, and much else.

Less empathy, more kindness.

The problems we face as a society and as individuals are rarely due to lack of empathy. Actually, they are often due to too much of it.

the idea that you can't truly understand something without having experienced it yourself.

Here's how to freak out a baby: sit across from the baby, engage with him or her, and then suddenly become still. If this goes on for more than a few seconds, with you looking all corpselike, the baby will become upset.

Making children suffer temporarily for their own good is made possible by love, intelligence, and compassion, but yet again, it can be impeded by empathy.

One study found that nursing students who were especially prone to empathy spent less time providing care to patients and more time seeking out help from other hospital personnel, presumably because of how aversive they found it to deal with people who were suffering.

Further, spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases.

Empathy is limited as well in that it focuses on specific individuals. Its spotlight nature renders it innumerate and myopic: It doesn't resonate properly to the effects of our actions on groups of people, and it is insensitive to statistical data and estimated costs and benefits.

But for us mortals, empathy really is a spotlight. It's a spotlight that has a narrow focus, one that shines most brightly on those we love and gets dim for those who are strange or different or frightening.