
What is empathy? - Vigier
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/what-is-empathy/
======
hliyan
Having witnessed many cases of individuals who help the poor, donate to
cancer/heart patients and then turn on a dime and advocate the carpet bombing
of rebel held civilian areas, I'm starting to feel empathy is not the issue.
The empathy circuits are intact in most human beings. The problem is
_dehumanization_.

Empathy is proportional to how "human" we perceive someone/something to be. We
experience the most empathy for close family, friends and individuals we have
met in person. As the distance grows the empathy response reduces. It further
reduces if the victims are portrayed as uncivilized or savage. It further
reduces when the victims are numerous (hundreds of thousands).

~~~
nils-m-holm
In addition to dehumanization, which is a huge problem, there are also people
who just want to be _perceived_ as being empathic and charitable.

There is a couple in my neighborhood that makes a big point out of helping
people in poor countries, sending toys to their children on Christmas, hosting
all kinds of charity events, etc, but on a personal level, they behave like
the numbest troglodytes and could not care less about anybody's needs.

In some people, empathy is a carefully crafted facade without any substance
behind it, which might also be a reason why they are in favor of carpet
bombing.

~~~
gxs
You know, I’ve always felt that the Bay Area, ironically, has a
disproportionate number of these people.

I’m from LA, but live here in the bay, and people often will tell me how fake
Angelinos are.

For my perspective, people in LA might be ostensibly more superficial, but at
least it’s authentic and in general people don’t try to hide it.

Contrast to the Bay Area, it seeems like having a cause is trendy here, which
is superficial in its own way.

I went to cal and ended up staying for friends/work so don’t get me wrong, I
love it here. But like all places, it has it’s own nuances.

------
ThomPete
This is an ongoing discussion I have with many people. There is a weird idea
that empathy is something that makes you good. In reality what it is is
neither good nor bad. It's the ability to put yourself in the emotional state
of someone else to understand things not only from their rational point of
view but from the point of view of them as humans with both irrational
(emotional) and rational perspectives.

It can be used for good or bad not just good and it's doesn't mean that just
because I can put myself in their position I agree with their pov (which many
people will claim i.e. "you have no empathy")

~~~
projektir
> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good.

It's a pretty heavy prerequisite. A lot of bad things can be traced to people
not understanding other people, or refusing to understand them
(dehumanization). It's sufficiently fundamental and a common problem that I'm
not sure how big the cohort of emphatic-but-manipulative people is. It
certainly exists, but there are other issues mixed in there, such as moral
detachment (i.e., people who decided they're not interested in being good).

I believe pretty much all of your typical -isms (sexism, racism, homophobia)
are rooted in lack of empathy towards groups that one is physically unable to
be part of. Most people don't have active empathy ability (i.e., modeling
people not like them), they just empathize with their own experience only.
That's why your otherwise normal people can end up with very problematic
beliefs.

Empathy also requires you to understand the world in a more complete way,
which also tends to break down quite a range of rationalizations, and
rationalizations can lead to a lot of evil, as well.

So while you're technically right that empathy is merely a tool, it's a very
major tool, and I've found people with relationship problems who are telling
me they have no empathy, don't know how to do it, don't want to do it, are
pretty much a dead end.

If I had a button that could suddenly make lots of people more empathetic, I
would absolutely press it and be convinced that it'd make the world a much,
much better place.

~~~
ThomPete
The problem with your belief is that you are assuming that it's easy to define
sexism, racism, homophobia. The reality is that what a lot of people think are
ex one of those three just aren't. Very few people are any of those things in
any meaningful way.

In fact I would claim that your belief is exactly part of the problem in that
you confuse empathy with some ethical/moral idea and end up thinking that you
have the right interpretation and can judge whether someone is racist, sexist
etc.

~~~
ben_w
It’s very easy to define sexism, racism, homophobia. I think the thing which
makes it hard to spot is that we normally treat questions as boolean yes-or-no
things.

For example, a police department which is 10% more likely to let one race off
with warnings than another race _is_ racist (and that’s not a moral judgement:
if warnings are effective everyone should get them), but it’s also an example
deliberately chosen to be as far as possible from racially motivated genocide
as I could manage without the risk of people denying it was racism.

It’s a spectrum. _How much_ do you empathise with $person, not _do you_.

~~~
ThomPete
Its easy to define it but very hard to ascribe it.

------
classics2
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw)

~~~
cko
I used to think I had empathy. I mean, when I see someone being taken
advantage of, I tear up immediately. Until one day my mentor straight up told
me “you have no empathy.”

Which didn’t really bother me, since I’m pretty sure I’m not a sociopath.
(Though that probably wouldn’t bother me either, by definition.)

Watching that video made me realize that what I usually feel is sympathy. I
think I’ve been so fortunate (or complacent) that I can’t really say to
someone “I’ve been there. I know how it feels.” I mean I have been sad and
depressed and lonely, don’t get me wrong, but overall I’m like “holy shit why
am I so lucky?”

Feelings are icky. If a close friend suffers a loss, I just want to do
something practical. Help them move furniture, or babysit their kid or
something. I don’t want to “get down to their level.”

So yeah. No empathy here.

~~~
jehlakj
I believe that nobody can “have” empathy. Putting yourself in someone else’s
shoes is still you who’s in their shoes. It’s just impossible to share the
same emotions as someone if you’ve lived a different life, different
experiences. When we see a teen yelling, “You don’t understand!”, we really
don’t understand even when we were teens ourselves. I’m not a huge fan of the
word because I think the first step to true connection is to admit that you in
fact do not understand, but you’re there for them. Like the video suggests
(which in my opinion isn’t really talking about empathy).

~~~
johnchristopher
The field of communication and information (in humanities) has covered a lot
of ground about that. Of course we can't inject our thoughts directly into
someone else's brain and vice-versa.

If two things have the same properties, there's truly only one thing.

------
pilijupetur
People always confuse sympathy with empathy. That's the reason why a lot of
think that we are showing empathy when we are not. In fact, being empathetic
is difficult. Very few times in our life are we truly empathetic

~~~
jm__87
Personally I think affective empathy is extremely common, but we just
construct strategies to avoid experiencing it too much. Most people are going
to experience some level of suffering if they directly witness another person
suffering. It's just that no one likes that feeling of suffering so we say
smth like "that's too bad but there is nothing i can do here" so we can feel
better and move on with our lives. This is I guess what we call sympathy, but
really I feel it's just a strategy to reduce the impact of the empathy reflex
most of us feel. Imagine what your life would be like if you couldn't get over
the feeling you get when you witness someone else suffering - you would
constantly be suffering yourself and be totally useless to yourself and
others. Strong feelings of empathy aren't necessarily a good thing.

Compassion would be what I think is the difficult thing. Whether you fully
understand what someone else is going through or not, you have an intention to
help them feel better. To actually act in a compassionate way you need to
first feel that others are deserving of your compassion and that can be a very
tough thing to develop for anyone but those who are the very closest to you.

------
Annatar
_Female brains have evolved to be better at empathizing and communicating and
are hard-wired for empathy. Male brains are more suited to rational
understanding and system-building – from making machines and writing software
to engaging in abstract thought, writing music, engaging in politics, or
theorizing about the fundamental foundations of physics._

And herein is the reason why there are so few female engineers, especially in
computer science, laid bare. The task at hand, then, should be to continue
buckling the stereotype in gender segregation: little girls should be
encouraged to become more involved in being system builders and tinkerers,
while little boys should be nurtured to develop and show significantly more
empathy. This will be hard going, but the good news is that it is entirely
doable.

 _Empathy is still a core engineering value._

~~~
Viliam1234
> And herein is the reason why there are so few female engineers, especially
> in computer science, laid bare.

Do I read it correctly that "the reason" does not refer to how brains have
evolved, but rather to the _belief_ about how the brains have developed? In
other words, do you consider the statement about the brains wrong?

If I understand that right, what other related beliefs do you have about
brains? That they are exactly the same for men and women, that sexual hormones
have zero influence on development and functioning of human brains, that all
differences between male and female thinking and behavior are caused by
society? Just making sure I am not debating a strawman.

"Tabula rasa" is a popular opinion in certain political circles, but there are
two obvious problems with it:

1) It does not explain differences between male and female behavior in
animals. Why do e.g. male birds behave differently from female birds; did
patriarchy teach them to? A possible answer would be that evolution created
mechanisms that apply to all animals, but for some reasons they do not apply
to humans. And then humans invented patriarchy, which by sheer coincidence has
a similar effect.

2) How about the brain differences where men get it worse? For example, boys
being more likely autistic than girls; did patriarchy also do that? Because I
am not aware of patriarchy having high opinion about autism; it seems rather
the other way round, nerds being stereotypically bullied by jocks; so why
would then patriarchy encourage boys to become more autistic?

Note: I agree that society often wildly exaggerates the gender differences, or
adds some extra bullshit. I am just saying that this is an exaggeration and
distortion of a real thing, not something invented from scratch.

> little girls should be encouraged to become more involved in being system
> builders and tinkerers, while little boys should be nurtured to develop and
> show significantly more empathy. This will be hard going, but the good news
> is that it is entirely doable.

Lest you get too optimistic, going too far in this direction gives us
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)

~~~
Annatar
_If I understand that right,_

You don’t. Males and females are very, very different because of molecular
biology. That is obvious. However, those differences do not make one or the
other sex superior or inferior. It also does not mean that females aren’t
capable of the same things males are. However, how females think is largely
negatively skewed by upgringing. For example, when I see a small girl pushing
a toy baby carriage, I see all Red because from experience, that’s
brainwashing a little girl that girls are meant to incubate offspring. That’s
an opportunity to produce a really good system bilder and thinker, or perhaps
a scientist, wasted. Females can be just as good engineers and scientists as
males if not better, if only they weren’t being brainwashed during their
upbringing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an intellectual atrocity.

------
ptrincr
_" But an empathy box," he said, stammering in his excitement, "is the most
personal possession you have! It's an extension of your body; it's the way you
touch other humans, it's the way you stop being alone."_

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick

------
mysterypie
Paul Graham had a lot of interesting observations about empathy in his 2003
essay "Hackers and Painters":

 _Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so
hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. You have to
be able to see things from the user 's point of view.

When I was a kid I was always being told to look at things from someone else's
point of view. What this always meant in practice was to do what someone else
wanted, instead of what I wanted. This of course gave empathy a bad name, and
I made a point of not cultivating it.

Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that looking at things from other people's
point of view is practically the secret of success. It doesn't necessarily
mean being self-sacrificing. Far from it. Understanding how someone else sees
things doesn't imply that you'll act in his interest; in some situations-- in
war, for example-- you want to do exactly the opposite.

Most makers make things for a human audience. And to engage an audience you
have to understand what they need. Nearly all the greatest paintings are
paintings of people, for example, because people are what people are
interested in.

Empathy is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker
and a great one. Some hackers are quite smart, but when it comes to empathy
are practically solipsists. It's hard for such people to design great
software, because they can't see things from the user's point of view.

One way to tell how good people are at empathy is to watch them explain a
technical question to someone without a technical background. We probably all
know people who, though otherwise smart, are just comically bad at this. If
someone asks them at a dinner party what a programming language is, they'll
say something like ``Oh, a high-level language is what the compiler uses as
input to generate object code.'' High-level language? Compiler? Object code?
Someone who doesn't know what a programming language is obviously doesn't know
what these things are, either._

Quoted from
[http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)

~~~
jm__87
I find it interesting how many varying definitions for empathy I'm seeing in
this thread. I always thought of empathy to specifically be "feeling
oriented", not simply taking someone else's perspective. Not saying anyone is
wrong here, seems like we have yet to fully come to a consensus on what the
word empathy really means.

~~~
computator
> how many varying definitions for empathy I'm seeing

The words sympathy and empathy are like the words ashamed and embarrassed.
Everyone thinks they know the difference, but when they try to explain it,
they find that it's very difficult to separate the words.

At least for my own mind, I found a handy way of differentiating sympathy and
empathy from a line in The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell: _If I hit my
thumb with a hammer, most people watching will grimace: they 'll mimic my
emotional state. This is what is meant by empathy._ So, then, sympathy is when
you don't grimace but say something like, "I hope you're OK."

------
kashyapc
Paul Bloom (who's provocatively-titled book _Against Empathy: The Case for
Rational Compassion_ is prominently discussed in the article) says something
like the following:

"For example, consider long-distance charity. Someone who hears about the
sorrow of starving children might actually go through the empathetic exercise
of imagining what it is like to starve to death. But this empathetic distress
surely isn’t necessary for charitable giving. A compassionate person might
value others’ lives in the abstract, and, recognizing the misery caused by
starvation, be motivated to act accordingly."

It sure makes someone pause and think, but not quite sure how accurate it is
in the realm of reality. Bloom's talk feels a bit like clever verbal judo to
me. But what do I know...

------
platz
[https://imgur.com/a/5RGnstB](https://imgur.com/a/5RGnstB)

~~~
jetrink
Via OCR:

"Let us imagine for a moment that people have attained happiness — a state of
complete human freedom of will in the widest sense: at that very instant
personality is destroyed. Man becomes as solitary as Beelzebub. The connection
between social beings is cut like the umbilical cord of a new-born infant. And
consequently, society is destroyed. With the force of gravity removed, objects
go flying off into space. (Of course some may say that society ought to be
destroyed so that something completely new and just can be built on the
debris! I don’t know, I am not a destroyer ...)"

Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

------
nathell
The word "empathy" has a somewhat eerie ring to it, as if it were a magical
capability. At least in its most common understanding as "the ability to feel
what another person feels".

Fun fact: that's impossible. You can never be sure what another person is
feeling, because you are not that person. They, and only they, are the sole
authority on their feelings.

Instead, I choose to understand empathy as opening up to the fullest extent
possible: removing all filters, prejudices and opinions, listening to what
another person has to say, and _being_ with them in a mindful way.

As Marshall Rosenberg puts it: “Empathy: emptying our mind and listening with
our whole being.”

~~~
johnchristopher
>

The word "empathy" has a somewhat eerie ring to it, as if it were a magical
capability. At least in its most common understanding as "the ability to feel
what another person feels".

> Fun fact: that's impossible. You can never be sure what another person is
> feeling, because you are not that person. They, and only they, are the sole
> authority on their feelings.

That's because that definition of empathy is wrong and distorted to almost be
a synonym of telepathy.

 _A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empátheia,
literally “passion”) (formed from ἐν (en, “in, at”) + πάθος (páthos,
“feeling”)), coined by Edward Bradford Titchener to translate German
Einfühlung._

 _Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional
state of another person. ex: She had a lot of empathy for her neighbor; she
knew what it was like to lose a parent too._

> Instead, I choose to understand empathy as opening up to the fullest extent
> possible: removing all filters, prejudices and opinions, listening to what
> another person has to say, and being with them in a mindful way.

That's active or good listening but being with them in their emotional state
(whatever that means) isn't yet the definition of trying to understand how
they feel and how they think about the topic at hand. Emptying yourself means
you can't rely on your own life experience to better understand the other one.
(Not a fan of how Rosenberg rephrased that though non violent communication is
really useful in some settings while in otheres you have to act upon feelings
being conveyed to you).

------
edhelas
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_\(software\))

------
woohooyou
Sympathy: fellow-feeling - You are crying, so I cry with you. Empathy: you
experienced something and I want to assist somehow

------
rajman187
but has the bug in fMRI software been fixed ?
[https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-
in...](https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-invalidate-
decades-of-brain-research-scientists-discover)

------
9a89df7a09sdf8
to recognize reality as the extension of the self, maybe. dunno. tough to
think about.

------
Puer
Empathy isn't the ability to say "I understand." Empathy is admitting that,
sometimes, you _don 't_ understand, but you'll still try and be appropriately
supportive.

~~~
slavik81
You state a position, but don't present any argument to support it. You seem
to contradict the dictionary definition[1], so what are you basing your
definition on? Why is that a better definition and how does that relate to the
research in this article?

[1] _" the ability to understand and share the feelings of another"_

~~~
Puer
I don't agree with the notion that you need to "understand" to be empathetic.
If a friend tells me that they're going through a rough time I feel like it's
disingenuous for me to tell them that I understand their situation, even if I
myself have been through difficult periods. I can't and don't feel like I
should give the impression I can understand the nuance of their situation.
I've found it's much more productive to be supportive in situations like that
by saying things like, "I know I can't understand fully what you're going
through right now, but that sounds really hard and if I can help in any way
please let me know" versus "Yeah, I understand what you're dealing with."

If empathy is putting yourself in another person's shoes and that's the
understood general definition... I don't think it's genuine to say that, "Yes,
in these few seconds/minutes/hours since you've told me your problem I have
gone through the effort of visualizing life from your perspective and I now
understand all of your issues." Even if "I understand" is communicated with
good intentions I feel like it rarely looks to productive discussion.

~~~
khedoros1
Well, right, you might not immediately understand and identify with someone
else's problem. That is, you won't empathize with them. But you could say that
you sympathize with them, if their pain causes you to feel pain as well (or
joy, or...whatever). Or their situation may cause you to feel compassionate,
if their suffering makes you want to help. I think that there are already
words that name the feelings you're talking about.

"Empathy" has a generally-accepted meaning. You can disagree with it if you'd
like...but it will hinder communication to use words in ways that they aren't
commonly used.

------
jm__87
Seems this thread is full of varying definitions for various concepts. I've
posted a few comments in this thread myself assuming my own definitions
without really reading a dictionary first, so I'll leave my definitions here
for anyone who might be interested:

Affective empathy: experiencing some level of suffering or discomfort when
visually seeing someone else suffering. This is just a reflex for most of us
that scales with how obvious and immediate the other person's pain appears to
be. Seeing someone get hit by a car or cry will cause this feeling whereas
seeing a depressed person will not as they do not obviously appear to be
suffering.

Cognitive empathy: thinking about someone else's circumstances and thus
feeling some level of shared suffering. This form of empathy does not require
the suffering to be right in front of you for you to feel something and does
require cognitive effort (i.e. is not a reflex). We would use this to
empathize with someone who is depressed.

Sympathy (as in to feel sympathy for someone): feeling empathy but not taking
much time or energy to do anything to help the sufferer and more likely coming
up with some rationalization to help yourself deal with your own feelings
(i.e. they'll be fine, there is nothing i can do). I guess we also have a
concept of "fake sympathy" where someone lies about feeling empathy and then
does nothing.

Compassion: a belief that someone is worth helping and having an intention to
help them if you can, regardless of the degree to which you empathize with
them.

I'm almost certain these definitions are not the "correct ones", but for the
sake of me not amending all my previous comments I'll just leave this here.

