[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I’m gonna read you a couple of
statements and I want you to tell me how
well each one describes you through a
show of fingers show of fingers yes a
show of fingers if it doesn’t describe
you at all hold up one finger if it fits
you to a tee hold up five somewhere in
between two three or four got it all
right let’s try I often have tender
concerned feelings for people less
fortunate than me how well does that
describe you all right let’s try again I
tried to look at everyone’s side of a
disagreement before I make a decision
how about that one Wow impressive
the more you agree with statements like
these the more you experience empathy a
simple word for a complex idea think
back to the last time that a friend of
yours was upset
maybe you got his emotion and became
upset too but maybe you also tried to
piece together what it is he felt and
why empathy comprises both of these
abilities to share and also to
understand what other people are going
through the empathy in this room very
high maybe not surprisingly and people’s
collective empathy is like the human
equivalent of a natural resource it’s a
precious one empathic people benefit in
all sorts of ways they are happier and
attract friends more easily than their
less empathic peers they excel at work
especially if their work involves people
like sales or management empathise
benefits ripple outward to patients of
empathic doctors report less depression
employees of empathic managers are less
stressed and empathic people’s romantic
partners are more satisfied in their
relationships but the news is not all
good for one our collective empathy is
eroding over time take the questions
like the one I just asked you people
have been answering questions like these
for decades
allowing psychologists to map our
collective empathy over time here’s the
average empathy score in 1979 and
thirty years later in that time empathy
had decreased so much that the average
person was less empathic than
three-quarters of people thirty years
before and even people who try to be
generally empathic can find it difficult
in some circumstances think back to a
conflict that you had with someone in
the last month or week or day many of
you told me just now that you’re
extremely impactful
empathy becomes too hard and we abandon
it altogether right now
politics is America’s empathic black
hole we’ve retreated into ideological
silos tuning out people who we disagree
with or even worse savoring their pain
this is a fractured time compassion
feels endangered being a psychologist
studying empathy today is a little bit
like being a climatologist studying the
polar icecaps we discover the value of
something just as it disappears all
around us does it have to be this way
that depends on how you think empathy
works for centuries philosophers and
scientists have told us it’s a trait
inherited through our genes hardwired
into our brain saying that you either
have or don’t have I call this the
Roddenberry hypothesis because Gene
Roddenberry enshrined it into the
characters of the greatest television
show of all time Star Trek The Next
Generation no that is not up for debate
thank you I’m glad to have so many
fellow Trekkies here on one side we have
the USS enterprises ships counselor
Deanna Troi
no one’s throughout the galaxy for her
empathy she catches other people’s
feelings and can read their mind on the
other side we have the Android data who
doesn’t feel emotions himself and can’t
tell what other people are feeling
either according to conventional wisdom
each of us has a level of empathy
somewhere between these two and like our
adult height we’re stuck there for life
so that means if empathy is too hard
you there’s nothing you can do to
overcome your limits and if our
collective empathy is dwindling we can’t
do anything about that either this is
all pretty fatalistic thankfully it’s
also wrong I want to tell you about a
new view of empathy that for me is
actually not new at all in fact it
defined much of my childhood in 1972
Washington State University offered
scholarships to students from the
world’s poorest nations my mom got the
one from Peru and my dad the one from
Pakistan they traveled from Lima and
Lahore each city bigger than New York to
the sleepy town of Pullman where they
fell in love
looking very 70s in the process I might
say for them though it was not meant to
be the biggest thing that my parents had
in common was their foreignness to the
US and as they grew more comfortable in
their new home they grew less
comfortable with each other they
realized that their personalities were
as far apart of their hometowns
they began divorcing when I was six but
didn’t finish until I was ten for years
I was shuttled back and forth between
their houses but I might as well have
been zipping between distant worlds my
mom is quintessentially Peruvian full of
warmth and nerves she values family
above all else my dad prizes intellects
and ambition where he came from the
student who scored highest on an exam
would end up in college and the students
scored second-highest would end up on
the streets I’m an only child and I was
the only bridge between their worlds
when I was with my mom I had to learn
the rules that governed her heart and
mind and make them true for myself but
when I reached the my dad those rules
didn’t apply anymore and I had to
recalibrate he’s very different reality
this was hard emotional labor for a
six-year-old and sometimes it felt like
I’d give up and I’d have to choose
between my mom or my dad but I knew that
for the sake of all of us I had to keep
trying and eventually it got easier
I learned to tune myself to their
different emotional frequencies and that
allowed me to maintain a strong bond
with each of
even if their connection to each other
disintegrated empathy saved me but not
because it came easily my parents
divorce was like an empathy gym for me
forcing me to work at care and
understanding and that experience of
stretching myself and the benefits that
it caused is part of why I study what I
do in the first place over the years I
found lots of evidence that contradicts
standard wisdom but jives with my own
experience it turns out that empathy
isn’t really that much of a trade at all
it’s more like a skill we’re not stuck
at one level of empathy throughout our
lives certain experiences like a hateful
political climate can atrophy it others
like having to manage two very different
parents can grow it and we can grow our
empathy on purpose through practice you
make choices about whether to practice
empathy or not all the time will you
cross the street to avoid a homeless
person or pay attention to their pain
will you dismiss someone who disagrees
with you or try to figure out why they
feel the way they do
when we practice engaging over and over
again we build an empathy that is deeper
broader and more muscular there’s all
sorts of examples of this but I’ll just
give you two the first pertains to the
question that I get asked most of all
which is are women more empathic than
men it certainly seems that way
sometimes maybe we have stories and
there are cases where women outperform
men for instance in tests where they’re
supposed to guess what other people feel
if empathy is a trait then men just
might be all thumbs when it comes to
emotion we might be forever stuck in a
Venus Mars problem but if empathy is a
skill then maybe these differences are
circumstantial to psychologists put this
to the test in a classic study they
first found as others had that women
outperform men on an emotion
understanding task but then they told
both men and women guess what we’ll pay
you for being accurate about what other
people feel
you might guess what’s coming next but
this completely eliminated the gender
gap in empathy so it turns out we’re not
totally hopeless if we have reason to
practice empathy we do and we get better
in the process I think we can all
practice empathy ironically though
simply believing that it’s a trait can
get in our way
decades of evidence demonstrate that
when people think they can’t change
something about themselves
like how smart or open-minded they are
they shy away from challenges when they
think they can grow they open up instead
recently my colleagues and I tested
whether this was true of empathy as well
we had people read articles suggesting
either that empathy was a trait which is
pretty stable over time or that it was a
skill which is changeable and can be
developed
then we ran them through an empathy
obstacle course full of situations that
make caring tough over and over we found
that when people believed that empathy
was a skill they worked harder at it
they spent more time listening to the
struggles of someone of a different race
they spent more energy trying to
understand the perspective of political
outsiders when we empowered them they
stretched their empathy past it’s
typical boundaries as a kid I was lucky
to have an empathy Jim now my lab
provides that opportunity for other
people we’ve worked with hundreds of
college freshmen and thousands of middle
schoolers throughout the Bay Area we
instill in these students the idea that
empathy is a skill and encourages them
to practice it even when it feels hard
because we believe that over time
empathic practice turns into empathic
habits and eventually empathic people
we’re not the only ones in the empathy
building business and I want to tell you
about some people who inspire me sue
Rahr heads police training for the state
of Washington and she’s brought empathy
front and center cadets in her program
like this one go through mock crime
scenes and practice defusing tense
situations by slowing down asking
questions and paying attention to what
other people feel
since Rory took over officers use of
force has declined all over Washington
especially towards people with mental
illness in a dark moment for American
policing she’s cast a light life after
hate was founded by angela king tony
McAleer and their colleagues all of whom
were once white supremacists but now
have reformed and worked to extract
other people from the dark place they
once inhabited hundreds of hate group
members contact life after hate each
year Tony Angela and their colleagues
teach them that although hatred buries
empathy it doesn’t kill it and that even
people have lost their way can get it
back Tony and Angela embodied this in
their own stories
they call themselves formers to
acknowledge their past but also to
acknowledge the idea that we’re all
still forming able to choose new paths
and forge new connections
Tonie Angela and Sue tackle some of the
hardest issues of our time and they
teach us that empathy can bloom even in
barren soil we should all take a page
from their book earlier I told you that
when people no empathy is a skill they
work harder at it hopefully by now you
know empathy is under your control I
challenge all of us to empathize with
purpose especially when it’s hard let’s
point our care at the voiceless the
homeless individual or refugee who we
might otherwise ignore let’s point our
curiosity at people who anger us even
when ignoring them feels easier if more
of us can make choices like this we can
begin to regrow our collective empathy
and mend the tears in our social fabric
and that’s the good news here empathy is
not just a precious resource it’s also a
renewable one thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I’m gonna read you a couple of
statements and I want you to tell me how
well each one describes you through a
show of fingers show of fingers yes a
show of fingers if it doesn’t describe
you at all hold up one finger if it fits
you to a tee hold up five somewhere in
between two three or four got it all
right let’s try I often have tender
concerned feelings for people less
fortunate than me how well does that
describe you all right let’s try again I
tried to look at everyone’s side of a
disagreement before I make a decision
how about that one Wow impressive
the more you agree with statements like
these the more you experience empathy a
simple word for a complex idea think
back to the last time that a friend of
yours was upset
maybe you got his emotion and became
upset too but maybe you also tried to
piece together what it is he felt and
why empathy comprises both of these
abilities to share and also to
understand what other people are going
through the empathy in this room very
high maybe not surprisingly and people’s
collective empathy is like the human
equivalent of a natural resource it’s a
precious one empathic people benefit in
all sorts of ways they are happier and
attract friends more easily than their
less empathic peers they excel at work
especially if their work involves people
like sales or management empathise
benefits ripple outward to patients of
empathic doctors report less depression
employees of empathic managers are less
stressed and empathic people’s romantic
partners are more satisfied in their
relationships but the news is not all
good for one our collective empathy is
eroding over time take the questions
like the one I just asked you people
have been answering questions like these
for decades
allowing psychologists to map our
collective empathy over time here’s the
average empathy score in 1979 and
thirty years later in that time empathy
had decreased so much that the average
person was less empathic than
three-quarters of people thirty years
before and even people who try to be
generally empathic can find it difficult
in some circumstances think back to a
conflict that you had with someone in
the last month or week or day many of
you told me just now that you’re
extremely impactful
empathy becomes too hard and we abandon
it altogether right now
politics is America’s empathic black
hole we’ve retreated into ideological
silos tuning out people who we disagree
with or even worse savoring their pain
this is a fractured time compassion
feels endangered being a psychologist
studying empathy today is a little bit
like being a climatologist studying the
polar icecaps we discover the value of
something just as it disappears all
around us does it have to be this way
that depends on how you think empathy
works for centuries philosophers and
scientists have told us it’s a trait
inherited through our genes hardwired
into our brain saying that you either
have or don’t have I call this the
Roddenberry hypothesis because Gene
Roddenberry enshrined it into the
characters of the greatest television
show of all time Star Trek The Next
Generation no that is not up for debate
thank you I’m glad to have so many
fellow Trekkies here on one side we have
the USS enterprises ships counselor
Deanna Troi
no one’s throughout the galaxy for her
empathy she catches other people’s
feelings and can read their mind on the
other side we have the Android data who
doesn’t feel emotions himself and can’t
tell what other people are feeling
either according to conventional wisdom
each of us has a level of empathy
somewhere between these two and like our
adult height we’re stuck there for life
so that means if empathy is too hard
you there’s nothing you can do to
overcome your limits and if our
collective empathy is dwindling we can’t
do anything about that either this is
all pretty fatalistic thankfully it’s
also wrong I want to tell you about a
new view of empathy that for me is
actually not new at all in fact it
defined much of my childhood in 1972
Washington State University offered
scholarships to students from the
world’s poorest nations my mom got the
one from Peru and my dad the one from
Pakistan they traveled from Lima and
Lahore each city bigger than New York to
the sleepy town of Pullman where they
fell in love
looking very 70s in the process I might
say for them though it was not meant to
be the biggest thing that my parents had
in common was their foreignness to the
US and as they grew more comfortable in
their new home they grew less
comfortable with each other they
realized that their personalities were
as far apart of their hometowns
they began divorcing when I was six but
didn’t finish until I was ten for years
I was shuttled back and forth between
their houses but I might as well have
been zipping between distant worlds my
mom is quintessentially Peruvian full of
warmth and nerves she values family
above all else my dad prizes intellects
and ambition where he came from the
student who scored highest on an exam
would end up in college and the students
scored second-highest would end up on
the streets I’m an only child and I was
the only bridge between their worlds
when I was with my mom I had to learn
the rules that governed her heart and
mind and make them true for myself but
when I reached the my dad those rules
didn’t apply anymore and I had to
recalibrate he’s very different reality
this was hard emotional labor for a
six-year-old and sometimes it felt like
I’d give up and I’d have to choose
between my mom or my dad but I knew that
for the sake of all of us I had to keep
trying and eventually it got easier
I learned to tune myself to their
different emotional frequencies and that
allowed me to maintain a strong bond
with each of
even if their connection to each other
disintegrated empathy saved me but not
because it came easily my parents
divorce was like an empathy gym for me
forcing me to work at care and
understanding and that experience of
stretching myself and the benefits that
it caused is part of why I study what I
do in the first place over the years I
found lots of evidence that contradicts
standard wisdom but jives with my own
experience it turns out that empathy
isn’t really that much of a trade at all
it’s more like a skill we’re not stuck
at one level of empathy throughout our
lives certain experiences like a hateful
political climate can atrophy it others
like having to manage two very different
parents can grow it and we can grow our
empathy on purpose through practice you
make choices about whether to practice
empathy or not all the time will you
cross the street to avoid a homeless
person or pay attention to their pain
will you dismiss someone who disagrees
with you or try to figure out why they
feel the way they do
when we practice engaging over and over
again we build an empathy that is deeper
broader and more muscular there’s all
sorts of examples of this but I’ll just
give you two the first pertains to the
question that I get asked most of all
which is are women more empathic than
men it certainly seems that way
sometimes maybe we have stories and
there are cases where women outperform
men for instance in tests where they’re
supposed to guess what other people feel
if empathy is a trait then men just
might be all thumbs when it comes to
emotion we might be forever stuck in a
Venus Mars problem but if empathy is a
skill then maybe these differences are
circumstantial to psychologists put this
to the test in a classic study they
first found as others had that women
outperform men on an emotion
understanding task but then they told
both men and women guess what we’ll pay
you for being accurate about what other
people feel
you might guess what’s coming next but
this completely eliminated the gender
gap in empathy so it turns out we’re not
totally hopeless if we have reason to
practice empathy we do and we get better
in the process I think we can all
practice empathy ironically though
simply believing that it’s a trait can
get in our way
decades of evidence demonstrate that
when people think they can’t change
something about themselves
like how smart or open-minded they are
they shy away from challenges when they
think they can grow they open up instead
recently my colleagues and I tested
whether this was true of empathy as well
we had people read articles suggesting
either that empathy was a trait which is
pretty stable over time or that it was a
skill which is changeable and can be
developed
then we ran them through an empathy
obstacle course full of situations that
make caring tough over and over we found
that when people believed that empathy
was a skill they worked harder at it
they spent more time listening to the
struggles of someone of a different race
they spent more energy trying to
understand the perspective of political
outsiders when we empowered them they
stretched their empathy past it’s
typical boundaries as a kid I was lucky
to have an empathy Jim now my lab
provides that opportunity for other
people we’ve worked with hundreds of
college freshmen and thousands of middle
schoolers throughout the Bay Area we
instill in these students the idea that
empathy is a skill and encourages them
to practice it even when it feels hard
because we believe that over time
empathic practice turns into empathic
habits and eventually empathic people
we’re not the only ones in the empathy
building business and I want to tell you
about some people who inspire me sue
Rahr heads police training for the state
of Washington and she’s brought empathy
front and center cadets in her program
like this one go through mock crime
scenes and practice defusing tense
situations by slowing down asking
questions and paying attention to what
other people feel
since Rory took over officers use of
force has declined all over Washington
especially towards people with mental
illness in a dark moment for American
policing she’s cast a light life after
hate was founded by angela king tony
McAleer and their colleagues all of whom
were once white supremacists but now
have reformed and worked to extract
other people from the dark place they
once inhabited hundreds of hate group
members contact life after hate each
year Tony Angela and their colleagues
teach them that although hatred buries
empathy it doesn’t kill it and that even
people have lost their way can get it
back Tony and Angela embodied this in
their own stories
they call themselves formers to
acknowledge their past but also to
acknowledge the idea that we’re all
still forming able to choose new paths
and forge new connections
Tonie Angela and Sue tackle some of the
hardest issues of our time and they
teach us that empathy can bloom even in
barren soil we should all take a page
from their book earlier I told you that
when people no empathy is a skill they
work harder at it hopefully by now you
know empathy is under your control I
challenge all of us to empathize with
purpose especially when it’s hard let’s
point our care at the voiceless the
homeless individual or refugee who we
might otherwise ignore let’s point our
curiosity at people who anger us even
when ignoring them feels easier if more
of us can make choices like this we can
begin to regrow our collective empathy
and mend the tears in our social fabric
and that’s the good news here empathy is
not just a precious resource it’s also a
renewable one thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
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