Professor Simon Baron Cohen presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.
Archive for the ‘Research’ category
How Reading Fiction Boosts Empathy
September 12th, 2011From Cord Jefferson at GOOD:
We told you back in December about a study that showed Americans are losing our sense of empathy. By testing college students with what’s called the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, researchers discovered that nearly three-quarters of the students exhibited less empathy than college kids 30 years ago. “Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated … individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them,” wrote Jamil Zaki in Scientific America last year, “and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others’ trust to cheat them in laboratory games.”
That’s the bad news. The good news, according to new research, is that the decline of empathy is not a foregone conclusion. And the key might be your nearest vampire novel.
The Empathic Civilization: Animated!
June 4th, 2010Bestselling author, political adviser and social ethicist Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Beautifully animated by the RSA.
Daniel Goleman on compassion
December 10th, 2009Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time.
Daniel Goleman brought the notion of “EI” to prominence as an alternative to more traditional measures of IQ with his 1995 mega-best-seller Emotional Intelligence.
Since the publication of that book, conferences and academic institutes have sprung up dedicated to the idea. EI is taught in public schools, and corporate leaders have adopted it as a new way of thinking about success and leadership. EI, and one’s “EIQ,” can be an explanation of why some “average” people are incredibly successful, while “geniuses” sometimes fail to live up to their promise.
Video Interview: Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy
December 7th, 2009From the Book Lounge: Biologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy presents an argument for empathy in a world focused on competition.
George Lakoff on Obama and Empathy
December 6th, 2009
I found this video of George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California in Berkeley, speaking at the Commonwealth Club last year. Though the video is more than a year old, it provides some insight into how President Obama holds empathy as an inherent quality to the foundation of our nation. I have linked to the segment on Obama and empathy, but recommend watching the entire talk. Professor Lakoff provides some fascinating insight into reason and how reasoning capacity is impossible without emotion.
Mirror Neurons: Understanding the triggers of empathy
December 5th, 2009In a recent interview, Neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran spoke to livemint.com about mirror neurons and their influence on empathy. He even calls one type of mirror neuron a “Gandhi neuron.” Reading the article and watching the video, I’m reminded of the varying understandings of empathy that exist today. One notion, as expressed in this interview, is the ability to “put oneself in another’s shoes” which allows us to have some sense of how another person is experiencing their life. For others, empathy involves a sense of caring for another. Empathy can also be simply an unconditional presence to receive the presence of another human being. I experience this kind of empathy as a quality of openness and receptivity that makes no demands and has no agenda.
The main concern I have about this research is that empathy might be reduced to simply mirror neurons firing in response to a stimulus. Reductionism is the unfortunate tendency of “hard” science, reducing inner experiential phenomena to outer observable objects. In this perspective, some people necessarily have more empathic ability because they have more Gandhi neurons. In my experience, empathy can be learned. I have learned and developed empathic skills that continue to grow over time, and I have seen the same happen for others in the circles in which I travel. I guess I just don’t want to confuse correlation with cause.
Read the article and watch the video
