Recently in Empathy Category

Doctors have limited empathy skills, study shows.  They were shown to deliver empathy only 10% of the time when talking with cancer patients. 

In audio taped meetings with patients, researchers identified 384 "empathic opportunities," but found that the physicians responded empathically to only 39 of them. Each encounter elicited an average of less than two empathic responses from the doctor.

Listen, my dad was a doctor, so I know all about doctors and their limited empathy skills.  It doesn't make them bad people, just bad at empathy; bad at creating stronger connections.  (Could it be the reason I was drawn to the study of empathy?)

In any case, for all those left-brain, task-driven doctors (or any other professions), try this strategy.  When you hear someone express emotionally, start your responding sentences with:

-  I imagine......
-  I can sense that.....
-  I realize that .....
-  It sounds like you are feeling .....

So when a patient says, "This is kind of overwhelming," a doctor could start out with, "I imagine.....".  And once that phrase starts, you'd be surprised how quickly the brain kicks in to finish the sentence with congruity.  A doctor (of friend, or spouse, or....) could say:

-  "I imagine it can be overwhelming to hear grave news and thoughts of future and family flood your mind." 
-  "I realize you must be feeling overwhelmed at the tragic news and the aggressive treatment plan. It's certainly overwhelming to have to plan for something like this."

As the study states, "The most important job of a physician is also the most important job for a minister or for a lawyer or anyone else: To try and help people cope with the uncertainties of life."

Here's the article:

Empathy - Psychology Wiki - a Wikia wiki

Wikia's entry on empathy. Good resource.

From the TED Conference in 2007, Daniel Goleman talks about how emotional empathy is about noticing first.  This concept reminds me of the Buddhist axiom of "calm, then insight." 

"The quality of feeling and understanding another person's situation in the present moment -- their perspectives,  emotions, actions (reactions) -- and communicating this to the person."

"The companies that are going to prevail realize it's the quality of the emotional experience that sets them apart."
Danny Meyer

In an interview with Fast Company magazine, mega-restaurateur Danny Meyer, who has 4 of the top 20 restaurants in Zagat's New York, shares how he hires people in the hospitality business.

FC: Given the reps of Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, you must get resumes from every great chef and waiter in the city. How do you tell the fois gras from the chopped liver?
Meyer: The most important thing we do is teach our managers how to hire for a certain emotional skill set that yields what we call a hospitalitarian. We want people who have the technical skills we need -- how to clear a table beautifully, how to distinguish between wines, how to chop a perfect brunoise. That's 49% of the equation. The other 51% is emotional skills. You can't teach those skills, but you can teach how to spot them.

FC: What emotional qualities are you looking for?

"Empathy requires the ability to understand how others perceive situations. This perception includes knowing how others feel about a particular set of events or circumstances. Empathy requires knowing the perspective of others and being very able to see things from the value and belief system of the other person. It is the ability to fully immerse oneself in another's viewpoint, yet be able to remain wholly apart. The understanding associated with empathy is both cognitive and emotional. It takes into consideration the reasons and logic behind another's feelings or point of view, while also alowing the empathic party to feel the spirit of a person or thing."

Adele B. Lynn

I like this definition because it talks about how others perceive situations. Perception is reality. So by trying to see how another perceives a situation, you enter their reality. It doesn't mean you have to agree with it. It doesn't even mean you have to feel it or even understand it.

Being empathic allows you to gather the data that supports their reality. The more you know, the better able you are to align and influence.

Take a suicide bomber's perspective.

....who's the fairest of them all?

Could it be that real beauty lies in the most empathic and compassionate ones?

So says Matthieu Ricard, former genetic researcher, now Buddhist monk and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill.

"You see it on someone's face when she feels in harmony with our deepest nature as human beings, which is basicall peaceful and loving."

Something radiates from within. What is it?

"You're responding to empathy, compassion, an openness to others."

But how does that harmony manifest itself physically? Through subtle expressions, sas Ricard, which we pick up both consciously and unconsciously. Hundreds of almost impreceptible muscular movements constantly communicate our feelings. Think of how a classically beautiful face changes when it's transformed by contempt; less beautiful, right? Maybe even ugly?

Unconditional love transforms a face, too, says Ricard. We identify with that look. It brings up in us a yearning to be loved and to be loving.

Author, columnist for O Magazine and coach Martha Beck hits the nail right on the head in this article about how to cultivate empathy.

She walks us through an empathy workthat that consists of:

In April's issue of O, Dr. Phil shares a four-step program for teaching your child empathy as he answers a reader's question:

Q: I have a 10-year-old daughter who steals things from friends. My husband and I just caught her for the fourth time in two years. She makes up ridiculous stories about how the toys got into her hands. How do we deal with this?

...that helps us navigate our social surroundings. More than just caring, empathy is a complex neurological mechanism that holds society together.

So says the Infinite Mind as they discuss empathy, it's history, it's place in science, how it works in the brain and more. You'll learn about what goes on in our brains when we tune into each other’s emotions, and what it means if we can’t.

Listen to this fantastic hour-long show to understand more about empathy. Originally aired November 2003, but re-aired recently on March 8, 2006.

Heck, just the show's abstract is an interesting read and gives a great "who's who" and "what's what" in the world of empathy.

Find out here.

From Carl Rogers' book "A Way of Being"

"An empathic way of being with another person has several facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment to moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever he or she is experiencing. It means temporarily living in the other's life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings, since this would be too threatening. It includes communicating your sensings of the persons world as you look with fresh and unfrightened eyes at elements of which he or she is fearful. It means frequently checking with the person as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the responses you receive. You are a confident companion to the person in his or her inner world. By pointing to the possible meanings in the flow of another person's experiencing, you help the other to focus on this useful type of referent, to experience the meanings more fully, and to move forward in the experiencing."

To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice. in some sens it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish."

Nova had an excellent piece on how neuroscientists have located empathy in the brain and what that means to us as humans and how we relate to one another. I've included the transcript from that show in this post.

It's about a 15-minute read, but if you are looking for the science behind empathy, or just want to understand empathy, this is the read.

If you'd rather watch the segment (I highly recommend it since some examples are purely visual), click here.

Last weekend my husband played in another two-day golf tournament.

That meant I was a golf widow for the weekend again -- not my favorite thing to do. I'd much rather spend the weekend playing tennis and going to the beach.

If the golf industry only knew they could make golf widows feel better, would they?

What I mean is, rather than give each player a new golf bag or pro shop dollars as the door prize for attending the event, how about giving something that would please the golf widow more than the player?

How about a laptop bag especially for the wife? This one's cool. Or portable speakers? A must-have ipod accessory. Or, the ever useful Amazon gift certificate?

But then again, maybe the golf industry is actually being empathic. After all, with gifts like these, we'd probably end up fighting over who keeps them!

What do you think, is linking golf and EQ a stretch?

I don't think so.

Although am I the only one thinking this new EQ program might be taking it a little too far?

I always thought empathy was a cognitive function, a thought-ful/mind-ful cortical exertion that focused on processing emotional data from the primitive brain.

Research using MRI scanners monitored volunteers while their legs were touched and while they watched videos of other people being touched and of objects colliding.

Turns out, a sensory area of the brain called the secondary somatosensory cortex, thought only to respond to physical touch, was strongly activated by the sight of others being touched.

This suggests that empathy requires no specialised brain area. The brain simply transforms what we see into what we would have felt in the same situation.

"This means we can feel empathy without building up complex theories about what others feel". The researcher says.

This is good to know since I've always thought that empathy has something to do with a set of intuitive emotional knowledge we all have.

I decided to see how collaborative encyclopedias like Wikipedia and Everything2 define empathy.

Real interesting search. In it, I found out that the drug ecstasy (MDMA) is classified as an "empathogen" which is the name applied to some members of the phenethylamine family of psychoactive molecules.

It is in the realm of consciousness - the psyche, the mind, and the soul - where the results so far seen from MDMA make it one of the most fascinating, mysterious molecules discovered during this century. Its actions are little understood as yet. But it is clear that is has an extraordinary and unprecedented heart-opening or empathy-generating effect...

See Everything2 finds on empathy
See Wikipedia finds on empathy

Are women better at empathy than men?

I get this question a lot when I train empathy skills. I used to say that there's no difference. Oops, I might be wrong.

It turns out that while there are no major differences in total emotional intelligence scores, women and men do differ in certain abilities (according to a study that used Reuven Bar-On's EQ Inventory.)

Again, men and women are equal when it comes to total EQ, but when it comes to empathy, interpersonal relationship and social responsibility, women score higher.

When it comes to assertiveness, stress tolerance and impulse control, men score higher.

But wait.....

Paul Graham, computer science genius who created Yahoo! Store (the first web-based application), writes in his book "Hackers and Painters" (where hackers means awesome computer programmers who've contributed to technology for the sheer joy of it, just like painters have done with art):

Here

Musician John Mayer (cool kid, great music, even writes hip music reviews for Esquire Magazine) has a new song out called "Daughters."

I hereby officially nominate him for most empathic lyrics in a song. (Surpassing "Superman" by Five for Fighting which I wrote about some time ago).

John writes,

"Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too....

On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world"

Wow wee. That's a message that should have started ages ago! My question: why couldn't Frank Sinatra, Elvis or some other ancient singer have sung this? Were they asleep at the microphone?!

In a recent interview with Oprah, Barack Obama says:

"I often say we've got a budget deficit that's important, we've got a trade deficit that's critical, but what I worry about most is our empathy deficit."

Oprah asks, "how do you actually get people to be more empathetic?"

Barack answers, "Images, actions, and stories always speak the loudest...to move people, you have to tell stories."

Once upon a time.........

Tim Sanders, the chief solutions officer of US internet giant Yahoo spoke at the Yorkshire International Business Convention early in 2004. He urged Yorkshire's business chiefs to become "knowledge-sharing leaders."

"Through faith, employers create a virtuous circle. There's nothing more destructive than the vicious cycle of not trusting employees. The vicious cycle can destroy your business," said Mr Sanders, who went on to give a string of real-life examples of how some of the biggest and best corporate executives used a management system based on "compassion, network and knowledge."

"Empathy is one of the greatest management skills you can build. If you lived your life right then later you can look back on it and enjoy it a second time."

Here for more.

If there's ever a business case for empathy, it's innovations like Apple's mouse. Read this Fast Company article to get what I'm talking about.

BA: should we order a pack and see what it does to our Kpod and Pedia design? Check this out for a sample of the cards. Here's a recent conversation about their value and a suggested alternative. I just think we need something to shake our design up.

I know, I know: its "to whom can I give comfort today"? But, you know what I mean. As Roosevelt once said: "that is editing upon which I will not put!"

Anyway, here's a great quote from this LHJ article. "Giving comfort amounts to acknowledgement and empathy. It doesn't require eloquence." What do you think?

What I'd like to learn next: how to give comfort when you feel defensive. Or, how to ask for comfort. Help!

Lately I've been about how much music both brings out and contains emotion. Empathy in music? I can�t help it: I tend to see empathy, the lack of empathy or opportunities for empathy everywhere I look.