A good friend and I were recently discussing our teenage children and reflecting on their closest relationships when my friend asked me, “Do you think empathy is set for life for teenagers or do you think empathy can be improved”?  I understood his concern – research is consistently showing that empathy for college students has diminished by 40% over the past 40 years and many blame the ever-increasing presence of screens as a primary culprit in this decline.   I was also reminded of one of my favorite podcasts, Invisibilia, that produced an episode titled, GULP, The End of Empathy.

In The End of Empathy, researchers argued that empathy was now more often used to overly identify with people we already agree with than for altruistic purposes.  Politics was one of the examples discussed where we all seem to have a tendency to understand the experience of our own tribe but not so much the other.  One conclusion from the episode was to teach young people to use empathy selfishly – teaching youth how empathy can improve their own lives — but giving up on encouraging empathy to help others.  Yikes, have we really changed that much?!

I don’t think so and I’ll continue to encourage those I care about to reflect upon their own reservoir for empathy to improve their own relationships, feel closer to their children and have an additional inherent quality to embrace for their own personal value.   If you would like to improve your empathy here are some possible approaches.  1) Be curious.  Simply wonder to yourself  “what am I feeling and why” and direct that same attention to other people in your life.  2) Go to new places and engage in novel activities.  As part of a graduate school assignment, I attend a four-hour evening service at mosque – not something I had done before – and I left with a deeper understanding of the Muslim faith and the community that supported that mosque.  3) Read Fiction!  When we read fiction we identify with characters, try to understand their emotional experiences and wonder what we would do in the same circumstances.  This effort to identify with others actually carries over to our personal lives and provides one of the easiest and most pleasurable ways to deepen our own empathy.  I have attached an article discussing the relationship between reading fiction and developing empathy for those interested in further information.

And finally, I’ll again recommend the Invisibilia podcast.  They describe their podcast as:

“Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.

Very interesting to me!

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