Read the full transcript of Alison Jane Martingano’s talk titled “How To Train Your Empathy Muscles” at TEDxUWGreenBay 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Complexity of Empathy
Empathy is a seriously impressive human ability. Understanding what other people are thinking or feeling is necessary for any functioning society. But it’s bloody difficult. Comprehending the contents of another person’s mind is likely one of the most complicated things that any of us do regularly.
The human brain has over 100 billion interconnected neurons that can be active in more possible configurations than there are elementary particles in the known universe. So it’s perhaps no surprise really that we sometimes find it hard to understand one another. And yet there’s this persistent perception that empathy is effortless, or at least that it should be, that it flows automatically from kind people. And yet increasingly, the research shows that effort is required for empathy.
The Effort Behind Empathy
Psychologists in their research labs have asked participants to come in and empathize and then try to make it as difficult for them as possible. These experiments show that even simple empathy tasks, like recognizing someone’s emotions, require effort, and more complex empathy tasks necessitate substantial cognitive resources. For example, it’s hard to take someone’s perspective when you’re distracted. And we have less empathic concern for others when we’re being asked to multitask.
In fact, if you give people the choice, they often avoid empathizing entirely. In one particularly cool experiment, researchers asked participants to come in and look at pictures of other people, and they gave them a choice, whether they wanted to empathize with the person in the picture or to describe their physical characteristics. Participants chose to describe physical characteristics 65% of the time. It seems like when we’re given the choice, we often avoid empathizing.
Types of Empathy
So you may be thinking, “That doesn’t describe me.
I’m naturally empathic.” Or maybe you know somebody who describes themselves as an empath, somebody who catches the emotions of other people very easily. You know, they see someone sad, so they feel sad. Or they see someone happy, so they feel happy. That particular type of empathy is called emotion contagion, and you’ve probably felt it at some point yourself. It just kind of floods over you, sometimes when you don’t even want it to.
Maybe you’re sad at home, watching the television, and an advertisement comes on about a starving child in a foreign country. And feelings of empathy just flood your mind, perhaps prompting you to donate or change the channel. But this talk isn’t about that kind of empathy. It’s about a much more difficult kind. Academics call it cognitive empathy, or perspective taking.
Cognitive Empathy: The Challenge of Understanding Others
It’s about understanding the thoughts and feelings of somebody else, which is difficult, because it’s basically mind reading. I got interested in doing research on this kind of empathy when I first emigrated to the United States. I was raised in the UK, so I thought I spoke the same language as Americans. But using the same words actually gave me a false sense of security.
I thought I understood what other people were saying. I thought we were on the same wavelength. But boy, was I wrong. Let me give you an example of a time when my assumptions got me into trouble.
I was driving to a family event with my fiancé, and he called me “quite pretty.” I was upset. In England, “quite” is a qualifier that downgrades the description, synonymous with “slightly pretty,” or “somewhat pretty.” I found out that day, after quite a bit of back and forth, that in America, “quite” actually upgrades the description, synonymous with “very pretty,” or “extremely pretty.”
The problem was, I didn’t stop to try and figure out what he meant. I was too busy being offended to take his perspective. Now I look back, and I see that that was a missed opportunity. When we come across these situations where somebody else doesn’t think like we do, and we have to work a little bit hard to figure out what they’re trying to say, or how they’re feeling, that’s an opportunity to practice empathy.
Empathy as a Muscle
And empathy is a muscle. It improves with practice. As an empathy researcher, I worry about this assumption that empathy is effortless for two reasons. Firstly, I worry that by assuming that empathy is effortless, we may judge ourselves and others as unempathic, or even flawed, if we find empathy difficult, when the research is quite clear that finding empathy challenging is a common human experience.
Second, I worry that assuming empathy is effortless will lead us to be less likely to put in the effort required to empathize effectively. Empathy, like most things worth doing, requires effort and hard work. There are no quick fixes. There are no shortcuts.
But like any other muscle in our body, empathy can be strengthened through regular exercise. And you’ll be happy to know that there are a variety of empathy training programs that have been shown to be effective. Empathy training programs are particularly effective if they involve practice and feedback. But you don’t actually have to be enrolled in a school or workplace empathy training program in order to practice your empathy.
Practicing Empathy in Daily Life
This is a workout you can very much do at home. There are a myriad of daily experiences that give us an opportunity to practice empathizing, particularly interactions with people we disagree with. It’s in these challenging exchanges where we have to work a little bit harder to understand their perspective that our empathy muscles are truly tested and developed. And for this reason, I encourage you to seek out diverse experiences, to travel, to attend college, or to just step outside of your comfort zone temporarily in order to practice empathizing.
But you might be surprised to know that you don’t actually have to talk to other people to practice empathy. There are actually various other things you can do. My research shows that one thing you can do is eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. So imagine you’re at a bar, and you’re listening into the conversation of the couple next to you.
They’re having a misunderstanding. She thinks they’re talking about one thing. He thinks they’re talking about something completely different. I guess we’ve all been there. You, as the outside observer, can use this as an opportunity to try and figure out what each one of them is trying to say. In this way, eavesdropping on their conversation is an opportunity to practice empathizing in a situation where you can be a little bit more objective and impartial. But, you know, don’t be creepy about it.
We can also practice empathy with our pets. After all, it can be hard to know what our cat is thinking. It might be easier with dogs. Either way, pet owners can practice empathizing by trying to figure out what their pets are thinking or feeling, which might be why pet owners are, on average, more empathic than non-pet owners, because they’re practicing with their pets every single day.
But it’s not just real animals and real human beings that we can practice empathy on. Fictional characters are also a great opportunity to practice empathizing. In this way, we can try to figure out the motives and the emotions of the characters. Research shows that reading novels is an excellent empathy tool. And it’s not just books.
This is true for movies and TV shows as well, as long as they don’t rely too heavily on tropes and clichés. You know, we know this guy is the bad guy because he’s wearing the dark clothing, he’s standing in the shadows, and there’s that ominous music playing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love an easily identifiable villain. They are good, clean fun. But one of the reasons they’re so enjoyable is that I don’t have to work that hard to understand them.
Research shows that if we want this to be an effective empathy exercise, we’ve got to work a little bit harder to figure out the mental states of characters that are a little bit more complex and ambiguous. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about books, TV shows, theater, or the visual arts, such as the enigmatic Mona Lisa. These can all be opportunities to practice empathizing. You know, is she sad? Is she happy? You can think of these situations as your fictional empathy gym, an opportunity to practice empathizing in a fictional environment where you’re not at risk of offending anybody.
Tailoring Your Empathy Workout
Unlike all good workout regimes, you want to pick the exercise that works best for you. Maybe you hate reading as much as I hate cardio. And that’s okay. There are plenty of options here.
The other thing you want to consider is how hard to push yourself. Now, I might be taking the muscle metaphor a little bit far here, but bear with me. You’ve got to pick the right weights. You can certainly overdo it. You can also pick things that are too easy. You’ve got to pick the empathy task that’s hard enough that it’s challenging to you, while it’s not being so difficult that you become completely confused. You’ve got to find your Goldilocks zone, your sweet spot.
To add to confusion, though, your personal Goldilocks zone may change day to day. Some days you may be on fire. You’re taking other people’s perspectives, even though they’re vastly different from your own. You’re understanding. You’re compassionate. And some days you just want that guy to shut the hell up because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. As my Pilates instructor would tell me, you’ve got to listen to your body. You’ve got to give yourself grace when your muscles are tired. And that’s true for your empathy muscles as well.
In my field of research, I hear a lot of claims about quick fixes to empathy. Virtual reality was a popular one recently. The idea was that you could virtually take the perspective of another person, that you could walk in the shoes of a refugee, perhaps, or a hospital patient. But my research shows that it’s not actually that simple.
If you’re relying on the headset to do the work for you, and you’re not putting in the hard work yourself, then your empathy muscles are never going to grow. If you want long-term empathy improvements, you’ve got to put the work in.
The Benefits of Empathy
Now, at this point in my talk, hopefully I’ve convinced you that empathy is hard work and that it can be improved with practice. But you may still be wondering, “Why should I bother?” We all know why we should exercise our physical muscles, but why should we care about our empathy muscles?
Well, the list is actually quite long. Simply put, empathic people are healthier, both physically and mentally. Exercising your empathy muscles doesn’t just benefit everyone around you, it benefits you, yourself. Empathic people have more social support, wider friendship networks, they have greater optimism, self-esteem, agreeableness. Empathic people are more likely to use adaptive coping strategies, which reduces their stress and anxiety.
Some of these results might surprise you. After all, I’ve been telling you for about 10 minutes now that empathy is hard work. And so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that people who emphasize all the time must be exhausted. On the contrary, though, research consistently shows that empathy protects against burnout. And that’s been found to be true across ages, genders, nationalities, and professions.
To explain why, let me return to that muscle metaphor just one last time. Imagine you’re moving apartments, and you’ve convinced two of your friends to help you. One of your friends is incredibly physically fit, he’s got those big, bulging muscles, and he lifts those really heavy weights at the gym. Your other friend is, you know, less physically fit. Which one of your friends is going to be more exhausted, helping you to unload your U-Haul?
Empathy muscles, much like physical muscles, protect us from burnout, and they allow us to carry larger emotional loads before we become exhausted. So I actually want to recommend people who are at risk of burnout to empathize more, not less. And in general, I recommend that everybody exercise their empathy muscles regularly so that you and everyone around you can benefit. Thank you.
