RE: Psychology Addict # 47 | Putting Ourselves in Other’s Shoes
I think the key aspect is the question you raised here:
Can We Learn To Be Empathic?
First of all, we have to define the circle of people who are the benefactors of said empathy. As you pointed out correctly, most of the time our empathy is limited to a group of people we identify ourselves with (in-group-out-group-bias).
With that in mind:
I'm quite sure we can learn empathy. At least when it comes to cognitive empathy. I would doubt, however, the possibility to learn emotional empathy to the same extent.
If anything, my own experiences are telling me this (granted, that's not scientific proof but might be a nice hint nevertheless).
Personally, I'm usually not able to feel any kind of empathy towards most people (even with those I consider friends). A symptom of that might also be my inability to remember names or faces of people I rarely see - most people are just "shades" for me.
This is not judgemental in any sense, it's just the way I perceive people. I usually remember traits better than anything else.
In this regard, it's (with very few exceptions) impossible for me to actually feel the despair or happiness of others. I'm just completely indifferent emotionally.
But I'm usually able to understand their feelings from a rational point of view, hence my cognitive empathy is quite strong. I can see the reasons for their emotional states and know how to react properly.
This was not always the case.
A few years ago, I was not even able to do that. I simply did not care about other people's feelings and neither did I possess the ability to understand them. Obviously, I did many questionable things and hurt a lot of people during that time.
But changed circumstances forced me to rethink my behaviour eventually and I searched for ways of achieving a better understanding of (and therefore ability to interact with) other human beings.
I'm quite confident that I have found a proper way to address these things most of the time. Cognitive empathy can be a very helpful tool to compensate the (inherited?) lack of emotional empathy.
Personally I think extending one's ability of using cognitive empathy is the smarter choice in general. By doing that we can shift the boundaries of what we consider to be our in-group - without the threat of emotional instability. Empathy based on reasoning, facts and logic is far more valuable than its counterpart. And it's actually something we can learn to achieve.
Ego ! 😊 ❤
I was interested in the way you associated your inability to feel empathy towards people and the way you perceive people in general. Most certainly the way we see people affects the emotions we have towards them. However (and correct me if I am wrong), this seems to refer to empathic feelings in retrospect. Or, do you see people as 'shades' also whilst you are with them? Ps: I understand this is not judgmental.
You are the second person already in this thread, thus far, discussing how empathy can be taught/learnt (at least cognitive). This is very exciting for me to hear. I haven't come across any studies on neuropsychology suggesting the lack of emotional empathy might be inherited. But, if I may give my opinion, I believe this has more to do with learnt (or 'unlearnt') behaviour than inherited factors, as it was briefly discussed here too.
Great conclusion about how promising, as a whole, the implementation of cognitive empathy can be as a means not only for personal, but also for social achievements.
Thank you so much for coming by once again my dear, dear Ego.
I trust you are taking good care of yourself!
Much love to you always and forever ❤
Besides very few people I actually do. I simply cannot relate to most people in any way emotionally - yet alone feel emotional empathy towards them. Usually I'm more interested about raw information gathering about another person, because having more knowledge about someone/thing is always better.
But I immediately forget people's name after they tell me. I once lived together with two guys in a flat and it took me about half a year to figure out the name of the second guy - and only because my other flat mate called him once. So, yeah, I think "shades" describes it quite accurately.
Maybe. I'm not sure about that. I think it's a combination of both. An inherited lack of empathy due to brain structure and epigenetic factors as well. I had always difficulties adjusting to social norms and feelings of others - it took me years to really learn how to behave adequately during social interactions.