CHOOSING EMPATHY

There are several important qualities that define our humanity. Today I want to talk about two of them: our capacity for conscious empathy, and our ability to consciously redirect our emotional impulses. We have a choice of whether and how we will use these; the benefits can change the course of our lives.

Empathy is the quality that allows us to relate to other people, to have feelings for them, to understand them in an experiential/emotional sense, and not just as an intellectual study. Without the capacity for empathy, we could not see one another as human, with common feelings, thoughts, and experiences.

Empathy involves imagining that another person in our situation would have a similar experience as us. If we’re cold, it’s natural to imagine that other people in the same circumstances would also feel cold; if we’re thirsty, it’s easy to project our own thirst onto others.

We also tend to imagine that other people would make similar decisions as we would: In one curious study, when people were asked to wear a sandwich board, those who agreed to do so overestimated the number of other people who would also agree to wear it, while those who did not agree to wear it overestimated the number of people who also would not agree to it.

So our empathy is not always very accurate, and can reflect a kind of solipsistic fantasy; but that’s just the beginning of getting to know each other. Without that initial empathic guesswork, it’s likely that we wouldn’t go on to have deeper empathy, and we wouldn’t care at all what others were experiencing.

This attitude shows up strongly when we think of people with different political views.

A recent study from the University of Michigan showed that when we believe that people have opposing political views to our own, this projection of our personal experience, this initial impulse toward empathy, is thwarted.

That, at least, is where our impulses take us; but we are not slaves to our impulses…

Free trade is the form of social interaction that most encourages human empathy. When we want something, and somebody else has that something that we want, we have several choices: We can steal it, we can fool or trick them into handing it over, we can beg them to give it to us, we can ask to borrow it –  or we can exchange with them for something that has an equal or greater value to them.

Begging, borrowing, tricking or stealing all put us in a position which naturally diminishes our empathy. The other person becomes "the thing that possesses something we want." If we use force to steal, or appeal to the generosity of another to lend or give us what we want, it puts both of us in an adversarial position toward one another, or at the very least into a sort of dominant/submissive relationship.

This is one of the great evils of envy: It causes us to see people as things.

Free trade, on the other hand, encourages empathy. If we trade with somebody, we are equals. We have to consider each other’s interests, likes, desires, and dislikes, in order to make a good trade.

Free trade encourages very different people to find common ground, to understand different ways of living so that we can understand what one another wants and effectively sell things to each other.

But to override our impulse to see people as things requires us to stop and think, to reconsider our initial, more primitive impulses, and to make a different choice.

We have the ability to consciously override our emotions and our impulses by reappraising them. When was the last time you felt like hitting someone, but you didn’t? When was the last time you felt like yelling or screaming at someone, but you decided not to?

We do this kind of thing all the time – at least civilized people do…

One of the qualities that we see in criminals is that they don’t use this quality very well. They are much more likely to follow their impulses instead of controlling them. And as Theodore Dalrymple described in his book Life at the Bottom, drawing from his work with prison inmates, they would commonly refer to their violent actions in the passive voice, "The knife went in," instead of the active voice: "I stabbed him." So there is no ownership, no agency, and no responsibility taken for their actions.

One of our most noble human abilities is that of actively, purposefully using our consciousness to override our feelings and impulses, to take a mental step back, and decide what would be the best thing to do from our consciously held values.

This is what allows for self-ownership. This is what allows us to make a different decision, to learn and grow and develop as human beings. This capacity for conscious reappraisal is what frees us from blind obedience to our feelings and impulses.

It is also what allows us to choose to have empathy, even when our initial reaction would prevent empathy. This is what the Golden Rule is all about: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

When we choose to have empathy, our ability to relate with others grows, and we become more effective in our capacity to influence others, as well.

Dr. Joel Wade is the author of Mastering Happiness. He is a marriage and family therapist and life coach who works with people around the world via phone and Skype. You can get a FREE Learning Optimism E-Course if you sign up at his website, www.drjoelwade.com.

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