Social Empathy summary

Ever had to work on a group project? If so, you’ve probably experienced a situation where one person hardly ever shows up to meetings and does less work than everyone else. Pretty annoying, right? No one could blame the other group members for getting resentful.

But what if you found out that he’s been absent because he has a sick child? If you’re like most people, you’d be more inclined to cut him some slack and be more supportive. That’s empathy in action.

When AIDS became an epidemic in the United States in the 1980s, the government was remarkably slow to respond. In fact, the Reagan administration made it a policy not to mention AIDS at all. The reason? The largest affected groups, gay men and intravenous drug users, had a lot of social stigma attached, especially at the time. It wasn’t until national attention focused on the story of a young boy who contracted the illness through a blood transfusion that the government started to put in place policies aimed at helping sufferers. 

Why the difference in response? It comes down to one human tendency: fear of otherness. The more we perceive someone as other, the weaker the empathetic connection.

Before Barack Obama became president of the United States, he wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope. There, he explained how empathy was at the core of his moral values – and expressed his conviction that it should be central to decision-making. He’s one example of a powerful person firmly on the side of empathy.

Unfortunately, he’s quite rare among the powerful. Much more common is the view expressed by the current president Donald Trump, who was already a powerful man in 2012 when he said at the National Achievers Conference that when someone attacks you, you have to hit them back twice as hard. Not much room for empathy in this approach.

Imagine it’s the last day before the deadline for a big project. Do you feel a rush of adrenaline and a sense of heightened focus as you sit down at your desk and get down to work? Chances are, the answer is yes – it’s your brain releasing hormones to give you the energy to get it done. That’s how our body deals with stress. 

But what if you stayed up worrying about the deadline for weeks? If the situation is not resolved quickly, the body also releases cortisol, another hormone. It helps produce more resources – and, crucially, shuts down the functions that are not essential for survival. Instead of a burst of energy and focus, you get brain fog and exhaustion – and a reduced capacity for empathy.

Take a close look at any of the world’s major religions, and you’ll come across some version of the Golden Rule. It’s the one that tells you to treat others as you’d like to be treated yourself. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism all espouse some version of it in their teachings.

For many people, the encouragement to care for people and help others is one of the most positive aspects of religion.

If you’ve ever taken part in a discussion on the internet, you might have come across a troll. Internet trolls are people who post things online just to cause disruption and offense. Reading those posts, you’ve probably noticed how upsetting they are, often going after people already suffering from social inequalities – for example, attacking people of color, women, and LGBTQ folks.

Trolling is a clear example of a lack of empathy – and it’s the anonymity of the internet that enables the trolls to do their nasty work. It’s one of the downsides of technology where empathy is concerned – it amplifies its absence in our society.

In 2016, a shocking video of a five-year-old boy being rescued from a bombed building in Aleppo, Syria, went viral. It was viewed by millions and gave rise to strong feelings. For a lot of people, those feelings included pain and fear for the boy and imagining what it must be like for him.

But for many others, the concern went further. They might have wondered what life was like for a child in a city ravaged by war, how all the other groups were experiencing it, and the social and political reasons for the violence.