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Empathy is considered one of the most important competences of the future.

What is empathy? Empathy is a simple word to describe a complex idea.

It is tuning in to other people and understanding them. Empathy is essential in closeness. It helps us understand the shades and nuances, read intentions correctly, recognize the harm behind anger and see through the eyes of another person. Thanks to this, we can better communicate with people and interact with them. In and outside work, empathy bridges the differences in a multicultural world … Empathy does not mean approval or consent. You can be empathetic towards another person without giving up your rights and needs. Resilience, Rick Hanson

 

Empathy is the ability to feel other people’s mental states, as well as the ability to adopt their way of thinking and see reality from their perspective. Deep level empathy is understanding that someone else’s world is just as real as ours.

There is no reality in itself, there are only images seen from different perspectives. Albert Einstein

According to Carl Rogers – empathy is not only seeing through the eyes of another person, but it is hard work, reflection and knowledge about how the other person observes and experiences the world.

Research on empathy describes:

  1. Mirror neurons

Specialized cells in the brain responsible for compassion. These are groups of nerve cells that become active when you perform a certain activity or observe it in other individuals.

2. Affective contagion

The phenomenon of sensing other people’s emotions and transmitting positive or negative emotions or moods by those around them. There are emotional contagion and mood contagion. The first is short-lived and more intense, the second is long-lasting and less intense.

We are bothered by the question whether empathy can be developed. We can consider empathy as a trait (so-called persistence orientation) or as a skill that can be developed (development orientation).

Philosophers and psychologists have argued that empathy is a trait that is permanently in our genes and brains. The reasoning is that each of us has a “level” of empathy and, like our adult growth, we are stuck there for life. This is all right if you are empathetic already, but it also means that if you struggle with empathy, you will never get better, no matter how hard you try. It also means that when our collective care fails, there is nothing we can do about it. Fortunately, this view is incomplete. Through proper practices, such as compassionate meditation, various friendships, and even reading fiction, we can purposely develop our empathy. Empathy is something like a muscle: when left unused, it disappears when forced to work, it grows. Stanford News, Jamil Zaki

Empathy can be developed by:

  • increasing self-awareness
  • being mindful
  • going beyond your own perspective
  • increasing cultural competences
  • focusing on contact with the other person
  • noticing non-verbal signs – facial expressions and voice timbre
  • communicating openly, at a deeper level, and by talking about emotions.

Professor Jamil Zaki, a psychologist at Stanford University, conducts an empathy study at the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory.

What does Jamil Zaki say about hacking empathy?

  • Empathetic people are happier, they have more friends.
  • Employees working with empathetic bosses experience less stress.
  • Collective empathy deteriorates, which means we are less empathetic.
  • We are less empathetic in difficult situations, then we abandon empathy.
  • We can develop empathy in the “empathy gym”, among others in difficult situations and by practicing situations in which we demonstrate understanding of others.
  • Practicing empathy turns into a habit of using empathy and this gives us an empathetic community.
  • Even if empathy towards another person was previously covered by hate practices, it can be regained.
  • We can control empathy, even when it is difficult, for example when we try to understand the behavior of someone who is angry with us and criticizes us.
  • Empathy is not only a precious resource, thankfully it is also renewable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DspKSYxYDM