Is empathy something that everyone has, and do only psychopaths lack empathy? Donald Trump has been recently criticised for attending a press conference with survivors of the Parkland school shooting with this note in hand, including a reminder to show that “I hear you”.
Far be it from me to defend Trump, his actions, or his policy suggestions. But is this note alone evidence that he lacks empathy, and evidence that he needs a note about something that most people express freely and spontaneously?
I don’t think most people do in fact show a high degree of empathy freely and spontaneously.
I would feel callous in saying that if I didn’t have concrete experience that backs me up. I volunteer for an emotional health charity, where much of the support we offer is over the phone. That note would not be out of place in front of a recently trained volunteer, someone who is still trying to remember all the elements of how to be empathetic to someone in a shockingly complex and difficult situation. Point 5, “I hear you”, is trying to remind us that although there are many facts, policies, and other practical things to remember, that the most important thing is to listen.
Our organisation uses the “listening wheel” for training, and for reminding volunteers on the phone of what is helpful when someone is in distress. That “I hear you” point is present in all six elements, but most emphatically in the “reacting” and “summarising” elements, shown here in green and orange.
In other words, even people who have voluntarily signed up for being empathetic to strangers need reminding of this, even after weeks of training. They are probably on average higher on “natural empathy” than the general population, and they still need reminding.
Why do people need reminding of such an ostensibly basic skill? Because we are too often tied up with practicalities or our own priorities. Many people, on hearing about a difficult situation, will offer advice or opinions, sometimes before the conversation has even got to a point where the problem has been discussed in its full complexity. Faced with someone else’s distress, many of us focus more on getting to the end of the complicated situation gracefully, rather than on what the person in distress might actually need. What we want is not really to listen to the person, but for them to say “yes that solves the problem, thank you” – and for us to be able to feel we’ve done a good thing.
Some ask why people “aren’t empathetic anymore”. I would ask it the other way around: should we not be positively valuing empathy as a skill, rather than assuming most people naturally have it, and negatively labelling those who are perceived not to have it?
To make the distinction less binary, it would also be helpful to see empathy as a behaviour, not as a quality that a person either has or doesn’t have. Readers working in education will recognise the situation where a student decides they simply can’t do a particular thing, or simply haven’t got it in them to demonstrate a particular skill. This can mean someone goes through life not wanting to try.
At school, labelling yourself as terrible at something might not always be a huge problem: many people get through life without understanding how molecular structure works, or the right technique for the high-jump. However, a binary attitude is hugely limiting when students apply it to major sets of transferable skills (“I’m just not cut out for maths”). Empathy, and other social skills, are the most transferable skill set of all.
If we are concerned that young people seem not to display empathy or care, are we sure it’s not because we’ve set an impossible bar for what you need to do to “qualify” for being perceived as empathetic or caring?
The attitude that people should just be naturally good at things – including empathy – is indescribably damaging when it is applied to human skills. Not everyone gets to practice these skills equally at home or in their early lives, and not everyone has the same wiring to demonstrate these skills in the same way. While teaching human skills is not exclusively the job of education, it is the job of education to ensure that students at least believe in the general concept of learning, and the idea of improvement through effort.
By all means, don’t vote for someone you don’t think has the skills to be head of state. But let’s stop labelling things as a “natural attribute of humans”, and start valuing emotional skills for what they are: skills that are possible to learn.
Confessions of a lecturer 