I often see the categories of emotional responses confused. Here’s are definitions as I understand them:
* Pity – feeling sorry for a person and being relieved you don’t have the same problem
* Sympathy – caring about another person’s misfortunes and wishing them well
* Empathy – being able to understand and relate to others’ emotions. In leadership studies, being empathetic is an element of emotional intelligence and is considered a key trait for creating and maintaining a positive / productive workplace with engaged employees.
* Being an Empath – thinking / feeling others’ thoughts / feelings / energy. In consciousness practices, being an empath is considered a gift for intuitives, healers, and shamans.
* Compassion – an emotional state that is difficult to define / explain. Open hearted caring with higher cognitive processes – having a higher level of empathy and reason combined. In spirituality, being compassionate is considered a higher and desirable level of development.
REFLECT:
Which of these states do you experience the most often?
Just as there are controversies around mirror neurons, there is controversy around the positive nature of empathy and being empathic —and whether they serve or hinder the highest good.
REFLECT:
Has being empathetic served your highest good?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
Has being empathetic served the highest good of others?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
Serving the Highest Good:
One example of being empathic serving the highest good is award winning journalist, Lisa Guerrero. The Chief Investigative Correspondent at Inside Edition, she covers consumer fraud, corruption, crime, child abuse, and sex trafficking. With five million viewers nighty, it is the number one news magazine in syndication. Her purpose is to hold politicians, scam artists, and crooks accountable, and she wishes more journalists would do the same.
Guerrero feels empathy is a gift that can propel us into bravery – into making the courageous choices on behalf of ourselves and others. She feels we have been trained to ignore – NOT to rely on it. She advises relying on emotions!
Describing how she uses empathy – becomes an empath – in abuse investigations,, Guerrero says:
After listening to my subject, I sit with their anger or frustration and absorb it into my body. Sometimes… I cry with them. I let if affect me. I draw on that anger and frustration for the final part of the investigation, which is the confrontation. Because I’m armed with the righteous anger of the victim I can act on their behalf
In contrast, author Paul Bloom suggests relying on empathy can hinder the highest good.
“Being high in empathy doesn’t make one a good person, and being low in empathy does’t make one a bad person… goodness might be related to more distanced feelings of compassion and care…”
Bloom considers empathy an irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices and muddles our judgment in all aspects of our lives, from marriage to parenting to education to medical care to charity to the justice system to … And neuroscience research supports his approach. The areas of the brain that experience empathy are also sensitive to whether someone is a friend or a foe, part of one’s group or an opposing group, pleasing to look at or not, etc. Or as the saying goes in reporting: PUT A PRETTY FACE ON IT!
In an experiment for charitable giving, subjects were told they would hear an interview with a terminally ill child on a waiting list for treatment from the Quality Life Foundation (who make children’s final years more comfortable). Sheri, a brave bright 10 year old, talked about her painful terminal illness and how she would love to be moved up the waiting list. Of the empaths who listened, 75% wanted to move her up the list, despite being informed it meant other children higher up in priority would have to wait longer to get care.
This empathetic decision illustrate’s empathy’s weakness. When we “highlight” one person / area / group / nation / issue – we leave the rest out of the picture”. We sacrifice fairness and justice.
Additional research shows our empathetic response is influenced by (1) what we think about the person / group, (2) how they have treated us, and (3) how we judge the situation they are in. The research has covered the following areas:
APPLY:
Are you favorably or unfavorably empathetic to:
* someone who has wronged you?
* homeless people?
* someone competing with you?
* wealthy people?
* underdeveloped countries?
* people with AIDs from drug needles?
* someone cooperating with you?
* people of other races?
* people with mental illness?
* people from different cultures?
Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, HarperCollins, New York, 2016.
Lisa Guerrero, Warrior, My Path to Being Brave, Hachette Books, 2023
