Empathy might seem like a squishy, vaguely liberal word—a sentimental virtue of minor importance. But the more we learn from neuroscience and psychology, the more it appears that much of human social and economic life, not to mention individual health, fundamentally relies on it. Which makes the rise of inequality— something that threatens empathy—all the more troubling.
The term empathy conflates two separate but equally important human capacities. The first is simply the ability to know that other beings have distinct minds, agendas, and points of view, and to imagine what these are. Psychologists call this cognitive empathy, or theory of mind. Cognitive empathy is morally neutral: A doctor needs it in order to have good bedside manner; a con artist needs it to take advantage of his mark.
The second capacity is known as emotional empathy, which refers to our tendency to feel moved in response to someone else’s pain and distress—to care about these differences in experience. It’s thanks to this capacity that societies throughout the world exhibit some variation of the Golden Rule. Emotional empathy is, in other words, the very foundation of morality.
[For more of this story, written by Maia Szalavitz, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...y-for-the-rest-of-us]
Comments (0)