As a child, many of us are taught that it’s important to put yourself in another person’s shoes, to feel what they’re feeling. “How would you like it if Joey took your toy and smashed it?” This is an attempt to understand that our behaviors can have a negative impact in another person’s life — that our actions can hurt others.
So it’s no surprise that as we age, we tend to believe that it’s important to keep empathy in our lives when thinking about other groups of people — like the poor or disadvantaged.
But what if everything we thought we knew about the value of empathy was wrong? What if empathy hurts us more than it helps?
[For more of this story, written by John M. Grohol, go to https://psychcentral.com/blog/...-more-than-you-know/]
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