On empathy and stress

Last week, I reached a stress peak.

I’ve always experienced a slightly higher-than-average level of anxiety, and after several weeks of disturbed sleep and steadily increasing work stress, I sort of lost it. Instead of spending the (finally) warm Brooklyn weekend outside, I spent most of it in bed, binge-watching Netflix and trying to recover from burnout. I even canceled my Easter plans to visit family. This week, I feel a lot better, and I’m beginning to analyze what went wrong in order to avoid repeating the same cycle in the future. So when this study about the connection between stress and empathy popped into my inbox, I was intrigued.

Stress is often described as part of our biological “fight or flight” response. When we get too stressed too often, our bodies can start to mistake relatively benign situations for potentially dangerous ones, and we can get stuck in “fight or flight” mode at inappropriate times and for long periods. There are a lot of other things at play as well – I don’t want to simplify stress! But for the purposes of understanding this research, let’s think about it that way. And then let’s shake up that thinking, because, according to Science Daily,

“NEWER FINDINGS REVEALED THAT HUMANS SHOW AN INCREASE IN PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR UNDER STRESS.”

That’s prosocial, as opposed to antisocial, the latter of which is generally how one would describe fighting or fleeing. Claus Lamm and his team from the University of Vienna asked study participants to solve difficult tasks under a time limit while providing regular negative feedback (hello, stress) and measured their cortisol levels and brain activity. Then, they showed the participants photos of painful medical procedures and asked them to “vividly imagine” the pain of the patients in the photos. In some cases, they told the participants that the patients had received anesthesia. The researchers then also played the experimental economics “dictator game,” in which participants have to distribute a certain amount of money in whatever ratio they see fit (it’s used to test self-interest).

According to the fMRI results, the participants’ neural empathy networks reacted more strongly to the painful-looking images when they were under stress. The surprising thing was that this was true regardless of whether or not they believed the patient in the photos had received anesthesia. The same neural activation also reportedly correlated with the amount of money shared during the “dictator game.” The stronger the apparent empathy reaction in the game, the more money the participant shared.

“OUR RESULTS THUS SUPPORT THE HYPOTHESIS THAT HUMANS SHOW MORE EMPATHY AND ARE MORE PRONE TO HELPING OTHERS WHEN THEY ARE UNDER STRESS, BUT THAT THEIR PERSPECTIVE TAKING SKILLS MIGHT DETERIORATE,” SAID CLAUS LAMM.

Which is perhaps why, even though I felt myself getting more and more stressed out over the past few weeks, I kept saying yes to bids for my attention, work, and physical presence. It wasn’t until I had to leave a meeting to catch my breath and then cancel everything for a long weekend that I snapped out of this empathy-stress-empathy cycle.

Now that I’m on the other side of my stress crisis, I can see how I misread several situations during that time, and how internalizing those misread emotions so deeply could have caused further unnecessary damage to my already frayed nerves. Think about it – do you feel especially affected by others’ emotions and experiences when you are stressed yourself? When you’re at your wit’s end, do you feel like you empathize more with each person who asks you for something, or the main character in the show you’re binge-watching? Or are you more likely to shut down?

Of course, this is just one piece of research. But if Lamm had put me in an fMRI machine this time last week and asked me to look at photos of patients undergoing painful medical procedures, anesthesia or not, I certainly would have felt something!

The perils of positivity

I often talk in this space about the power of empathy for adding good to our lives – how it can help us connect with others on a personal level, and even sometimes on a professional one. The word has a positive connotation; calling someone “empathetic” is compliment. It’s a quality we want in our doctors, teachers and caregivers. But how does it impact our personal mental state? And can we have too much of a good thing when it comes to empathy?

A few recent studies and articles have me thinking a lot about this lately. The first is this piece from Scientific American: Too Much Emotional Intelligence Is a Bad Thing. It highlights recent research suggesting that people who are more in tune with others’ feelings also tend to experience more stress than the average person. In the study, two psychologists from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany tested 166 male students on their emotional intelligence (a catchall term for one’s ability to identify, understand and adjust to feelings), asking them to match feelings to facial expressions, among other things. Then, the students had to give a talk in front of a panel of stone-faced judges. The psychologists measured how much cortisol – a stress hormone – was in the subjects’ saliva before and after, and those who rated as more emotionally intelligent experienced more stress during the talk and took longer to calm down afterward.

From a personal perspective, this doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve always been extremely sensitive to others’ feelings (or my perception of them, at least) and I have definitely felt the weight of that on many occasions. It’s very interesting to see it play out in research like this. The SA piece goes on to refer to other research suggesting people with a lot of empathy are also more prone to depression and anxiety…great!

Though that may help explain this other piece of recent research, which suggests that people who consider themselves generally happy and positive tend to overestimate how empathetic they are.

So, it’s a trade-off. One that many would argue is well worth it. And there’s another reason not to be too glum about the occasional bad feelings that come from too much empathy. Negative emotions, it turns out, are actually good for your mental health. The trick is to accept those emotions, rather than suppressing them.

So, yes, sometimes empathy comes with drawbacks, especially among those of us who are especially tuned in. But being happy go lucky isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either, apparently!

One final note: I do tend to stick to journalistic endeavors with this newsletter, but if anyone reading this identifies with feeling overwhelmed by perhaps being a bit too empathetic, I want to recommend highlysensitiveperson.net. There you’ll find an interesting blog and podcast with interviews and general discussions about what it’s like to be extra sensitive to the world – which often includes an overabundance of empathy.

The difference between love and empathy

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks.

Today seems like the perfect day to ask: What’s the difference between love and empathy? It’s a question that comes up a lot, and for me the answer is kind of like the answer to “what’s the difference between a square and a rectangle?” Love typically involves some level of empathy, but empathy doesn’t always equal love. (Although I do sometimes see the words used interchangeably, along with “kindness,” “compassion” and “caring,” that kind of equivalence is controversial!) So, let’s ask the experts how empathy applies to love:

Psychologist Paul Ekman separates empathy into three different types, which might be useful when thinking about love: cognitive empathy (perspective taking, or imagining someone’s feelings but not actually feeling them yourself), emotional empathy (actually feeling others’ feelings) and compassionate empathy (a balance of the two that usually leads to some action). The first two types are the ones people like Paul Bloom (author of Against Empathy) are worried about, because they can be used to manipulate people or make the person feeling them so overwhelmed that they get burned out before they can act on those feelings. This Psych Central blog post provides a list of expert-recommended suggestions for employing more compassionate empathy in your relationships.

Over at U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good project, empathy expert Roman Krznaric explains the “empathy circuit” we all have in our brains, allowing us to put ourselves in others’ shoes. Research has shown that this circuit begins to develop shortly after we’re born, and is influenced heavily by the way our parents or caregivers show us love and nurturing. But, as Krznaric points out, our capacity to empathize keeps growing and changing as we age, just like other parts of our brain. He shares the habits of highly empathic people, and I think habits 1, 3 and 4 can be particularly helpful when it comes to partner and family love.

And finally, a note about turning to empathy – instead of sympathy – when things aren’t going quite so well in the love department. At Psychology Today, psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein writes about why it’s more important to try to understand your partner than to feel sad or sorry for them. He also points out that loving someone doesn’t mean empathy will necessarily come easily:

When it comes to intimate relationships, no matter how much love there is between you and your partner, there’s no guarantee that you both will be able to automatically empathize with each other – even if you think you’re “soul mates.”

That may sound kind of depressing, but those of us who are fans of Valentine’s Day might choose to see it as a worthwhile challenge. For the rest? I empathize. So this one’s for you.

A Conversation with Jane McGonigal

A few months ago, during one of my hours-long internet research dives, I googled “the future of empathy.” I expected to see books or journal articles among the results. What I did not expect to find was an interactive online game called Face the Future aimed at getting people to imagine a near-future in which we can share and receive feelings as easily as text messages or emails. If you’ve been subscribing to this newsletter for a while, this may sound familiar. Just before the game took place (in mid-November) I sent out a link encouraging readers to check it out. The game ended up getting an overwhelming response, and I’ve got a story coming out soon that gets at more of the details. But I bring it up now to explain how I found myself in the fortunate position of interviewing Jane McGonigal. She is the director of games research and development at the Institute for the Future, which partnered with educational organization Facing History and Ourselves to create the Face the Future game. McGonigal is a world-renowned game developer and the author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and Superbetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient – Powered by the Science of Games. 

We talked about how technology can affect empathy, and what young people can do to make sure they’re part of the process of change. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:

Kaitlin Ugolik: Can you talk a little bit about what you do at the Institute for the Future?

Jane McGonigal: At IFTF, we base forecasts around signals. We look for things that are being invented now and prototyped and studied in research labs now, and try to follow the breadcrumbs where they lead.

KU: What are some of the current signals most relevant to how we use technology?

JM: We’ve foreseen that wearables like Fitbits will have sweat sensors so they can detect things like adrenaline and cortisol and oxytocin, all of these hormones that tell us about our positive and negative feelings. We’re already seeing the use of voice analysis, so when we talk to Siri or Alexa in our living room, they can look for our speech patterns to see if we’re depressed or anxious.

KU: How do you think these innovations will affect our ability to empathize, or experience empathy?

JM: The reality is that there will be a lot of data about our emotions in the future. We kind of want to build that out to ask, once we have this data, will we keep it private? Will it be shared? Who will we share it with, and why would we share it? The furthest out is the idea of being able to simulate a sense of emotion.

KU: Would you use the technology simulated in the Face the Future game to transmit your own emotions? 

JM: I think almost certainly no. I worry about if colleagues could see that I’m stressed, would they not want to work with me and I’ll miss out on cool projects? Or if my parents seem I’m upset. There could be lots of potential downsides on an interpersonal level, but I also think tracking on a bigger level could be useful if anonymized. Like noticing that people in San Francisco are really depressed today and figuring out why: the weather? Something else? It would be interesting to contribute data to learn about the mental health of communities.

KU: Do you have concerns about whether sharing emotions in that way might actually have a negative effect on empathy?

JM: I’m more interested in the general sense of anxiety that many people feel about the future, and the sense of uncertainty many young people have about their futures in particular in this economic, political and environmental climate. Thinking about the future – any future – builds a sense of belonging and self-efficacy. Instilling this idea that the future belongs to you, and you can take actions today that affect how that future turns out.

KU: How might technology like we’re talking about help young people feel more in control of the future?

JM: When you’re overwhelmed or paralyzed by anxiety or depression, it can be hard to make room for what other people are going through. I think what we’ve seen in the last decade, particularly with younger generations, a sense of figuring out who’s in charge and wondering whether they can make a difference, and whether it matters what they do. Getting involved with deciding what the future should be like is an important part of helping people find that confidence and self-efficacy that they can make a difference in the world we all wind up living in.

 

KU: Can you give one example from the technology world?

JM: What if we had asked some questions about Twitter a little earlier in its development, in terms of design assumptions that were made about anonymity and the ability to create multiple accounts instantly and talk to anybody even if they don’t follow you? If we thought through that, we might have made some different design decisions to minimize the chances that it would become such an atmosphere of bullying and harassment. I think now we’re seeing some pushback against some of the design decisions, but the platform is in such a stage of maturity that it can be really hard to intervene and change course. It’s important for the future community that users of this type of technology are expressing their wants and desires and concerns now.

You can follow Jane McGonigal on Twitter at @avantgame.

Interested in empathy? Check this out.

Today, the Huffington Post has a big list of ways to incorporate more empathy into your life this year . I’ve been ramping up my writing about empathy, but not here. I won’t be using WordPress anymore after next week. So if you want to read more of my writing about empathy, please subscribe to my newsletter here. You will get an intro email, and then just two emails each month. I would really hate to lose the conversations with all of you when I make the move, so I hope you’ll join me!

 

On friending and unfriending

Last week, the New York Times published a piece about friendship — or lack thereof — that quickly went viral. Do Your Friends Really Like You?, the headline asked, and I (and thousands of others) wanted to know the answer. The piece explores the psychology of friendship and refers to a recent study by MIT researchers that found that friendship reciprocity is way lower than many people believe. In other words, most of us assume that our friends have the same feelings for us that we have for them, but that may not actually be the case. The study analyzed 84 “friendship ties,” and found that while subjects expected their feelings about friends to be mutual 94 percent of the time, the actual result was 53 percent.

Now, this is only 84 subjects, and they were all members of a management course, so they’re a very small and specific sample. But a lot of my Facebook friends — “friends?” — shared this story and seemed to be moved by it, and I have to say that I was too. I’ve had a handful of experiences over the years in which friendships fizzled, exploded, or simply evaporated, and I spent a lot of time wondering why. Was it mean? Was it them? Was it something else entirely? One question I didn’t start to ask myself until recently: Did they even notice what happened? As one of the researchers explains in the Times, “the possibility of nonreciprocal friendship challenges one’s self-image.” Of course we don’t want to think about whether the other person cares as much as we do, or has as much invested. Because if they don’t, what does that say about us, and all of the time we spent/wasted on the relationship? The MIT researchers believe our culture has a huge issue with defining friendship in the first place, and that likely leads to a lot of poor matches. This is something I’ve thought about a lot too, and I can’t help but feel like many of us have been led by movies, television and certain books to believe we should strive for unrealistic — and arguably unhealthy — styles of friendship.

Our culture glorifies friendships that border on obsession (think: Anne of Green Gables) and encourages the idea that we each need a sidekick (think: every single Disney Channel show and movie). It doesn’t give us a ton of tools for achieving those things or navigating them, though, and especially as we get older and demands like work and kids fill up our time, “real” friendship becomes increasingly hard to achieve. The big question is: What are we supposed to do when we realize it’s not working out?

The Times piece ends with this:

So it’s worth identifying who among the many people you encounter in your life are truly friends. Who makes time for you? Whose company enlivens, enriches and maybe even humbles you? Whom would you miss? Who would miss you? While there is no easy or agreed upon definition, what friendships have in common is that they shape us and create other dimensions through which to see the world. This can be for better or worse depending on whom we choose as friends. As the saying goes, “Show me your friends and I will show you who you are.”

Great, now we’re getting somewhere on that whole “what is a friend?” question. But still — then what? Say you’ve known someone for 10 years and that friendship has often felt strained or confusing or simply unsatisfying, but you thought that was just how things were supposed to be. Now you realize you were wrong. You realize they don’t make time for you, don’t enrich you, and don’t seem like they would miss you. What are you supposed to do?

The answer to this is most often “whatever feels right” or “whatever is right for you,” but I believe that one reason we may have such poor friendship reciprocity — and that so many people are surprised by those numbers — is that we have no solid blueprint for actually navigating these relationships, especially when they go wrong. In general, it seems that we don’t really know how to talk to each other if we aren’t related or in a romantic relationship. My guess is that this is why so many people simply “ghost.” But is that the best way? Maybe. It’s certainly better than emailing a friend with a checklist: “Do you feel that I enliven your life? Check yes or no.” Maybe we don’t need a blueprint, either. Maybe what we need is stronger self awareness and self confidence, so that we don’t need people, and friendships are less fraught.

Ultimately, the Times piece was validating for me. It reminded me that I’m not alone in being blindsided by a friend’s sudden disinterest in me. But it gave me a lot of new questions, as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, dear readers! Tell me your experiences with lack of friendship reciprocity, and your theories as to why it happens. I’ll be revisiting this topic again soon, and I’d love to have your input!

How far (in time) can we stretch our empathy?

I have been doing a lot of research on empathy, and I’m starting to see its potential application almost everywhere I look. I read an article about the future of Virtual Reality entertainment, and it left me wondering how VR might affect – or maybe in some ways encourage – empathy. I read about how so many women experience postpartum injuries that go undiagnosed or ignored, and I wondered how better empathy training in the medical field might help prevent that. Then today, I read this piece about the paralyzing effects of climate anxiety, and I found myself wondering, can empathy be extended to those who aren’t yet born, and to experiences we can’t currently fathom?

According to Roman Krznaric, an adviser to Oxfam and the UN who has written a book about empathy, “empathy is not just a psychological phenomenon but also a political tool.” At least, if your politics depend on breaking down a “we/them” barrier and not building one. And, let’s face it, the issue of climate change is definitely a political one. When the Democratic nominee for president feels the need to say, during her acceptance speech, that she “believes in science,” there’s really no denying that science is political.

But believing in science is one thing. Adding empathy to the equation is another, and some suggest it may be the only way to actually enact change based on said science.

In the piece linked above, Krznaric begins with a story about a woman dealing with the impact of massive flooding in Britain in 2007. She was able to empathize quite easily with people whose homes were at risk from rising sea levels due to climate change. But she’s just one person. Krznaric focuses on why it’s so difficult for governments to enact policies that will protect future people from climate change, but I find myself thinking even more at the granular level. Our political systems are very short-term-oriented, as Krznaric explains, but are individuals? Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede seems to suggest that the answer depends on culture. Which brings me to the question: is this issue of climate change anxiety and climate change empathy really a U.S. problem?

Let’s say, for the moment, that that is the case. That people and politicians in the U.S. have a harder time empathizing with future generations than folks from other cultures. (This seems to be a pretty well-accepted idea, at least in the business world.) A major tenet of U.S. society is equality. In that case, as Krznaric argues: “if we believe all human beings are equal, we cannot morally justify deciding not to act today because future generations should be expected to pay more of the costs of climate change.”

But we do. We justify it all the time. Either because we won’t be around, or we don’t have any children or grandchildren who will be around, or we know our children or grandchildren will have the means to manage with whatever climate disaster befalls their world. Some see this as a moral issue, others a philosophical one. I’m not sure what the answer is, myself. Krznaric suggests that it is imagination: “We must become experts at imagining ourselves into the lives and thoughts of our great-grandchildren, and of strangers in distant times.” But who has time for that?

 

If any readers have suggestions for further research on empathy – either specific to this post or more generally – please send them my way! kugolik at gmail dot com.

What is ‘healthy?’

It’s a story that’s made for a lot of great headlines: almonds and avocados are “unhealthy,” so much so that companies like Kind, which makes fruit and nut bars, have been warned by the Food and Drug Administration not to pretend otherwise. How could it be that fruit and nuts – a few of the “superfoods” people have been increasingly gravitating toward in hopes of slimmer waists and prolonged life – are bad for you? The more important question, I think, is, “says who?”

In truth, it’s not that foods like almonds and avocados are “bad.” In fact it’s the lack of appropriate judgment of food at all that is one of the biggest problems with regulating food. Almonds and avocados are simply fatty, and since 1994, fatty = bad, according to the FDA. A lot of research since then has suggested that there is such a thing as a “healthy fat,” and that sugar – something the FDA pays much less attention to – is likely more detrimental to health than fatty fruits and nuts. So the announcement today from the FDA that it is thinking about changing the definition of “healthy” is great news, right? It could be, eventually. First the FDA will ask for comments from experts and the public, then it will propose a rule change, then people will be able to comment on the new proposed rule, a final rule will be announced, and then food manufacturers will have a certain period of time to adjust before it is widely implemented. So Pop-Tarts will probably still “officially” be healthier than almonds for a few years.

It’s really the reason that this rule change is even being considered that interests me the most. It’s not solely because the FDA realized the error of its ways and wants to make it up to avocado lovers. It’s because Kind sued.

“We very much hope the FDA will change the definition of healthy, so that you don’t end up in a silly situation where a toaster pastry or sugary cereal can be considered healthy and a piece of salmon or bunch of almonds cannot,” Kind CEO Daniel Lubetzky told the Wall Street Journal.

I very much hope so too, but I also wonder whether this is the best way to be making decisions about food regulation. I’m not naive; I know that much of our country’s legislation and regulation come out of lawsuits and lobbying. When it comes to health, though, and particularly what we eat, which is so personal and also in many ways political, a part of me hopes we can figure out a way to rely more on science than money. Man, I guess that time off has made me a little mushy. Better watch an episode of House of Cards…

To Veg or Not to Veg, Pt. 2

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about how the media covers science, but this brouhaha over whether or not a vegetarian diet can kill you seems like too good of an opportunity to miss. (This is titled Part 2 because I wrote about some studies on vegetarianism on this blog exactly two years ago today. Whoa.)

Last week, the New York Post and others reported that a Cornell University study showed that long-term vegetarianism can lead to a genetic mutation that makes people more likely to develop colon cancer and heart disease.

The problem? The study didn’t say that.

On Friday, Vice published this takedown of the coverage of the study, talking to the actual researchers who conducted it. What a novel idea! The researchers did, in fact, find that long-term vegetarians have a gene variant – not a mutation caused by vegetarianism, but a variant that may have evolved in the genes of vegetarian cultures, such as that of India. This variant means these people produce synthetic versions of different fatty acids. An overabundance of fatty acids = inflammation, according to these researchers, so, in fact, people with this genetic variance are better off sticking with a vegetarian diet. If they don’t, they could overload on omega-3s and omega-6s and suffer from inflammation and, potentially, disease. This is complicated, so it’s easy to see why many publications looking for a headline didn’t quite understand it.

What does it actually mean in practice? It seems to be more anthropological than medical. “Our claim is that, to put it simply: you need to have a diet that is matched to your genes,” one of the researchers told Vice.

As I learned when reporting this big feature last year, genetics is a very complex field of study. It is easy to get wrong. I actually made a mistake in the initial version of my story because I was confused about the way a specific gene therapy worked. I fixed the mistake, and I didn’t write a sensational headline about it, but what I’m saying is that I understand. This stuff is tough. It’s so important though, and we have to do better.

The Vice story came to another persuasive conclusion as to why so many publications got this wrong: they don’t like vegetarians. As a person who was a vegetarian for more than three years, I have to say I can believe it!

Wedding Wednesday: Is marriage good for your health?

Now that we’re less than six months away from the big day, I thought I’d allow myself a few more wedding-related posts. No, this is still not a “wedding blog” (take note, people who google me and read my blog before I interview you!) but I’ve come across some interesting things while planning this shindig that I think are worth sharing here. Today: marriage and health.

Set aside the obvious stress of interpersonal relationships (and planning a ceremony and reception for 100+ people to celebrate them…) and it turns out that getting married is actually pretty good for you.

There’s the oxytocin release of falling in love, of course, but some research shows that partnering up with someone who makes you happy could actually help you live longer. That’s probably not news to you, but a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that being married correlates with better outcomes from surgery.

From a release from JAMA Surgery:

Chances of survival after major surgery may be better among married vs unmarried persons, but little is known regarding the association between marital status and postoperative function. Characterizing the association between marital status and postoperative function may be useful for counseling patients and identifying at-risk groups that may benefit from targeted interventions aimed at improving functional recovery.

This is an important caveat about correlation vs. causation, which is nice and refreshing to see after this week’s drama about meat and cancer… which I might address in another post. But I found it really interesting that even though they aren’t entirely sure what led to this correlation, it could be useful for recovery purposes.

Mark D. Neuman and Rachel M. Werner of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania used data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study to find this marriage connection. Participants in the University of Michigan study reported that they had undergone cardiac surgery, and some died after such surgery, which was reported by proxies, according to JAMA. At the post-surgery interview, 19 percent of married participants had either died or had worse health, compared to 29 percent of divorced or separated people, 34 percent of widowed participants and 20 percent of participants who had never been married.

Participants who were divorced, separated, or widowed had an approximately 40 percent greater odds of dying or developing a new functional disability during the first 2 years after cardiac surgery compared with the married participants.

“These findings extend prior work suggesting postoperative survival advantages for married people and may relate to the role of social supports in influencing patients’ choices of hospitals and their self-care,” the authors said, adding as usual that more research is needed. You can see the study here.

Of course I hope neither my fiance nor I have to have heart surgery at any point, but heart issues run in both of our families, so it’s good to know that if and when it happens, we might have a slightly better chance of recovery! As always, it’ll be interesting to watch what comes out of further research.