Are we doing empathy wrong?

We tend to think of empathy as something we’re born with.

The truth is that the science on empathy is still relatively young. And while there is a general consensus that most of us are born with the ability to empathize, if we don’t start learning how to do it from a young age, we can run into problems. And it’s not as simple as learning to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. According to several recent pieces of research, there’s a “wrong” way to do empathy… or at least a way that can make things more difficult for ourselves and others.

A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania (in collaboration with SUNY Buffalo and Brown University) suggests that rather than actually imagining yourself in someone else’s position, it’s healthier for all parties to simply “reflect on the nature” of their suffering.

The study had 200 college-aged subjects read a story about a person who had money troubles after being in a car accident and was also struggling to care for a younger sibling after losing their mother. One group was asked to focus on how they would feel in that situation, while a second was asked to consider the perspective of the person who wrote the story but be as detached as possible.

The researchers found that the second group experienced the least stress. We’ve talked about this in this newsletter before – empathy can raise cortisol levels and blood pressure, which over the long term can be problematic. But when it comes to connecting with people on an everyday level, what’s wrong with feeling a little stress?

Well, maybe nothing, unless you’re a caregiver or a medical professional. In this study, the researchers’ takeaway was that doctors and nurses might want to put a little more distance between themselves and their patients.

“When we consider the situation with a little more distance, you’re feeling concern, compassion and a desire to help, but you don’t feel exactly what that other person is feeling,” one of the researchers told the Philly Voice. “Empathy is very important, and for a lot of caregivers probably is the reason they chose their field. We don’t have to teach our medical professionals to suppress that emotional response; we just have to try to help them have the right kind of response, thinking of others as opposed to thinking how they would feel in the same situation.”

The bigger takeaway for all of us, I think, is that at this point there are a couple of pretty well-established routes to empathy: direct perspective-taking, which can cause distress, and more distant compassion, which affects us less. But this raises the question: isn’t the point of empathy to be affected by what affects others? Will we be less likely to spring to action in response to someone else’s pain if we only employ the latter kind of empathy?

Personally, I struggle to avoid imagining myself in others’ shoes. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by seeing or reading an account of something harrowing that I have a physical reaction (I’m probably a researcher’s dream!) So studies like this make me wonder about what might be going on with my own body, if it’s possible to change how I empathize…and if I’d actually want to!