Why Empathy Is Not the Best Way to Care | Paul Bloom | Big Think

Why Empathy Is Not the Best Way to Care

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Yale psychologist Paul Bloom’s latest book is called Against Empathy, which doesn’t leave you guessing where he stands. Bloom argues that empathy is doing us damage – there is a place for it, but not so high up on society’s pedestal. Empathy can cloud our decision-making, and bring us too close to problems that require action rather than commiserations. Realizing that begs the question: in a world with less empathy, how do we connect and help our fellow humans? Bloom is banking on compassion, and makes a distinction between the two that transcends semantics: empathy is feeling what other people feel, imagining their predicament, echoing their emotional state.

Compassion is more rational: you hear the other person’s predicament but you don’t feel their emotion – this frees you up to understand it, and to make headway on a solution. Bloom likens it to seeing a doctor or a therapist. Do you want them to feel and echo your pain or anxiety, or would prefer that they do something about it? If empathy is as overrated as Bloom suggests, then compassion may be the better way to show you care. Paul Bloom is the author of Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.

Paul Bloom's most recent book is Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.
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PAUL BLOOM:

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. An internationally recognized expert on the psychology of child development, social reasoning, and morality, he has won numerous awards for his research, writing, and teaching. Bloom’s previous books include Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil and How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, and he has written for Science, Nature, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Paul Bloom: I argued empathy is a poor moral guide. It’s biased. It’s enumerate. It zaps the spirit. It can be weaponized to make us worse people. But one question I often get is what replaces it? And in my book I make a distinction between empathy and compassion. Now a lot of people think the terms mean the same thing and it’s not an argument of words. You can use whatever words you want. But psychologically there are two different processes. One is what I’ve been calling empathy which is you’re suffering, I put myself in your shoes. I feel your pain and that has all sorts of effects, most of them bad I would argue. But a second distinct process is compassion where I care about you. I care about your welfare but I don’t necessarily feel your suffering. Now you might say well that’s just a verbal difference or how do we know such a compassion exists. But there’s some really cool research exploring this and actually I got into this because I was at a conference in London and I bumped into Matthieu Ricard.

He was hard to miss, long saffron robes, beatific smile. The happiest man on earth. And I got to talking to him and he asked me what I was up to and I told him that I was against empathy. And to me that felt kind of awkward but I thought, you know, telling a monk you’re against empathy. But he said oh, empathy. Of course you should be against empathy. And he began to tell me about his research and then I realized there’s a body of research, neuroscience research that distinguishes empathy from compassion, exactly the distinction I was looking for where they put people in scanners, FMRI scanners and they get them to engage in empathy meditation where you feel the suffering of the other person.

You imagine feeling it. And you compare that to compassion meditation where you care for people. Loving kindness they call it. Without any empathic connection. And this work which was done in collaboration to the neuroscientist Tania Singer illustrates a real sharp difference where empathy is exhausting, it is unpleasant, it is difficult and it makes you withdraw. Compassion is exhilarating, it’s energizing, it is seen as a positive experience and it makes you approach. It makes you more likely to help. And since then there’s been other...

[tammyreynolds]

Finally--someone is speaking sense into the matter. People talk empathy, then accuse of not being empathetic, then scream it from the rooftops...it's sickening. I'm a writer, and my goal is to have the readers FEEL the emotional situations of the characters in each novel (to live it in their own minds). Being empathetic in everyday life is not helpful in most circumstances.

[dannyvela]

Pity - Feeling bad for someone without doing anything.

Sympathy - Hoping someone will feel better without feeling emotion and not helping them

Empathy - Feeling emotion for the person because you've had personal experience and you know how they feel and not doing anything to help, just saying "you know how it feels".

Compassion - Having personal experience but the emotion they have motivates you to help, care and you want to help the person find a solution.

Altruism - Wanting to help the person (because you feel like it's the right thing to do) find a solution but don't have personal experience in knowing how they feel.

[emilieDB]

What I got from this was that empathy works well on a small scale but goes wrong on a large scale, hence the need for rational compassion.

[katiestolealltheunicorns]

Both have their place. Susie Orbach talks about having a process of sitting in the space with a patient, feeling a sense of what the patient is feeling and being able to come out the other side and separate in order to help. There is some empathy in that; sure you have to use empathy in a smart way, but you can't really get to an impartial place without the life experience to know more of what the people around you go through.

[bonjakobsen]

I've taken Gallup's strengths test and got Empathy as my number 1 strenghts,
I agree 100 % with Mr. Paul Bloom, not sure it's really a strengths,
it gets in the way of viewing things as they are and be rational.

thank you for your work.

[cosmicmanik]

Empathy + Compassion. They doesn't cancel each other but all the contrary, they complement each other. Compassion that is aware of the other through empathy. I agree that empathy alone is not enough, but compassion alone could be a solitary act if doesn't require any empathy at all.

[endigosun]

My empathy is what taught me compassion. A measure of suffering can be good.

[Xorisonmedia]

Empathy is the investigative tool which informs us. Then Compassion is an attitude on what problems and solutions we recognise which informs our action. Without Empathy I would argue that compassion is not possible. it is easier to hate someone you do not understand.

[TheCloudFoot]

To Dr. Bloom: We're all glad you're so advanced that you can start to scale back from feeling someone else's pain and make ethical decisions based on numbers and reason. The problem is that so much of humanity hasn't even gotten to basic human empathy—the ability to understand that other people are not just characters, they're real people with thoughts and cares. This election has helped show us that, with everyone vilifying and insulting each other. We NEED empathy to function as a society. Only after we've established that can we start to act rationally.

[kimberlyhoward]

I approve of this 100%
We are susceptible to manipulation by those who pry on sympathy, and even empathy. Empathy is ok in any moment of connection but it should be short lived and then replaced by compassion, it allows you take your strength back and put the hurt back with the source it came from with compassion for that person.

[taleemikhidmat]

Agree. Sharing the joy is exhilarating but a person in grief needs compassion more.

[dgkm]

Empathy: noun. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

The base problem here is that the formal definition blurs two things, understanding + sharing.

If I understand what Paul is saying, he is saying that the sharing part is often harmful. I agree with that. But the understanding part is essential, and something that he kind of pushes into this other word 'compassion'.

So basically, I agree with him, that 'sharing' peoples feelings is not always a good thing, but I don't like how he uses the language.

[beastybesty]

Although I find merit in Paul Bloom's version of “empathy” and its repercussions, I believe there is dangerous potential for misunderstandings, hence the disagreeing comments below.

Empathy: ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’. Nowhere in this definition does it state to become immersed and overwhelmed with another’s experience.

In the therapeutic world, empathy is seen as the ability to understand another’s experience from their point of view, but not allowing the other’s feelings to consume your being. In other words, to walk in someone else’s shoes but keeping your own socks on – no easy task.

When applying Bloom’s version of ‘empathy’ to the example of the ‘bleeding hearted liberal’ (which he goes on to do in another video), this hypothetical liberal when reacting to political media and discourse, is trying to understand other people’s negative experiences but is letting the feelings of the other consume him/her. In other words, the liberal is walking in someone else’s shoes but has forgotten to keep his own socks on. They are not embodying the therapeutic world’s version of empathy.

Now given the therapeutic definition of empathy from above, lets compare it to the definition of compassion. Compassion: ‘sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others’ (and for some ‘accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering’).

Nowhere in the definition of compassion does it explicitly state to put yourself in another’s internal frame of reference or to ‘walk in their shoes’. Since many people (such as the ‘bleeding heart liberal’) will try to understand others’ pain and suffering by putting themselves in the others’ shoes, they certainly aren't just doing ‘compassion’. So perhaps it would make more sense to tell people to be correctly ‘therapeutically empathic’ rather than ‘compassionate’ since the natural tendency of some people is to put themselves into another’s frame of reference anyway.

Since I first learnt about empathy in the therapeutic sense I can see why Bloom's version may cause disagreement and feelings of disservice to the word. Alas, no one owns the word empathy and gets to decide what it absolutely means. This is the blurred phenomena that comes with language and definitions.

TLDR: I believe Bloom needs to highlight the distinction between his version of ‘empathy’ and the therapeutic world’s version. Bloom’s version does not equate to the therapeutic version. Bloom says, “it isn't an argument of words” and yet semantics is inherently involved here.

[sauroros]

If compassion makes me aproach and more likely to help then I pick compassion over empathy.

[kieransoregaard-utt]

This guy doesn’t even know what empathy means. It’s not literally taking on the feelings of others, it’s understanding the feelings of others and what it would be like to feel like they do.

It’s not empathy that causes you to favor someone that looks like you. That’s called bias. It’s empathy that causes you to accept people who aren’t like you, because you could imagine being in their situation.

But I agree with what he says about compassion.

[Mythicalmage]

Understanding someone requires empathy; that's what the word has come to mean. I'm a writer, I think about words a lot and empathy is the only word that captures thinking about others who you otherwise would have no connection to. Charity is giving something, Compassion is generally a more strong affectionate feeling for those generally close to you, but empathy. Empathy is how media and story-telling work. If I can get you to feel my character being shot in the leg, then I'm doing a good job, and it may be tiring, but the reader is learning something deep about the character and themselves.

[prenticedarlington]

You need empathy to visualise someone's problem but not to fix it.

[raptorpack]

I would argue with only one point, that being that you need to experience empathy in order to be compassionate. True, compassion can breed empathy but if don't understand pain on the level that others feel then how can you give compassion that isn't empty of concern and care; or isn't hollow compassion in other words. Otherwise, I agree with this point.

[Eorhythm]

Sounds to me like he and his cohorts are conflating empathy with poor emotional boundaries and regulation, which makes a certain amount of sense within a culture that generally doesn't effectively help teach their youth those basic skills. But as others have said in the comments, empathy is a precursor and motivator for compassion, and I can't imagine one without the other. I had to learn through trial and error just how to cope with my own intense empathic experience because I was often driven to misery. Now that I've developed better personal boundaries and practical applications, my empathic response is a powerful tool, not a curse.

[robdavies]

cognitive vs affective empathy sounds like his distinction between empathy and compassion