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Empathy and perspective taking: How social skills are built
- adnzzzzZ 6y agoFor those interested in a lighter form of this kind of content I recommend these 2 classes which go over the literature on empathy from a neurobiological perspective as well as a psychometric one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1eHJ9DdoEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1eHJ9DdoEA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqkFg1pvNDw&list=PL22J3VaeABQApSdW8X71Ihe34eKN6XhCi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqkFg1pvNDw&list=PL22J3VaeAB...
- spodek 6y agoThis article is like a biological description of how muscles grow. People interested in getting stronger will benefit more from an exercise plan. They still have to exercise, but at least they'll know what to do. If your interest is developing your empathy and other social skills, the answer is through practice, as with any other performance-based skills. You can develop empathy with practice, just like charisma, patience, listening, and so on. I teach and coach leadership, having had to learn it from scratch after a PhD (physics) and MBA, only taught me theory, not practice, and starting several companies showed me the value of leadership skills, not how to lead. I wrote a book version of the course that gives the exercises to learn the social skills relevant for leading oneself and others. The preface is on my page: https://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-step-by-step https://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-step-by-step, which develops this concept more. As usual posting about my books here, if anyone is interested in reading it or doing its exercises but money gets in the way, contact me and we'll work something out.
- scns 6y agoI like what you offer, but your website could use some work. The video and annoying (2 times?) sign up dialogs are not responsive on my phone. Meant as constructive feedback.
- spodek 6y agoI consider feedback a gift, so appreciate it. As the podcast has grown into a non-profit, which we plan to spin off to its own site, I plan to simplify my personal site. I expect to resolve such issues in the simplification.
- rectang 6y agoWhat I'm most interested in is to to what degree the lack of "facial expressions", "speech melody" and the like in internet communication impedes the development of empathy. We can communicate with more people than ever before, but our ability to empathize with those people is poor.
- temp0826 6y agoSomeone should develop an AI to automatically add emojis to our communications ;)
- rectang 6y agoI wonder if technology won't actually help us ameliorate this issue. Improvements in video communication — availability, ease of use, quality, ubiquity — make establishing empathetic connections easier. And there's a lot of room for improvement! (Latency is my biggest pet peeve.)
- ivankolev 6y agoThe hologram comms from Star Wars popped in my mind :)
- jcims 6y agoWould be interesting to experiment with a forum that only works with video. Particularly if the video recorder starts when you are playing a 'comment' and captures your realtime reaction/response interaction with the content. Then you have the option to upload or nah. Then on playback the forum synchronizes all of these clips so that it's one continuous experience. UX could be the active video playing while 3-4 live 'replies' silently stack up to the right and you just mouse over over the one you want to unmute (now) and roll into the conversation (next). Maybe your video is in there too so you can hover over it to indicate you want to reply. Lastly the ability for everyone to grab clips and start threads from them would be interesting to help avoid the blab factor.
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- naringas 6y agoIMO, for most people empathy is already there. In my own experience what I had to learn about empathy is how to handle it, not how to have it; I already have it, it's automatic. The only thing that needs practice is extending it to strangers and enemies/rivals.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoThat is an interesting first part of your comment, "how to handle empathy". I too find it quite easy to relate to others by taking their perspective as well as easily being able to imagine how they may be feeling. To the point that my point of view and emotions become influenced by others in a sort of sympathetic reaction. EDIT My limited vocabulary skills made me unaware of the fact that this is known as "compassion" Very similar to how when someone yawns I find myself wanting to and normally yawning also. In most cases I feel this is to my social benifit but at certain times it has been to my detriment. Typically where I have assumed the wrong perspective and feelings, or possibly my own ego has projected my perspective upon others in a sort of pseudo empathy. In my own experience this has been particularly damaging when entering personal relations with sociapathic type individuals.
- throw999666 6y ago> In my own experience this has been particularly damaging when entering personal relations with sociapathic type individuals. This is a wise analysis. The temptation to see you want to be there, not what is. One would hope empaths shall avoid sociopaths for their own good.
- kayodelycaon 6y agoEmpathy is not automatic for everyone. My emotions are so unreliable and unpredictable that they are useless for understanding other people. All of my social skills are based on logical analysis and a lot of trial and error. I enter every conversation with a goal of what I wish to communicate and how I want the other person to feel. I then attempt to do the proper things to make that happen. Society tells us that this way of handling interpersonal interaction is manipulative and evil. For many people, this is the only way we can function in a society that doesn’t think the way we do.
- kgarten 6y agoI'm wondering why empathy is such a hot topic... , I don't think our goal is to empathize more with other people. Really liked the point Paul Bloom made with his book about Rational Compasion: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compassion/dp/0062339338 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass... We should be able to understand how smb feels, not feel the same. Personally, I'm quite interested in why/when people are synchronizing their movements. Shameless self plug: http://kaikunze.de/papers/pdf/gupta2019blink.pdf http://kaikunze.de/papers/pdf/gupta2019blink.pdf Don't know why it happens yet our eye blinks and head nods are synchronizing when we talk face-to-face (versus back to back).
- BlueTemplar 6y agoBut understanding has an emotional part, and memory relies a lot on emotions. Trying to get rid of emotions might be harmful.
- kgarten 6y agoagain ... I'm not trying to get rid of emotions. That's not what I'm proposing. I just think the idea/concept of feeling the same as somebody else is strange and has its own dangers. Understand the others feelings, try to understand their point of view (also emotionally) that's great. Having exactly the same feelings probably not. "Empathy :: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" from meridian webster. Example: you meet a person who has a panic attack ... how is going to experience the feelings vicariously helping you?
- BlueTemplar 6y agoAh, yes, compassion vs empathy. But both are needed, depending on the situation.
- throw999666 6y agoI agree. Empathy is painful. It should not be the goal. I think the outcome for civilization would not be optimal if many more people were empathic right now, we still need a mix. But there are degrees of empathic ability. Only a very few people like me ( < 0.01% ) get the emotions of everyone around them without trying. I think the general population is comprised only less than 20% of people who are "empathic" to the extent whare if they try, or, are relationally close to someone they do feel their feels. Then, more than 85% of people are "rationally compassionate" in that they understand how others feel if they make an effort, yet around a 1/3 of people do that automatically with no effort. I think only around 10% of people are incapable of understanding how others feel at all. But if those people make some effort that number goes down to 1-2%. But while psychopaths are in that 10% they're not really in that 1-2%. And those people who "don't have subjective emotions nor do feel anything themselves" spread across all groups. The stronger statement, "don't have emotions nor feel anything themselves" are not present in the extreme empaths like me who can pick up emotions from around them. Finally, people are not "set" in a particular group. It is plastic, to an extent, but not in entirety.
- jungletime 6y agoA good related book is "How to win Friends and Influence people". Basically its a guide how to make friends, with a realization that we live in a world full of selfish people, that are self centered and don't have much empathy. This is the default state of human beings. I watched an interview with Pol Pot and even he thought of himself as a good guy. Quick Book Summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qvUYtwASqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qvUYtwASqY Pol Pot last interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ9_BMshyiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ9_BMshyiw [edit] I should qualify what I mean by selfish as it relates to the book. Basically humans tend to act in their self interest by default. And will go a long way to justify that behaviour to themselves even when it hurts others, so they can preserve a positive self image. this a common behaviour pattern. The book doesn't claim its universal, and no exception exist. I'm sure there are exceptions. But even modern "saint" equivalents like Gandhi did some messed up selfish things.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoWhile it may be true that there are many selfish people, many aren't. Interpret the world as being packed with wankers and in your mind you deny people the chance to be anything else. I had a relative like that, he wasn't a nice person.
- bigbubba 6y agoAs the saying goes, a thief thinks every man steals. I am very wary of people who are deeply pessimistic in the what they believe about everybody else.
- bluedino 6y agoI’ve taken these classes and it comes down to “be someone you aren’t in order to make conversation” It just feels so fake and scripted. I can easily tell in a business setting when people are just putting on their Dale Carnegie hat.
- BurningFrog 6y agoYou can also think of it as "make an effort to act in a way others enjoy".
- motohagiography 6y agoCan you empathize with genius beyond your comrehension, or is this just a downward relationship, and does doing so make you a peer? Can you empathize with objective evils like sadism or cruelty without becoming a party to it? It raises the question of what it is, really. The popular emphasis on empathy seems to reduce to a secular political idea, where the more traditional value of compassion is more of a theological concept. When I read appeals to empathy, I see appeals to a secular morality that originates in the material idea of progress, which while not necessarily negative, it's not above criticism either.
- awinder 6y agoThe first part of this is kinda funny. The problem is that you’re squinting too hard to try to make out the problem and now everything is fuzzy. The real value of empathy — why we’ve been using this social tool for thousands of years — is that you don’t have to become the actor to gain understanding. This tool also has a learning aspect, usually you try to empathize with people who you’re gonna be around a bit, so while you may not be able to check an empathy box right away, you could use empathy to further understand genius than you could without it.
- bigbubba 6y ago> Can you empathize with genius beyond your comrehension Yes. A 'genius beyond your comprehension' is still a human and will have some experiences that other humans can relate to. Being smart doesn't make you a space alien.
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- a4444f 6y ago"Being able to feel empathy and to take in the other person's perspective – these are two abilities through which we understand what is going on in the other person's mind." How about being able to feel oneself and take one's own perspective, for a change. What a strange world, where every one takes someone else's perspective.
- snazz 6y agoHumans are pretty good at taking our own perspectives. If everyone did that instead of empathizing with others, our conversations would all run in circles and we would be an even more polarized society.
- a4444f 6y agoI'd say, we converse with others, so that we could be more polarized / differentiated with respect to others. Only then we can have our own perspectives. Until that, we run in circles.
- bawolff 6y agoI actually don't think this is true. I've met lots of people who are self-deluding or don't conciously recognize their own patterns. We all have a story we tell about ourselves, but it often isn't the true story. That said, i don't think any of that conflicts with learning to empathisize with others. Understanding yourself is just as important as understanding other people. Personally i suspect they are related skills.
- snazz 6y agoHmm. That’s a valid point. I wasn’t thinking from that perspective, but your thoughts make sense. I came at it from the angle of arguing your own side in a disagreement with someone—that’s what I associate with perspective-taking. But the idea of misleading yourself with a fake story is another facet I failed to consider.
- iron0013 6y agoAlways count on HN to provide plenty of arguments against empathy
- bawolff 6y agoAren't narcissists supposed to have really good social skills but lack empathy? That makes me think the two aren't neccesarily connected.
- kqr 6y agoNarcissists and psychopaths have excellent empathy (indeed it is part of their social skills). What they lack is sympathy and compassion.