> It's possible to adopt “adults are just giant kids” as a lens through which to see other people. A work colleague is unreasonably angry at being left off an e

> It's possible to adopt “adults are just giant kids” as a lens through which to see other people. A work colleague is unreasonably angry at being left off an e-mail chain—but don’t playmates always hate being left out? An elderly relative refuses assistance—but doesn’t every child insist, “I can do it myself”? Seeing people this way can be condescending, but also gentle: it nods to the basic psychological needs that often drive our behavior. It's interesting that we're more willing to be understanding of adult misbehavior if we start by infantilizing them. Yes, we're predisposed to expect behavior issues with kids without blame, and perhaps to attribute behavior to circumstantial causes (he's cranky because he's tired) rather than stable traits (he's a jerk). But ordinarily we also think of empathy as stemming from relating others mental states to our own experiences. Shouldn't we as adults have a better ability to empathize with adults as adults whose mental lives are more like our own, than by imagining them as kids?