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2025-06-13 - Graham Bodie: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

2025-06-13 - Graham Bodie

Edwin Rutsch1h 1min

Edwin Rutsch

00:00

Hit three, yeah, so we're recording now, and I'm Edwin Rutsch, the director of the empathy center. So I've worked for about 15 years on topic of, how do we create a more empathic society? And here with Graham Bodie, and I just looked up at what kind of more official bio gram is that you're internationally recognized expert on listening, and you've published monographs, books, encyclopedia entries, and you've co edited a book, The Handbook of listening. It's the first comprehensive interdisciplinary research on on the topic, and your professor of Media and Communication at the University of Mississippi, and your website is grahambodie.com is there something else you'd like to add about just introducing yourself?

Graham Bodie

00:53

No, that's good, as the quote goes, right? Yeah, people generally teach what they're bad at, right? So maybe there's, maybe there's some truth to why I focus so much on listening, because maybe I'm not so great at it sometimes, and

Edwin Rutsch

01:11

I wonder if that's with empathy too. Who knows? Who knows me with empathy? So yeah, well, the reason we got connected was you did a post on LinkedIn about, how do you empathize? And it was more about defining empathy, or you're trying to, we're trying to shift from something you call perspective taking to perspective getting. And I just saw your post, and you know you wrote, wrote about that, and I've been working on a definition of of empathy project as well. It's kind of like my main project right now is, I just see there's so much confusion, you know, about the definition of empathy. Seems like, on the academic side, it's totally a mess in terms of how people are using the word empathy. And there's a lot of criticisms coming. New books out, like, you know, the sin of empathy, toxic empathy, suicidal empathy, against empathy, just, you know, all these the sort of negative criticism. And I think a lot of that comes from just a lack of understanding what we're talking about, that we're really just talking past each other. And most of the criticism, I think, is not even really criticizing empathy. It's like things that are not empathy. So I just see it. The definition is really important, especially since I want to create a, well, we're working on creating an empathy movement, you know, make mutual empathy a primary cultural and social value. And you know, you got to be clear on what we're talking about. So anyway, just wanted to see what what your thoughts were about, kind of exploring this topic, what got you to even write that, that blog post?

Graham Bodie

03:00

Yeah, so that that particular post was really more of a kind of the culmination of an of an exercise that you know, started with a with a talk that I gave several years ago. I think I've given the same talk a couple of times now, but the original one was with a a group. It's an online app that recruits people to they call it listening, but really it's texting. So you're if you're stressed out and you don't have anybody to talk to at that moment. Maybe it's two o'clock in the morning and you woke up and you're thinking about something, you can go onto this app and request a listener. And these individuals are trained, and so I did some training for those listeners, and they asked me to come in and talk about some work that I've done and published on active empathic listening. So this, you know, this term active listening, of course, is originally attributed at least to Paul Rogers. And what Carl Rogers meant when he used the term active listening has has ultimately been bastardized by, you know, corporations and and, you know, entities that are trying to make a buck on, you know, corporate training or workshops and so forth. It's been turned into a set of techniques that, if you just nod your head and say, Aha, and maybe paraphrase a little bit and ask a question, then you can check all those boxes, and you can say, like I'm an active listener. And then, of course, people lop on this notion of empathy on top of that, you know others, and I have called this sort of the adjectification of listening. And. Where you you know you deep listening, mindful listening, active listening, empathic listening, right? And there's any number of hundreds of different terms, so very much like empathy having multiple definitions, listening also has multiple definitions. And as an academic exercise, it's really not a big deal, right? You can have multiple definitions. Definitions are, are simply functional in the in the realm of of the academy. They allow people to understand this is what I'm studying. These are the things I'm not studying. So as an academic exercise or as a scholarly exercise, it makes no difference. You define a term, and then you move on, and you do your study, of course, in the realm of everyday interactions with people. If I run around with one definition of listening or one definition of empathy, and then you have another definition of listening or a definition of empathy that can cause problems, right? Because you get into these weird debates or arguments you say you're not listening to me. Yes, I am. No, you're not. Yeah. And we, we have this kind of meta, weird argument or conflict about whether or not I'm engaging in this thing that we are both calling listening, but I have one, you know, set of criteria in my mind about what constitutes effective and and good and competent listening. And you have maybe a completely different set of criteria and criteria for for what that means. So, so in terms of empathy and how I sort of am connecting this to listening is really out of what most in the academic literature refers to, sort of cognitive empathy, or this idea of perspective taking. And in the academic literature, it's largely imaginative perspective taking, where you're either imagining yourself as the other Right? Or if I were in this person's shoes, how would I feel? How would I react? What would I do in that situation? So this kind of self oriented perspective taking, or you're imagining not how I would react if I were in that situation, but attempting to imagine how the other person likely feels given that they are in that situation. So this kind of other oriented perspective taking, and what the research does when they distinguish these two things is the study suggests that that other orientation produces less anxiety, you know, less less negative things come from when I imagine other the other's perspective, as opposed to imagining myself in that person's perspective. But also that literature suggests that we're really pretty terrible at imagining what other people are experiencing. I'm not that other person. I never will be that other person. I can never really fully imagine that other person. And so I'm contrasting that in this LinkedIn post with what Nicholas Epley and others call perspective, getting that you know, the athletes quote is something like, you know, we we're not, we're not wired. Humans are not wired to imagine the perspective of another. And so the the better tool to use to fully understand another person are the ears, not the mind. So what we ought to be doing is asking strategic questions to open space for that person to tell us what it is they're experiencing, how it is they're experiencing that thing, and through a process of dialog and deliberation, or whatever other kinds of communicative exchanges that we might have with that person. We can get their perspective, and we can quote, unquote, empathize much better when we operate in a perspective getting mode as opposed to a perspective taking mode. So that was really the contrast I was trying to make with that particular LinkedIn post. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

09:23

that's that differentiation is what I've been looking at as well. So my work is also very much built on, you know, the work that Carl Rogers and you know he he used the active listening process in the therapeutic context, listening to his clients, just kind of being present with them, and listening to him to them. And then he also called his he called that active listening, but also that it was an empathic process of, you know, sensing the wholeness of who they are, their thoughts, feelings, desires. Dreams, just whatever needs, whatever comes up the wholeness of their being, and you're sensing into it, and then you're trying to differentiate that from sort of that imaginative, imagining yourself in their situation, or imagining them in their situation. And those are two different phenomena. So that's become very, I think, in the academic field, very confusing in terms of that, that it's not quite well sort of articulated, it seems to me, that and you and then these terms cognitive empathy and affective empathy, I think, are just very ineffective model. So I'd love to get away from from those, those terms, altogether. So I don't know if you saw the slide show I did on kind of how I'm looking at defining empathy.

Graham Bodie

10:57

Did you do one that you sent? Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

11:00

well, it's basically that sort of a basic empathy. And what Rogers would call empathy is what you were describing as perspective getting you're with the person. You're hearing what they're saying. You know, you may be using active listening to reflect back so that they so you're sure you're having an error checking, right? Did I get it or not, and then even by listening to them and doing that active listening, it often invites people to say more can they sort of open up. So for me, that's like a basic, like a basic empathy, just sensing into and I'm also working on the definition, trying to define empathy within the context of the empathy circles, I find the the definitions get rather abstract. You know about what people are talking about. And using the empathy circle model, you know, with maybe four or five people in a circle, one person is the speaker, one person is the listener, and then the listener is, you know, using active listening, to listen to the speaker. And, you know, it's sort of turn taking. So, yeah, so that's and so I'm trying to explain that model that there's different components of empathy. There's the basic empathy and the other, what you're calling perspective taking. I we call imaginative empathy, that you're imagining yourself. And it can be, you know, and imagination is kind of the broad term for imagining kind of anything. I can imagine myself being an animal, I can imagine myself in the future. And then the perspective taking is maybe a bit more focused on imagining a relationship with another person. Is how I'm seeing, sort of that, that that difference. And then the other part of that cognitive empathy, it seems to be understanding, right? That you you have that understanding. They have imaginative imagining, and then you have perspective taking, or sort of components of of cognitive empathy. And it's but it is at the core more, and it's even not even co consistent among the academics, they might throw other things in, like projection, or, you know, others. So they're even kind of inconsistent. There's even no consistency within that, that framework. So anyway, I think, I guess the core is trying to define empathy within the context of an empathy circle. What's happening in the empathy circle? So if somebody really wants to take understand empathy, take part in an empathy circle and experience these different phenomenon. So I don't know how that kind of resonates or makes sense to you,

Graham Bodie

13:57

yeah, and I don't, I don't want to, you know, suggest, and I'm not saying that you're suggesting either that there's like no place for imagination inside of empathizing with or trying to understand others, or even trying to be a better communicator or a better listener. There's a whole, you know, there's a theory called imagined interactions theory was developed by a colleague of mine when I was at Louisiana State University, Jim honeycut. And that whole theory is about, how do we properly and appropriately and effectively imagine possible interactions that we're going to have with people? So this isn't, you know, like imagining that I'm having a conversation with someone that I'll never talk to, although that's certainly, you know, fun, I suppose, if you're going to, you know, imagine a relationship with your favorite actor, or, you know, someone that is deceased you know, or something where you know, you want to have a connection with, with a with a grandparent, or something like that. But. This is literally, like, planning for upcoming conversations, or, like, redoing, everybody's had that experience, right, where you have a conversation and you leave in five minutes later, like, Ah, I really wish I would have said, x, right? I really wish I would have done, you know, this thing. And it's like, Well, is it too late to do that? And and so his research suggests that there's a variety of attributes or characteristics of imagine interactions as well as a variety of functions that they serve, right? They can, they can serve to, you know, help with conflict or social support or a variety of other things. And the point isn't to get in the weeds of the theory, but to suggest that that when done properly, this, this notion of imagination, of the kinds of conversations you want to have with someone, if done in a way that isn't that specific, but not too specific, right? You don't want to try to say when he says this, and I'll say this, and he says this, and I'll say this, and then, of course, if it goes off the rails, then then you don't know what to do next, but if it's got a certain level of specificity and so forth, and then those kinds of imaginative practices can actually be generative and helpful and productive and create more effective conversations. If we can plan for how we want the conversation to progress, that can do a lot of good, right? The problem, of course, is when we replace actual interaction with another person with some imagine that, you know, imagined, you know, sequence of events, or imagining how they you know, even something simple, like, you know what to get someone for their birthday, right? I can imagine what they would like, and then I can go out and buy it, or I can just ask them, like, what would you like for your birthday? They're probably going to like the present that that they helped to construct a lot better than the present, you know, that I imagined and didn't, you know, didn't quite fit the bill as it were, for that particular you know, it's great when people read our minds correctly. The problem is that most people don't read our minds very well most of the time, right? And so, you know, you know, as it's kind of an interesting phenomena that we're seeing now, which is kind of this reaction against empathy, is really a reaction against a bastardized version of, ultimately, it's not even empathy, as you say, right? It's something other than empathy. And, you know, similarly, when Carl Rogers was writing, you know, it, it seems sort of, you know, not all that amazing now, right? That we treat people as humans, right? It's like, Duh, we like we should do that. We should humanize people, right? But back then, he was reacting to a particular kind of clinical encounter that did not assume that people had the skills and abilities to become better themselves, right? So he was reacting to right kind of, not only Freudian psychoanalytic methods, but also this, this idea of this kind of stimulus response model within, within psychology, right? So his humanistic approach to to therapy was, was paradigm shifting, right? It completely up ended the the paradigm of what was appropriate and effective therapy, and so much so that it just seems commonplace today to treat people as you know, empowered and able to and competent enough to, you know, to help themselves, as it were, right? So the therapist role is much more about helping people see the, you know, the causes and consequences of whatever it is that they're dealing with and allowing them to kind of CO create that therapeutic experience. And again, that was, that was paradigm shifting back then. And I think we lose sight of that now we just sort of say like, you know, of course, that's the way that therapy should work. Of course, that's the way, you know, change should work in a situation where you might face a daily stressor, but, but it certainly wasn't the leading paradigm, which is why his work was so, you know, so impactful when it was and yet, we've taken what he developed right when he was developing, and we turned it in simply to a checklist, right? If we just, we just check these boxes and then we're they were automatically this good listener, when, when our, you know, when the whole point is to be focused on the other even as we're being sort of genuine to our own standpoints and perspectives.

Edwin Rutsch

19:53

Yeah? Well, he talked about a way of being. It wasn't that even, yeah, it's like, it's. A whole attitude of being that it incorporates. And I find that with the empathy circle, you know, people don't need to know a lot about empathy or listening. They just kind of do the process. And you kind of it kind of helps you just develop that sort of that way of being, of being more sensitive to the the felt experience of others, to their humanity, to also being, feeling that, oh, I can share whatever is going on with me, and I'm going to be heard in the in the group, right? So I don't have to be feel intimidated. I don't have to hide myself, and it's sort of a trust building process. So, but do you have a sense? Because for me, it was like he did just this great work. Rogers did a great work on this developing, you know, active listening, describing the process, the articulating, you know, how empathy works. You know, just the benefits of it, and then, and that's sort of the thread, you know, I've been following. And then I kind of start getting into the academic work, and it's like these concepts, like cognitive empathy, affective empathy, you know, empathic concern, maybe being compassionate. Like he never used any of those terms. He didn't. For him, it was like, you listen, which we would be perspective, getting your definition. He would just be getting the person's perspective, right? He didn't, or, and, and so he would, he didn't, you he didn't, kind of divide the person into an affective and a cognitive component, you know, kind of divide the person, but I think you saw people as a whole, you know, and, and I think that's what sort of has gotten the the definition of empathy off track, getting it into this cognitive, affective, You know, model. So anyway, the way I'm trying to define it now, to kind of simplify it, is there sort of the basic empathy, which you would call perspective, getting when you're actually with someone, listening to them, sensing, hearing what they're saying. It's sort of in the wholeness of who they are. You know, going in deeply, there's the and the empathy circle, you know, the active listener is, is doing that when they listen to the speaker. And then there's the imaginative part. We do that in role playing, where we when we're doing our training on how to, you know, learn to be an empathy circle facilitator. We say, Okay, we're going to have a scenario here that that it you're a family member, a sibling, and your four siblings in the circle and and with a facilitator, and your parent just passed away, and there's an inheritance of, you know, several $100,000 that you're supposed to be divided among you, and you each feel you should get all of it. And now you have to argue from your point of view. And we kind of give the different scenarios for each member, and they imagine themselves being in that situation, and then they argue, but they use empathic listening in the process. So you have the perspective getting they're doing perspective getting through, which I would call just basic empathy. And then they also have that imaginative part where they're imagining themselves in those roles of this person who, you know, we've given them the the scenario of who that person is, and that's what I'm calling imaginative empathy, that you can just imagine yourself in any role, any situation, so just kind of giving it a term, and it's a different way of getting knowledge. You know, it's, it's, it's good, it's positive, and but it's, it's different from just basic empathy. Is it? Basic empathy is another way of just gaining, of knowing, you know, so and then also adding self empathy. And, you know, I think Rogers, he didn't, I don't think he really used the word self empathy, but he point, he sort of described it. You know that when somebody listens to you empathically, you're actually able to empathize better with yourself, with your own felt experiences. You're kind of given space to go into yourself. And he didn't use the word self empathy, but he said, you're kind of like your own therapist, which is similar, I mean, it's in, you know, the spirit is similar to self empathy, to what he was describing. And then another aspect is what I was calling holistic empathy, because I think that's something that in the the academic world, it's very much individualistic, and I hear that from others in the in the psychology, it looks at the individual. You know, it's the core person. Is a poor focus. What's the individual doing? The individual is empathizing with someone else, but they don't talk about so much, or maybe a little bit here and there about there's a relationship between all these part people in the circle. Let's say that there's a quality of connection, like with you and I hear, there's a quality of connection between us, and I would call that holistic empathy. You know, how are we both listening to a certain what's the level? So that can be a high degree of empathy, holistic empathy in the relationship, or a low degree. And you know, you can, you're sensitive to the feeling of the group. And that's not talked about so much, but I think it's something that's needed to who, especially since our goal is to make, you know, the culture more empathic as a whole, you can sort of say, I always say, right now, it's kind of a low ebb, you know, in terms of it, it's empathy, empathy. So that's sort of the basic model I'm kind of working on right now, so that the model lands, yeah, it,

Graham Bodie

26:09

you know, in the context, couple of things that that made me think, you know what one is, of course. You know, Rogers was a proponent of these, you know, three core conditions for therapeutic change, right? What you know? So he used the word empathy specifically to describe the therapist understanding the client's world from the perspective of the client, right? So from that person. And like you said, he advocated this notion of perspective getting you didn't call it that, but that's what we might call it. Is, is the way to empathize, is to really truly, sort of fully listen to how the the other individual is speaking. What is the, what are the what's the language they're using? And you're trying to do that without any kind of judgment, although I would kind of quibble with whether that's even possible, we're always judging. There's always a process of us comparing, even if we can try to mitigate some of that or remind ourselves that we're not supposed to be doing that. So that was his empathy condition. And then there's this unconditional positive regard, which is, you know, I'm taking a stance with it when I when I hear whatever it is that you're expressing, I'm not, I'm not evaluating that as good, bad, or, you know, whatever. I'm not necessarily being indifferent about it, but I'm trying to react in in a way that creates sort of a space for vulnerability, so that the person keeps talking, right? So whether that's in the empathy circle, right, you know, reflecting on checking my understanding about, you know, paraphrasing back my understanding and so forth. And then that third one, which actually he wrote about a little bit in terms of his, what he struggled with was this notion of congruence, right, which, which is being genuine and authentic, allowing the, you know, sort of just being my true self. So maybe that's that that aligns with this idea of self empathy, or, like, really understanding, you know, my own thoughts and perspectives, right? And then you're right, also, with respect, like psychology is inherently individualistic, right? It assumes the individual and their thoughts or are the center of theory making, and anytime, of course, that you're in an interaction with another person, whether that's imagined or real, there's a dynamic, right? There's, there's always an exchange. So, so you've got to go beyond the individual, at least to the dyadic and, you know, from, from, from my work on, on listening, it's interesting to think about how this term listening, sort of has, has developed or evolved over time from being kind of solely an intra individual experience, just me processing information that comes through my ears. Actually way back in the 40s and 50s, there were three terms that were used. It was hearing, which was the physiology. It was listening, which was mere comprehension. And then there was a term called auditing, a, u, d, I, N, G, that was this notion of meaning making and and sort of using schema to understand and to process things. Right now we've, we've since kind of dumped this term auditing, and now we make a distinction in the academic literature between hearing and listening. And listening is this higher order meaning making process that involves understanding, comprehension, evaluation and sort of generating a response as a function of what I've heard. But all that, all that to say that you know, listening has also evolved from an intra to an interpersonal phenomenon. So. So I'm not only doing something in my mind, but I'm engaging as a listener. So I'm sort of got this ontology or this beingness as a listener. So I can be a listening being, for instance, right? It's a state of a state of existence, right? To be a listener and and people are judging me about whether I'm a good listener or not based on how I'm acting and reacting to them. And then in even more recently, in the last 10 to 20 years, the term listening has been attached to what organizations do or how societies are structured. So societies or organizations or larger entities like governments, can be structured as listening entities or as speaking entities, right? So you know, if you think about your own government, where you are, or even the national government, it's much more. It's structured much more as a push or a speaking entity, right? It wants to get its message out. It wants to tell people about public health and wants to tell people about information, and wants to sort of, you know, market or communicate to and very little money is spent, and very few resources are spent on actually carrying the perspective of the people that it's meant to serve in the first place, right? So a town hall or a listening session, right? And I put that in quotes, because oftentimes, a listening session is no more than a politician coming out to an event that's an hour speaking 45 minutes into a microphone and then opening the floor for 15 minutes of question and answer that, you know, gets three people to come to the microphone, and ultimately, those three people don't really even get to feel heard, right? So imagine a government that's built on an infrastructure, not of speaking, but an infrastructure, truly of listening to its public, right? We don't know what that looks like in this country, right? The Art of deliberation has been lost with with history to a certain extent, right? That our only deliberative act nowadays is pushing a button in a little booth, you know, once every year, once every four years, and so all that to say that you know empathy, I think you're right to try to conceptualize it on these different levels. There's an intra individual level, there's an interpersonal or sort of dynamic, sort of dyadic level, and then there's larger and larger kind of kind of, you know, societal levels where we can think about what you call holistic listening, or holistic empathy. Is, is, is, how is our society built to encourage and and teach and and value empathy or or value right, listening, right? What are the incentives that we have to be empathic? What are the incentives that we have to truly give perspectives that are not that are divergent from our own fair consideration, right and and if we're honest, there's very little incentive to give other perspectives the time of day right in in the kind of society that we that we built. And so I think that's the power of an empathy movement is to try to shift society toward those incentive structures that allow for really meaningfully connecting and humanizing other people, especially those that we disagree with or that are different from us, that have different world experiences, and very similarly to that, building an infrastructure in our government and in other spaces where people feel heard, you know, not just, you know, not just for the sake of feeling good about ourselves, but actually so that our perspectives are incorporated into decision making.

Edwin Rutsch

33:54

Yeah, so you know, your work has been on listening. And I, I see empathy and listening sort of the same thing at the core, it's maybe empathy is just a deeper form of listening that was maybe brought in to put a little bit more emphasis on the whole person, on the felt experience, that that the other has so say that, hey, in the relationship, there's this qualities, qualities of feeling, and you want to be sensitive to these qualities of feelings that others have. So I don't know. I guess I think we're working working on the same basic yeah program here. So in terms of, you know, with listening and so, yeah. So in terms of the the definition of of empathy, the other part is the affective what's called affective empathy. I don't know if you've looked much into that, that term.

Graham Bodie

34:58

I mean, I'm familiar, right? I mean, you. Usually when when you look at measures of empathy, you've got items that reflect affective empathy, you've got items that reflect cognitive empathy, and then you've got items that reflect what's called emotional contagion, or the degree to which you sort of catch the feelings right of another person. So there's those kind of three components in most of those measures.

Edwin Rutsch

35:18

Yeah. So in terms of the cognitive empathy, the main, you know, subcategories, is understanding. You know, that's cognitive, but you know, understanding, for me, if you have a different is sort of just creating a map of the other person. You know, as I listen to you, I create sort of a picture of who you are, what your thought process is, what's important to you, what your feelings are, maybe where the feelings come from. And you know, so I create this sort of map under of understanding of who you, who you are. Is that sort of how you're understand the word understanding? Or,

Graham Bodie

35:56

yeah, so I mean, again, to me, terms are definition terms, like understanding, you know, I treat them as what we might call a theoretical term. So they they have their meaning as they're embedded in a particular theory, right? And so most of the theories that that I deal with or use to understand what this notion of listening is, you know, understanding is a particular kind of it's a function of listening that involves making meaning, right, which is different from what we might call comprehension, which is simply Being able to, I don't want to use the term understanding to drive it as in sort of looking up and trying to think so, you know, comprehension is, you know, if you say, you know a sentence, can I, can I, you know, can I tell you exactly what sentence you said, right? Can I tell you the words that you said? I could just repeat back to you exactly right, what you said, whereas understanding is, I'm understanding, you know, sort of semantically, what you're trying to mean by saying that sentence. And then further along the you know, processing continuum, you know, you've additionally got kind of act recognition that not only do I understand the meaning you're trying to make, I understand what you're trying to do, right, what you're trying to accomplish, right? So with that statement, you are threatening or promising or requesting or or whatever, right? So, so in, in kind of discourse, under, you know, sort of discourse processing, or as I make sense of the conversation that we're having, I'm simultaneously hearing, comprehending, understanding and recognizing the sort of pragmatics of what you're trying to accomplish by saying those words, As opposed to other words you might say, or, you know, whatever, right? So, so, yeah, so, so those are when you throw around these terms that in my mind, I'm trying to also kind of reconcile between an understanding from maybe an empathy circle perspective versus an understanding from maybe a discourse processing perspective, as it were,

Edwin Rutsch

38:20

yeah. So anyway, under, under cognitive MP, there is that understanding, which, which we just talked about, and then there's the perspective, taking the perspective or imagining So, and they often say it's like without feeling what the other person is feeling. And that gets a little confusing in the sense that it kind of takes in this notion of feeling and reason are two different things and you got and I think that I see that sort of as problematic too, that they're so intertwined, if they're even separable, that you know every thought you have, even when you're reasoning, you feel the experience of the reasoning. You know, it's like I've done interviews or empathy circles on what does reason feel like? The reason has a felt experience to it. So, you know, this trying to so rigidly pull them apart, I think is almost in effect. I mean, it's almost, I don't know, I can't it just doesn't seem very doable or even effective. So when I'm listening to you, I'm just listening to your whole sense. I'm not saying that that, you know, I'm not like separating your feelings and your reason. So I So anyway, I see that as another issue, and that kind of comes under cognitive empathy too, is sort of a caveat. They always throw that in as a caveat. So

Graham Bodie

39:52

yeah, I mean, it's in even some theories of emotion suggest that the the reason that we feel one emotion as opposed to some other emotion. And is because we place a cognition on top of it, right? So, you know, if you say, you know, your your heart's racing, your palms are sweating, your pupils are dilating, you know, in and your blood pressure rises, what emotion is that? Right? I mean, it describes all the emotions, right? So there's no, you know, there's no physiological pattern for fear that's distinct, you know, in in all the different ways it could be distinct from anxiety, from joy, from, you know. So if my, if my heart's racing and my blood pressure rises, and someone is giving me flowers and I like that person, right? Versus those things are happening and I'm given flowers by someone who I think is a creep. You know, those are two different emotions, right? And the only way for me to understand which of those emotions I'm feeling is to place a cognition on top of it. So, you know, so where is the feeling and where is the reason? You know, it's, it's, I agree, I think it's hard, if not impossible, to, you know, maybe it's just a function of our sort of Western, you know, way of thinking that we can even sort of pull apart reason or logic from from feeling or emotion. Then you've got, of course, dual process models like Jonathan heights work on moral, you know, moral reasoning, where, you know, we we're making moral judgments, first and foremost because, because of a initial kind of knee jerk or our gut level emotional reaction, and only after the fact that we plop over a justification that has any kind of reason, you know, to it. And then we're trying to distinguish those things, right? Like, well, no, which one is which? Yeah.

Edwin Rutsch

41:45

And can you even tell me something where you're reasoning and then feel what the experience is like? So it seems like even when you're reasoning, the reasoning has it felt. It's almost you cannot not reason. You can't not feel your reason. If you really get down to the subtlety of the experience, you know? So, yeah, you can't reason without feeling Yeah, without Yeah. So, so anyway, it's, it's, there's another, there's all these kind of aspects that are kind of messing up the empathy movement in terms of, let's get something that's practical, you know. So anyway, that's how I'm kind of seeing it, you know, it. And that's so that's, again, the cognitive empathy. And then there's the effective empathy. And in there seems to be two buckets, you know, sections for the affective empathy. One is emotion sharing, kind of versions of that, and then emotional reactions. So under emotional sharing, it's like, you know, state matching, if I'm all excited, you get all excited. Or if I'm it's similar. If I'm excited, you know that excitement comes over to you, and then you've it caught my excitement, you get get excited. Or that we kind of merge so much so we kind of don't know who's who anymore. So there's sort of this emotional losing of self in this emotional morass, or what have you so. And then, and then there's also, yeah. So there's different. When you're I have a feeling, and then somehow you get that feeling. And it's, it could be coming from your own, your own experience, and I'm excited, and you remember, you know, with your loved one, you are excited, then kind of that memory brings excitement to you. So it's, it's kind of like different reasons that this emotions might match up with each other and and I think that there's a, you know, in the book against empathy, for example, the author, Paul Bloom, that's kind of what he's criticizing about empathy. He says, you know, if you go to your therapist and you're in tears and you're crying and and then you're for him, empathy is that your therapist then goes into ears and then starts crying, and he says that that's bad. And, you know, it's like, I agree with that. That's not empathy. It actually blocks empathy, right? The therapist, if there is being empathic, he's he's being present with your distress, you know, maybe even acknowledging what your distress is, naming it. Say, I'm hearing you're really distressed.

Graham Bodie

44:23

At the very minimum, he's like, he's expressing that you actually feel this way. You know this is a legitimate feeling, and that you are feeling it, and that in your worldview, from your perspective, that's a legitimate way to be reacting given the circumstances like so, at a minimum, he doesn't have to cry with you, certainly to be empathic, but he certainly needs to fundamentally accept, I think that's the Rogerian notion, right? Except that that feeling state is something that you're experiencing right now in the moment, and it's a legitimate feeling. State, right? And

Edwin Rutsch

45:00

that would be the perspective getting within your definition, right? Yeah, a therapist is getting your perspective. And if they're getting lost in in tears, and they're they've kind of lost the perspective, and they're just getting wrapped up in their own emotional grief or what have you, and they're no longer able to stay present. So, so you have things like that that that's actually with the emotion sharing under that bucket of affective empathy, and it gets a little bit more sense. It gets kind of confusing at that point, because if you're in tears, right? And then I do sense a little bit of your grief, right? I can feel the grief coming, but I don't get consumed by it. So there's, there's empathy within that, you know, that state matching or emotional contagion, but it's not letting that kind of take over, that I'm maintaining my empathic presence with you. So I don't know if that, if that makes sense. So, so that's the emotion sharing under affective or emotional empathy. And then the other aspect that comes under that bucket in academia that I'm seeing is your reaction. So if, if you're in a emotional state and you're crying, you're in what is my response to it like instead, I can be maintain my perspective, getting my empathy, my basic empathy, with you being present, listening to you, hearing where you are Kind of going deeper, creating, going, letting you go deeper in your experience and see where that experience leads. Or I can become distressed like, Oh, I'm so worried about you. I'm just and then I cannot even lose contact with you. You know, I'm no longer being present. I'm just wrapped up in my own personal distress at witnessing, you know, your experience. And that they're calling empathy, too with they're calling that affective empathy, which I think is not even empathy. It's sort of a block to empathy, you know, at that point, yeah,

Graham Bodie

47:18

but that's, that's why some people avoid, conversations about emotions, right? When, when we there's a phenomenon where, you know, if somebody is diagnosed with cancer, all of their friends suddenly vanish, right? It's because their friends can't handle the emotional all of the disclosure of a cancer diagnosis, and, and, and that, you know, if that's empathy, I don't want any, want any part of that. Yeah, I don't want any part of

Edwin Rutsch

47:48

that. So that's the, yeah, they're feeling distressed, or they may be feeling sympathy. Oh, I feel so sorry for you. You know, you've got cancer. I, you know, my heart goes out to you. And, and then they can come into sort of a state of just feeling sorry for the other person, and they're no longer present hearing, well, what does this mean for you? What's What is this experience of cancer mean for you? And you're getting an understanding of of what's and being present with them and and getting to know what's really going on with them, you know, at a human level, and allowing them to go more deeply into it. So the sympathy can become blocked too as a reaction. So these reactions to what you're sensing in the other person can become blocks to empathy itself. And there's also, I think that's what a lot of the Conservatives are criticizing. They're saying that empathy is, you see people as victims, like, Oh, you've got cancer, you're a victim. You know, I feel so sorry for you. And you know it kind of or, you know you would whatever social problems you have, I feel so sorry for you. And and then this, you turn people into victims. That's one sort of aspect. Or you get into the you see someone somehow being harmed in some way. You feel sorry for them, because there's a perpetrator, and you've got a victim, perpetrator dynamic. And then in the, if you're familiar with the the the Drama Triangle, victim Drama Triangle, right? You kind of enter into that, where you see the person as a victim. In then you, you know, fight the the perpetrator, and then you yourself become a perpetrator. And it just this Drama Triangle, the victim, perpetrator, rescuer, you know, kind of goes around in a circle, so and again. That would be sort of a reaction, you know, just, Oh, I feel sorry for you. I have to rest. Rescue you versus, you know, just being present, maybe with both parties, and trying to bring them into a mutually empathic dialog, which, you know, we've done with conservatives and and liberals, you know, just bring them into an empathy circle, listen to one side, listen to the other, help them to listen to each other. And so. So anyway, those reactions and that sympathy can also seems to be, you know, a potential block to empathy. And yeah, so, and then, yeah. So those are that's kind of like a breakdown how I'm seeing empathy and and trying to kind of take it out of that affective, cognitive empathy model to and bring it into the empathy circle. And with that, yeah, I was able to, you know, trying to clarify it. So when we have these dialogs, I've reached out to all the critics of empathy, you know, Paul Bloom the sin of empathy, toxic empathy, you know what? There's all these books coming out there against empathy, and I reach out to him. I say, Come, let's have a dialog about it. And and, you know, mostly they say, No, not interested. And it was one person who's a was a student at University of Chicago, and he was writing about what he called Radical empathy. Seeing empathy is sort of a way that the woke left is radicalizing people to bring them into sort of the woke, you know, cultural for, you know, activist framework. And it was basically saying that, you know, the empathy becomes that seeing people's as victims and that you have to rescue them and become an activist to do that, and by being able to kind of explain that empathy is just all sides listening to each other. And, you know, using something like the empathy circle to dialog with each other. You know, it really made sense to him to the point where he says, Okay, I should try the empathy circle. So he wanted to try it on on his college because at the core, he just wants people to listen to each other. And he just felt that, you know, people are using empathy to shut down speech and stuff. So anyway, that's why I'm kind of on this bandwagon, to get a clear definition, take it out of the academic vocabulary, and at least be clear about what I'm talking about. And then try to map map my I can have something to map onto all these other definitions, see how we, you know, can

Graham Bodie

52:46

getting away from the assumption that Empathy means simply accepting the other person's perspective, not only as their truth, but the only truth, right? Uh huh, yeah, right, that I can also have my truth like I can listen to you and understand you and get your perspective and completely disagree with you right and and I'm not suggesting that the only alternative is then to agree to disagree and we walk away. As somebody posted on LinkedIn today that I saw like not every situation is is Thanksgiving with, you know, racist, Uncle Joe, where you can just, you know, say, I'm done with Uncle Joe. Right, in a deliberative in a democracy, right? We have to deliberate. We have to make choices. We have to make decisions. We have to make policies. And sometimes those policies are going to be in favor of my opinion, and sometimes those policies are going to be maybe some, some you know, drastically different than my opinion and perspective. And we have to have a system that allows, not only for deep dialog, understanding and perspective getting, but also makes way for making really hard, complex decisions together, right? And so I think, you know, to a certain extent, I can then empathize with people that have an anti empathy perspective. If empathy is merely kind of a weird navel gazing activity that doesn't actually move the needle of decision making, and I'm not hearing you say that it is, but I think that's the straw man, the straw person that we that is often raised about empathy. It's sort of defined it in a way that is easy to knock down and doesn't complicate the actual act of what is perspective getting

Edwin Rutsch

54:41

or taking some sort of action. You mean, there's something that kind of comes out of the connection, out of the empathy,

Graham Bodie

54:48

and that's the critique of listening. Is like, well, listening is not action, right? If you're only listening right, then you're not actually moving the needle or. Taking action and and, of course, I have a, you know, a grudge to, you know, to launch against that as well. But so again, a misunderstanding of what true empathy is, or true true listening is. That's where I think you get, get, get into those arguments.

Edwin Rutsch

55:19

Yeah, it seems there's a idea of a neutrality to it. Now it's just, you're just being neutral, and it's, it's not positive or negative, and the it does seem to be inherently positive, because when people listen to each other viscerally, generally, you know, if they listen long enough, understand each other enough, their blood pressure goes down. There's a deeper feeling of connection, you know, more oxytocin, which is those physiological things that are very beneficial, I think that that doesn't get valued as, you know, sort of edits at its core. So well. The reason I, you know, it was really hard to, you know, kind of connect with you is just because you had talked about, you know, brought up the topic of empathy and and it was, what was the reason, kind of for that, that you sort of did that post, would just do it was,

Graham Bodie

56:15

it was kind of a series of, basically myth busting series where there's a lot of myths around, what does it mean to be a good listener, right? And one of the wrapped up in being a good listener is this idea that we take the perspective of somebody else. And my point is simply, you can't take the perspective of someone else. We're really bad at that. It's better if we get the perspective of somebody and that that's true. You know that that's true empathy or or empathic listening,

Edwin Rutsch

56:51

yeah? Because if you're just, you're doing a perspective taking, you're very likely wrong, whereas with perspective getting, or just kind of that basic empathy, you're, you're sort of error checking, and you're, it's going to be more it's going to be more accurate, your right, your experience, yeah. And so where are you going next with your work with,

Graham Bodie

57:18

um, I mean, yeah. So we're, you know, in the summer months. So I'm wrapping up some manuscripts. One of them is looking at perceptions of what it means to be a good listener, from the perspective of people with ADHD or other kind of neuro, divergent, sort of neurodivergent conditions, if you will. So most of the research on what constitutes high quality listening is done in neurotypical populations, and yet there are a variety of ways in which neurodivergent individuals listen in very strategic and high quality ways that don't meet the mold of of normative society. And so we're, we're starting to do some of that work, starting, starting to write up some of that work. So that'll that'll take my attention for the next month or so.

Edwin Rutsch

58:17

You do anything around the just kind of the social, political conflict we have in the country.

Graham Bodie

58:28

One, one manuscript that I've been working on for like, seems like 10 years now, it's been more like two is writing up some of the development of what's called the social cohesion impact measure. It's a online, free online tool for bridging organizations. And my work with Listen, first project involves some some research on developing some standardized ways to measure the impact of things like the empathy circle, right? How can you shift people from feeling pretty cold toward if I'm a Democrat, I feel, you know, like all Republicans are evil, or if I'm a Republican, I feel like all Democrats are evil. Can I move the needle on my perspective of people who have differences from me through some of these kind of programs, right, some of these interventions. So the literature is scattered, and one of the reasons it's scattered is because there aren't standard because Bridgers don't often measure the impact of their work, and when they do, they don't often use standardized measures. And so they get critiqued by the scientific community. They're not using the right measures. And so this was a collaboration between academics and practitioners to develop a standardized set of measurement tools to show that bridging works, and so we're writing up some of that work as well. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

59:57

did you do any empathy? Circles. And for that,

Graham Bodie

01:00:03

I'm not sure there's been any pre post studies on empathy circles, but certain we certainly could, could scaffold that, if you were interested in

Edwin Rutsch

01:00:15

everyone, to do any sort of studies about it. You know, it's when we I think, I, you know, there's that documentary Trump phobia, what both sides fear. You know, he went, we used to go to these different, you know, pro and anti Trump rallies, you know, during the first, his first time in office, and we'd sit people down from both sides, and, you know, they would just listen to each other for an hour or so, and afterwards they give each other hugs. You know, we got it on camera, and it was always in, you know, to have some kind of studies of that, you know, it's all kind of anecdotal. So, right,

Graham Bodie

01:00:57

yeah, so yeah, we could certainly look into how to use that tool to put some numbers on on that impact if you're interested in

Edwin Rutsch

01:01:07

doing that. Yeah,

Graham Bodie

01:01:09

okay, oh, Edwin. Minutes, it's always good to touch base. Thanks for reaching out and inviting me to have a chat this this afternoon, I'm gonna go clean out my gutters now at my house,

Edwin Rutsch

01:01:21

okay, well, happy gutter cleaning and thanks for joining me for a little bit of a talk here about your your perspective, getting topics. A lot of fun.

Graham Bodie

01:01:33

Have a good weekend. Bye. You.

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