The we went through everything. It was the person who she's starting an empathy research lab at the Green Bay, and she was just getting started and lining up people to I think that the study was too complicated, because she wanted to have empathy circles, where, after the person does the reflection, everybody you know fills out a questionnaire, and then you go back to the to to the next person, the listener you know, becoming the the speaker. But and between each person, there would be a short or an evaluation. And he had a lot of questionnaires, and it was just hard to find people to take part in it, you know, because it was just little, it was just too complicated to and then she kind of Yeah, then she kind of was running out of time and kind of panicked, and just kind of dropped the whole thing.
Did she decide to do a different study instead? Or, I think
so, yeah, not sure what she ended up with. Yeah, I'm not sure what. Yeah, it was a lot of work to kind of set everything up and then, yeah, that's really unfortunate. I did think it was too complicated, too, because it disrupts, you know, if you between each speaker and listener, and if you have to fill out a questionnaire, it's, it's just, it disrupts the whole flow of the empathy circle too. So I wasn't, like, really excited about it,
yeah, it's not even really an empathy circle. Yeah,
exactly, yeah. Yeah,
that's unfortunate. Yeah, that I mean, as I was trying to see how I could incorporate the empathy circle framework into my research, I was like, I don't know how to make this work from a research perspective. I still want to do some qualitative work with it, which is maybe just asking people questions afterward, and like also doing, like recording it and like analyzing it. So I'll have to see if that's possible to to work that into my research plan in the future, not for this round, because it's just again, it's it would it was making it too complicated and too different from my control group, you know, because I have to just manipulate one variable.
Yeah, the experiment, I think qualitative is, you know, is kind of easier just kind of maybe doing it within a context, like, if families or something, I think it has a lot of potential in families. And there's a study like families using the empathy circle, and what's the qualitative you know, report on the experience there is, or do you familiar with what's his name? Who did the accurate empathy? Just interview him. William Ickes, yeah, I just put
I C, K, E, S, is that you spell it, I
C, K, E, S, I just interviewed him. It's on the culture of empathy website. So he's one of the, you know, early researchers, and he was, you can kind of see how he approached his research, but he's retired now. He might be willing to talk to you or something, if you wanting advice on studies and stuff. So his was, his was, yeah, I don't want to go into all the depth of but he was at it for quite a while. Let me put the link in here.
I do know that his name come up in the literature. I just didn't know that that's how you pronounced it, so I
probably mispronounced it like, I keys. I think, yeah, I keys.
I can't remember. Every time I see it, I'm just like, I'm not even gonna try
and Exactly,
yeah, thank you. I will look more into his stuff. But yeah, that name definitely has come up a few times.
So I was thinking for today we would go over your your slideshow and see how it fit within the context of the holistic empathy definition. But at first, I just wanted to get sort of your take on that model, you know, from, like, just what's your thoughts about that? Is a is a framework for
what do you mean? Exactly like trying to integrate all the different definitions, or,
yeah, it's, is a is a framework. I mean, there's two parts. There's a framework itself, and then mapping it on. Into the empathy circle. So it's the the idea of holistic empathy. And, you know, empathy, direct, direct empathy, or basic empathy, which you know, Rogers would call just empathy, you know, where one person is listening to the other, kind of directly self empathy, and then imaginative empathy versus kind of cognitive, calling it cognitive empathy, and then sort of this holistic, the this quality of the empathic relationship of the group or the community, I think that's sort of the basic framework that and then mapping that on to the empathy circle.
Yeah, I think that the holistic empathy idea really it jives really well with what I share in my presentation, whereas it's often viewed as a unidirectional thing, where it's I feel empathy for you, like taking it outside of the self and having it become something that is in between the two people that seems to be similar to what you're talking about with the holistic empathy being like a quality of the relationship. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that. So are you seeing it as different levels of empathy.
So I think I would say, not so much levels, but facets. You know, if you have a diamond, it has different facets. And the holistic empathy is sort of the is this holistic way of being. I mean, so a culture could have a community could have a empathic way of being, and it has different components to it, and those components could even be, you could even get more granular in terms of what the components are, but it's, it's taking it, yeah, out of the you know, That individualistic view, and putting it into this. Is this, you know, relational. It's a mutual, relational, holistic, I guess, are just some kind of terms,
yeah, I think that makes sense. And then I really like the idea of mapping it onto the empathy circle. And I think the same can be done for different types of interactions. You know, if we were to look at, did you call it was restorative circles,
restorative empathy circles? Yeah, so it's like a conflict mediation
process. So I think that even though they might have a different framework for how they enact empathy, I think that using just starting with the empathy circle as a framework, we can experience it and take it out of the abstract and see how it's very applicable in a real like a real, actual interaction, and then potentially, in the future, the same thing could be said, like done in other contexts, where, you know, if somebody has a different framework, we could say, Okay, so here, here are the definitions, here, here's how they mapped onto the empathy circle. You have a different framework. Let's see how it maps onto your framework.
Yeah, that's all I wanted to do, was map on the the roadblocks. I think essentially that that list of the roadblocks. So where is the roadblocks? You know, we can actually role play the roadblocks, right, and then doing the criticisms of empathy as well as the other definitions, yeah. So it's kind of like, go, I want to go through each of those. In fact, maybe even make a course out of it. So I think it could be a, you know, a workshop course, yeah,
yeah. I think that's a great idea. So how should we go about this? Should we? Should I pull up my presentation? And,
yeah, I gave you a co host so you can share it, and if we could maybe go slower through it and then sort of map it on to the model. If that works on the holistic, maybe discuss as we go along.
Yeah, I think last time I was just trying to blast through all of it to kind of get to the highlights.
Yeah, we're also Anita was there. So we were kind of just had
multiple, Oh, that's right, I forgot that she joined us in the middle of that, so it kind of changed the dynamic of what we were trying to get through there. I really enjoyed talking to her, though.
Well, she's really committed to this. Her whole, you know, work everything. And her, she has a PhD in empathy, too. So,
yeah, I really enjoyed a lot of her analogies that she shared. So I thought it was definitely not time wasted. Even though we weren't able to get through this, it was very valuable time.
And how did this come about? This presentation? What. Is the background,
yeah, so I needed to present my research in my research lab and just kind of give some updates on where I am in my research. And so I created this, and it also was born out of a project that I'm working on with a philosopher who's looking we're looking at the philosophical underpinnings of how we view empathy and how it's been defined in the psychological literature, and maybe some of the flaws that have arisen out of like the the deep, the deep what's the word I'm looking for? I'm sorry. We have like this penchant toward thinking about the self and obsessing about the self. And so when we bring empathy into that discussion, we still have that, like obsession with the self. And so that kind of throws off this whole idea of holistic empathy, and so it's kind of what we're trying to work on with that project, is trying to address the underlying philosophical approach to interpersonal interaction and the way that you view other human beings.
So it's, it's a premise of, we're all individuals versus we're part of a community, and, yeah,
and actually, it's even, it even goes beyond that to talking about the self like you yourself is so much more important than anybody else. So from a psychological perspective, we are really, really overly obsessed with the study of the self. So ironically, even if you look in social psychology textbooks, which you would think that we're talking about the social component, you don't see anything that talks about the other, you only see chapters about the self first of all, and then if there is any reference to the other, it is only how the other affects the self. And so it's not about your obligation toward other people or any any reciprocity involved. It's only about how it affects the individual, which really is kind of, I see that as flawed from a psychological perspective,
yeah, from reality too. I see from a reality perspective,
yeah, it's really quite messed up, and so I do get into some of that in here. So
that's great, yeah? Because that really maps on to the holistic empathy and that we're in a group, we're in a community of, let's say, four or five people, and we're aware of the experience of everyone, and there's a we're in a relationship, and that relationship has has a certain quality to it, yeah,
yeah, which takes on kind of a life of its own outside of the individual as well. Like, yes, you need the individuals in the group in order to form the group. But then the group has an identity that is reciprocal. It affects the individuals as well. So it's, you can't just say that that doesn't exist.
Yeah, and it's not like, hey, the individual gives up all of their self for the, you know, for the group, because in the empathy circle, everyone has free speech, so everyone can express themselves, you know, to whatever is sort of going on and alive for them. So it does hold the individual experience and holds that is but, and it's sort of a negotiation of that individual self as well as the merging or the how it's the quality of the relationship, yeah, yeah. And
that is such an interesting, interesting thing to study, because when you see self and other merging, that can be a good thing and a bad thing, it can be a good thing because you understand each other better, and you you tend to take on more of that identity of the group, which can be a good thing, but also in the literature, it can be a really bad thing if you give up your autonomy, yeah, to that group that now makes your decisions for you. You know that's how we get into things like group think
and out of authoritarianism, yeah.
And even cults are born out of that kind of thinking, right, where you willingly give up your individual your sense of individuality and your ability to think for yourself to somebody else, and then that charismatic leader makes your decisions for you, and that can be incredibly dangerous. Yes, and
you start cutting out other people, right? The group gets smaller. So you start stop hearing, whereas with the empathy circle, the intention is to bring in everyone into it, so it's, it's totally inclusive, and you kind of reach out to the people who are like with, with the critics of empathy. You know, there's all these books out, and I don't know if you saw Elon Musk's comments about how horrible empathy is.
Don't get me started. I don't even want to go there, okay, but no, I didn't hear him say that, but it doesn't surprise me, but he's
actually saying that. He's actually alluding to holistic empathy is a positive thing, too, and people don't really pick up on that. So I think if we had a discussion with him, I think we could make he would maybe even agree with sort of this holistic empathy. What? What the critics of empathy are sort of saying, I see, is it's just a partial empathy that they're critical of. Yeah. So is that what he was saying as well? In essence, yeah, he's, he was referring to that book, the suicidal empathy from gad dad. I think his name, Saad. And I have, I did, I've been sort of tracking, see, I
the Musk said this was it. I just
couple last week on Joe Rogan. And I mean, that gets like, you know, 10 million views or whatever, so and criticisms. When I just give you this as a reference, I just had, I just put some stuff here, and also the AI search that kind of lays out his, his, you can see that later, yeah, oh,
yeah. I guess, since I'm sharing my screen, I'm pulling that up and changing the screen, yeah, super interesting.
We can continue with your presentation. So just don't want to distract too far a field from it.
I will go into present mode so that we can see this a little bit better. Okay, so I asked the question to the group, there were probably 10 to 12 people present, how they define empathy, and we wrote it on the board. And there were some there were some overlap, but there were definitely just like last week or two weeks ago, when we were talking with Lee and she had a definition of empathy that was an emotional like an emotion contagion, definition of empathy, it seems to be that when I ask that question to people who don't study it as deeply as we do, that tends to be the definition that lay people give. And so I think that that's that's an interesting and important thing for us to remember, that when we're using this word empathy, we might be using it differently than people typically use it. And so I think that that's an important thing as we get into it that we are that we have to be very clear about the definition that we are using in order to have a productive conversation. Maybe this is a good time to just really slow down and talk through this. So this is just from my research over the last few months. Let's see this is probably, I haven't added to this in the last few months, actually. So this is last summer into, like last November issues, when I was compiling this, this list of different definitions, and you can see that there are several studies that can that tend to use the same definition, and then others that are kind of standalone, like I didn't see anybody else who is referring to referring to it as a reactive process, but Davis is the one who created the interpersonal reactivity And so and it is far and away the most widely used scale for empathy. Everybody uses that in their research. It's so widely used that nobody even questions it anymore. The reason that I see that as somewhat problematic is it doesn't save any room for it to not be a reactive process. So have you seen his scale?
I have. In fact, I think it was a sympathy. I mean, it was questions like about sympathy. I thought it was a bit of a mess. Yeah. So
yeah. Well, the one that I was most concerned about was the subscale called emotional reactivity, or. A personal distress, I think, is what it was called. And it asked questions about, when you're in a stressful situation, do you go to pieces? And I find myself thinking, What does that even have to do with empathy? Yeah, that is not the same empathy that we're talking about, right? And I it became very apparent to me when I started interviewing caregivers or people in like helping professions, so doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, people in international development work who have seen a lot like they've they've seen a lot of trauma. They've helped a lot of people through some life and death situations, and they don't go to pieces because they have trained themselves to be able to maintain their own sense of calm and be able to think clearly through those difficult situations. And by this definition, if you were to measure their empathy using this scale, you would, you would come to the conclusion that they have less empathy than somebody like me, who is not a doctor, who does go to pieces when I see people with their hands cut off or whatever I I can't handle that as well As somebody like a doctor who who can just calmly work their way through it. So does that by definition? If we were to, if we're just looking at this as a definition issue, does that mean I have more empathy than a doctor? And I would say absolutely not. That is not what that means. But if we're measuring it using Davis's interpersonal reactivity index, we would come to that conclusion,
yeah, so maybe just go back to the first one, the intellectual perspective taking, and map that on to the holistic empathy. So I think that would come under imaginative empathy, that there's a sort of a role playing. You're taking the perspective of the other and, yeah, so that's that would maybe use the word cognitive empathy there to perspective, taking imagination. And and, so I don't know does that? How does that?
Yeah, I think that maps really well for me, because it they're making it clear in their definition here with each one of these different papers, that it's not an emotional experience. You're not You're not engaging in emotion contagion. So the thing I wonder with the way that we define imaginative empathy is that sometimes when you are imagining like if I've done acting when I was younger, I did, and when I put myself in the place of that person, and I'm trying to see it through their eyes, I do start to feel the emotions that feel.
Yeah, I don't think, I think there's, in terms of philosophical, you know, premises, the idea that there's emotions and reason. I think that even has a problem. I did, I did a empathy cafe with some academics, and we called it the feeling of reason. What does reason feel like? So the Wow, when you're when you're reasoning, there is a felt experience to reason. So and so, I think that there's, this is another one of those sort of premises that, oh, there's reason, and then there's feeling, and they ignore that you're feeling all the time. You have visceral sensation, and if you reason, you have certain feelings that are associated with that experience of reason. So I think that's even another sort of a premise that, yeah,
yeah, yeah. I agree with that. And
just like with your acting, you know, in the slideshow that I did on holistic empathy, it was Meryl Streep, right? She's taking on the role perspective, taking, actually, acting out like you're doing the acting of of, you know, Julia Child or Margaret Thatcher, and there's emotion. She's feeling emotion. But even you can't not sort of feel something. And if you, and if you interview people about what does reason feel like, you'll find out there's all kinds of felt experience related. You know, it's like, I feel safe. I've heard people say I feel safe, I feel clear. I feel you know, there's just
when they're when they're engaging with reason, yeah, oh, that's interesting. So there still is an emotion attached to it,
yeah, there is reason. Is a felt experience, yeah, in our bodies and so sort of that dichotomy, I think, is another problem with the definitions. Uh. Yeah. So anyway, that's Yeah, I think yeah, we can role play that, because we can do the role play in the empathy circle of imagining being somebody else. You can imagine being me. I can imagine being you. We can have an empathy circle, talking, listening to each other. So and we do that in the restorative circle, the restorative empathy circle. You know, in that process, you know you have a family like an issue with someone, and you bring people together to discuss it, and someone doesn't want to come, you can have a stand in for them who imagines being that person, and they can take on the role, for example, if it's a father who's very withdrawn and, you know, authoritarian, somebody steps in for them, and they are part of the restorative circle. And sometimes people are, like, amazed at how accurate that can feel to them in terms of that's interesting.
So is the that father that you're saying, for example, would he be present watching? He
wouldn't even be there. Yeah, he's like saying, Hey, I don't want to take part in this. Oh, okay, so, yeah, you just have a total stand in for them. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I think we have some convergence there. Then on perspective, taking cognitive empathy, the it's that imaginative empathy component, and then
is there more? I was gonna add something to that when I was doing some of my work for my experiment with interacting with AI. I took on the role of of a Trump supporter, 29 year old man who's really, really anti dei programs and feels very personally attacked by them. And I found myself so I, you know, just typing, just taking on that role with the AI like the AI was 36 year old, Jen from Ohio. She's very liberal, and she is very in favor of Dei, and so we're having this conversation back and forth. And I found myself even using language that I would not normally use because I was this. I don't even remember what name I gave him, but I was him. And so it's not something that I would ever say, but he would say it. And so I said it. And so I was just, you know, fully embodying that, that persona. And so I can see, I can see a lot of value in that kind of practice to see why people say and do the things that they do. When you take on that persona, you find yourself doing the same. Yeah,
it's very powerful, yeah, yeah. Kind of it was a little
bit unsettling to me personally, because I was like, Wow. I never knew that I would, but I felt, I did still feel removed from it wasn't me. It didn't reflect how I really saw the the issues. And it wasn't me. It was just me embodying this made up person that. But what
about the actors that I just totally embody it, and they just sort of live it, and they go into a deep, you know, deep sense of it. So there that's a human capacity. And
yeah, and it's that is quite disturbing. You you run into what's his name, the guy who played Joker and ended up committing suicide or having an overdose or something. His name's on the tip of my tongue, anyway, but he, he was a method actor, so he ended up fully embodying this crazy person, right? The Joker was absolutely unhinged, and he became that, and it destroyed him. Heath Ledger, that's his name. And so there, there really is, I think any of this can be all of this that we're talking about. It can be positive and negative. It can have positive and negative effects on your sense of self. Can have positive and negative effects on your emotional well being, your mental health, your relationships. There, there's, I think that we have to view all of it as needing to maintain balance. Have I shared this with you the idea of polar positives? No, this comes up sometimes in the philosophical research and also within the religious community that I'm in. People talk about polar positives where it's like there's a virtue on this one side, but if you go too far, it becomes a vice, so you need something on the other side to balance it out. So for example, like courage and patience or courage and self control, like if you're courageous to the point that you're willing to do anything you. Um, that can be come a vice, right? That that's no longer a virtue. But if you have this patience to slow it down, or like self restraint to slow it down, to not do things that are going to hurt other people, then you you can find that there's a balance. So they call it sometimes they call it, polar positives, contraries, furious opposites. They seem like they're opposite, but they're not. They're actually complimentary of each other. And so when I think about empathy, I think about it as always having to balance it out with with something that is going to help maintain your your health and and sense of self, and maybe that is just making it into something that is in the relationship, rather than just a one sided empathy. I know we've talked about that quite a bit as well. Yeah, that's,
that's where you know, if you're, for example, Carl Rogers talked about it too, that once he was with a patient, you know, client, and he kind of lost himself. Because people had those people have the craziest world views, right? And if you're just listening to them, you get kind of sucked into it. And he got actually kind of like lost in that world, and it affected him emotionally. He had to kind of withdraw for a while from from therapy, you know, from being a therapist and and as an actor. So that's that's another level. The actor gets into it and they get lost. But I would say that the the healing aspect is to be in an empathy circle where you talk about like, Hey, I'm feeling lost. I'm feeling really concerned. So you get heard by others, and you get heard by multiple others, that that gives that starts grounding you in terms of being in connection for one and being able to vent voice those feelings you have. So I think that. So actually, I would sort of say more empathy is the solution to to that.
And that's exactly what I was I was getting at as well. I agree with you on that, that it's, it's not that necessarily, that there's a different virtue that's needed in order to balance it. It's, it's changing the way we view empathy from a one sided thing to it relational? Yeah? A relational thing? Yeah. I think that is the thing that ends up balancing it out, because let's take that, that perspective of the the the therapist, right? If it's all unidirectional when doing the listening, and it's all about the other person's problems and their perspective and all of that, like it's, it's a one way relationship, and that's what they're paying you for as a therapist, is to have that one way relationship. They don't want to hear about all of your problems, but that that is why a lot of people in that field end up having high levels of burnout.
Yeah, and it's also, I see it actually a problem with therapy that that one, you know, directional, instead of the client learning empathy skills to listen to others, or they could be just feeding narcissism. It one, one level. And so I think that the mutuality of mutual empathy is, is kind of the healthy part going forward, and that they learn the skills that they can take home and into their other relationships, versus, yeah,
yeah. I agree with that. So I think that that's, that's yet another example of why the empathy circle,
and then the other is the reactivity. So again, it's like he's, what does he talk about, like, personal distress, you know? So I don't know if it was when his but it's all the reaction. The reaction can be a whole series of different reactions. And again, I don't see that as empathy either. It starts with empathy, because you have to read sense what the person is experiencing, but then it turns into a reaction at that point, I think you lose the empathy, yeah,
you, you, you lose the sense of self, you lose the autonomy, you lose the ability to do anything productive with that empathy, because you are just at the mercy of The other person at that point, really, this, this definition. I think it's the worst one of all of them. Yeah, it's, that's, that's emotion contagion, and that's it. It seems like that's the only thing that he's getting out there, however, emotional
contagion. But it can also be like you're listening to someone, then you're getting angry at them for their self pity. It's like, um, you're just sad, I'm angry at you so or, Oh, I love you. Or it just, it could be anything, right? It could be the React. If it's reactivity, it's all the things that are your React, any and all reactions. So, yeah,
that's true. So it's not necessarily taking on the same emotional Z and. Emotion as the other person, but it's it's not giving you the chance to engage with emotional intelligence, to keep any boundaries of like this is I have the right to feel something that's different, that is not reactionary to the other person. I don't have to get mad if they're saying something that I'm frustrated with, I can take a moment and breathe and get back to a sense of calm and equilibrium with this kind of definition, it takes all of that element out of
it. Of course, just want to say, just add with the empathy circle, you're creating a space of listening and empathizing with the person, but then there's a time limit so that you it can come back to you. You can say, I am pissed off with what you're saying, but you get met with empathy. So you're welcome to have all your reactions and and to have them be heard too. So that is another component to it,
yeah, and I think you mentioned it a few weeks ago that when someone empathizes with you, it helps you to understand yourself better. I think an example of this was two weeks ago. I was I was talking, it was my turn to talk, and I kept using the word concerned, and I didn't realize that I kept using that word until you pointed it out. When it was your turn to reflect back to me, you said, I'm hearing that you feel concerned, very concerned about that. It's like, yeah, I guess. I mean, do I Is that the right word that I'm using for it? And so it gave me a chance to reflect on my own communication as well. Am I communicating effectively? And effective communication? I mean, if we get down to the to the crux of it, is if what you intended to communicate is the same thing that the other person received, right and in the empathy circle, when we're reflecting back what we understood, that gives us that opportunity to engage in that, that proper communication where it's it's the same message on both sides, like on the broadcasting end,
message sent, Message received. Yeah, and so
that's why, at the end of this, I with my analogy with the hot air balloon. That's why, I think that's an important component of it, is that CD radio that they take up in the hot air balloon with them is they are reflecting back, like, 10, four, 410, right? Or, I don't even know, I've never used a CD radio, but like, they reflect back what they've heard so that they can make sure that the communication has been effective. Also, I forgot to mention, sorry, I forgot to mention waiting at noon today, so I'm going to have to hop off in time to get to that one. So
that's 20 minutes. Yeah, so no big deal.
We've made it to number two,
if you do it in the empathy circle, to the reaction is, is you say something instead of me reflecting back sharing, you know that I understand, you know my understanding, being present with you, that I have a reaction said, Oh, I feel really happy about that. Or I disagree with with, oh, no, not. I wouldn't be I disagree. It would be, or it could be, disagree, whatever your action is. So in the empathy circle, it's you have those reactions, but you're not bringing them forward. You're maintaining your empathy. Is the presence that you're bringing forward
that makes it's almost that it seems like you're you're choosing in that moment, you have to choose emotional reactivity or empathy. And so, I mean, if we're to take it back to this definition, if we are just being reactive, then we're actually not being empathetic, right? Because we're back up in our own experience again, and people
can experience that in the empathy circle. We can role play being reactive, and you can experience the difference of what that's like to be empathized with as the listener, as a speaker, versus somebody reacting to you so they're there. Then people can experience it, yeah,
yeah. So I think that's an interesting definition. I do have to say that he also in his scale. He also has a subscale that is perspective taking, and so it's not just about the emotional reactivity. He also has a subscale that is about empathic concern. So which, by definition, that definition really overlaps with compassion, really, or just
concern in general, yeah, or worry or Yeah, yeah. So
just being caring, caring about the other person, if you don't care about them, then you can use all of this perspective, taking. Uh, to manipulate them, right? If you don't care about how you use it effectively. And so the empathic concern is it an essential component of it to keep it from turning into something nefarious? Um, so moving forward. So this one is, I see this as directly opposite of the intellectual perspective taking one, because they view it as just an emotional experience. And this really seems like it is similar to this reactive version of it, where you're just feeling their emotions. So it's not even saving space for me to feel angry at what you said, right? It's just that I'm taking on the same emotion that you're taking on, um, so that one also, I think, is flawed. There's a there's
another aspect. One thing I like to do is create a model of that where you have two people, speaker and listener, and the speaker is feeling, let's say, anger. And as a listener, you can sense their anger. You Can you sense that the the the the feeling that the speaker has, but it's not overwhelming your consciousness. So to empathize, I It's, I see it as sensing into the experience of the other. I sense their anger, I sense their joy, I sense their enthusiasm, but I'm sensing it with still a self other distinction, like I'm sensing it's and there's a way of sort of model I like to model it. Have a little diagram to show. And this is gets the confusing point. It's not that they're feeling totally overwhelms me, and that's what people can get confused, like I do sense, yeah, sense, their their felt, their experience at varying degrees. So it's just that there's a subtlety there. It's the same thing with sympathy and so forth. You start with the empathy, sensing into but you're not, you know, having the reaction or and so it's a subtle point. That's, I think it's very confusing for people. It's
subtle and also important, I believe. And I would love to hear your definition of sympathy.
Yeah, it's, I mean, I've seen, I've, yeah, I there's two definitions. One main one that I see is like, Oh, you're, you're carrying some pain, and I start feeling sorry for you. And I, you know, it's like, Oh, Mark, Oh, I feel so sorry for you. So you share, oh, I just lost my dog, and I just feel so sad he just died. And instead of saying, Oh, I hear your dog just died, you're feeling really sad, I say, Oh, I feel so sorry for you, you know, and so I kind of say it's my reaction to, you know, sort of feeling sorry for you. And I did talk to interviewed, I can't remember his name, that somebody else's, you know, big academic also saw sympathy is sort of state matching, but I don't really use that first state matching.
Yeah, and the reason I even ask is because the in our common vernacular, it's used differently than it has been used in the past, like, actually back in the day, I have it in a future slide, but in ancient Greek versions of this, these words, they were, you could use empathy and sympathy interchangeably. And then even fast forward, actually, I'm just going to go to that slide so that we can look at it just second. Oh, there it was. Okay. So in ancient Greece, you could use them interchangeably. And even here, with Adam Smith and David Hume, they the word that they used for what we call empathy was sympathy. And the way that I have used sympathy up until I really started digging into the research was like you're saying, I feel bad for you. So it's more like a pity, rather than a concern that is motivated by understanding your perspective. And so to use them interchangeably, I think is it's dangerous. And I mean they back back in the 60s and 1700s it was used in the way that we use empathy today, more of like a perspective taking emotion, emotional and cognitive perspective taking process. But I would even say that if you're engaged in feeling bad. For someone, you're assuming a lot. You're assuming that you've got it all put together, and that they don't, and that somehow you have to, I mean, if you have empathic concern and compassion, or whatever you want to call it in there as well, you might feel motivated to fix their problems for them, right? Yeah, but that is where I see that being dangerous is Who am I to assume that what I have is going to solve their problem. So for example, in international development work that I've done, Americans coming into developing countries in West Africa, and assuming that they aren't happy like we are, which is so, so funny, we assume that their lives are worse than ours, because we have more money than they have. And then, but then, when you sit down and you engage with them and just observe their culture, they're much happier in I'm talking in in rural villages in West Africa that I visited, they're much happier than we are. And so if we assume that what we have is what they need, and we don't assume that they have something that we need, then we have not engaged in empathy at all. We've just engaged in sympathy and compassion but without empathy,
yeah? And so I see it too. And then you're kind of solving your own problem and not theirs, yeah?
And you feel good. And so that really seems to be, I mean, if we're taking it back to that egoistic, you know, Freudian view of things, you feel good, and that's why you did it,
right? Yeah. It might lead to, I wonder if it leads to sort of victim, seeing people as victims too. Yeah, I think
you're right. Yeah, that that triangle, yeah, yeah. I think that that's that's incredibly dangerous, and we need to get out of that mindset if we want to engage in true empathy.
Right there with you. Yeah, I love that.
Every time talk around these things, we're like, yeah, a
lot of synchronous to the year. I agree with that.
See, there you go again. I agree again, but let's bring it back to this. Let's see we have eight minutes or so do you should we continue going through this slide and just stick here and then maybe next week we can? Yeah,
it's, I think it's good to go through each of this is one of the X things I like to do with the model. Eventually go through each of the definitions and be able to map it on and have examples of how to map it on to the holistic empathy, because that's what we've been doing. And this is exactly, you know, mapping on all the other definitions and how they fit into this big other. I mean, the model, yeah, right,
yeah. It's I am just I'm excited once again, I have to bring it back to this. I'm excited to have these conversations with you, because the more I read about the philosophy behind it, the more I see that what you're doing really is in line with a more proper philosophy of empathy, which somehow psychology has forgotten. It's probably
good that I didn't come from an academic background,
and maybe, maybe that's why I see it as well, because I'm middle aged, coming back into academia, and so I've experienced this, and I'm coming now into psychology, and I'm saying, Wow, are you serious? Like, is this really what you believe it is? So maybe that's why they let me into the program, as they see that there's a benefit to having people from an outsider's perspective, come in and kind of shake things up, so that, I think that's our job, is to shake things up, yeah,
and I think, I think it's, it's going to be a real contribution to these it addresses a lot of the criticisms, you know, that you know, like, yeah, the criticisms are pointing out all these different problems that are generated from some of this stuff. And yeah, and I think true empathy is actually the solution, you know? I mean, yeah, yeah,
I agree that it's that it's not one or the other, because there are the academics on both sides of the debate. And I just, I want to say, can we just maybe engage in some empathy and actually have a conversation? See that we actually, we agree more than we disagree on a lot of this, but it's it's right here. This is the reason that we run into these problems. Progress is often hindered by poor communication between scientists with different people using the same term to mean different things, or different terms to mean the same thing. The potential for such semantic confusion is great as. With interdisciplinary research. And I mean, I'm definitely seeing it within psychology. So that's really up here, in this part of this quote that we well, and I guess a lot of it is interdisciplinary within sub facets of psychology that we just we're speaking slightly different languages, and so we think that we're fighting with each other when we're not which is, it's ironic, very ironic.
That's why I don't get all worked up about the sin of empathy and all those other, you know, books against empathy, because they were, I think people were just talking past each other. So,
yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I know I mentioned this before that I was afraid to read against empathy, until I started and realized, oh, oh, okay. Actually, I agree with a lot of your premises. I disagree with some as well, but you are referring to a different version of empathy than I am than I thought you were right. I thought you were saying that you're against this communicative like bringing it into this relationship of empathy, but you're not against that. Okay, so I guess we can be friends. So actually, last week, I had a conversation with Daryl Cameron. I've been trying to have a conversation a few months, so we finally met, and he actually just did a he just published a paper with Paul Bloom, which was, I'm sure that was a really interesting experience, because they're on opposite sides of this debate. The one thing that they were able to agree on is that empathic AI has some some interesting, promising components to it. So if, but we also have to take it with with caution as well. So they they agreed on all of these premises that they were talking about in this paper, about empathic AI. So I just think that that that's a wonderful thing to see, that people on opposite sides of a debate can come together and find things that they actually do agree on, which is senses that
Daryl is Daryl Cameron. He's going to have a lot of these definitions that we're talking about here. I don't, yeah, he hasn't have sort of a holistic empathy definition. I don't know. I'm not, can't remember what his I mean. I've, I've done an interview with him before.
Oh, really, yeah, the one research project that I remember reading of his was when they gave, they gave people two stacks of cards that they could choose from. The cards on on the one side of them, they were asked to feel the person's emotion. So, like, pick up a card that that showed a person's face. And so then they were asked to, like, try to feel what the person was feeling. And then on the other side, they could choose to take a card from here and have that experience, or they could choose to take a card from the other side and just define the emotion, so that would be this part of it, so identifying the emotion um. But what they found in that study is that people it the the cognitive load that was involved, a cognitive and emotional load that was involved in taking on the emotion of the person made people choose to just identify the emotion, because it's just it takes too much out of us to feel with people, and so it's easier for us to identify emotions than than feel with them. But if we're so, I think that what he's getting at is that his definition. And I'll have to look back through some of it, yeah, I remember that
now, yeah, that maybe he's
looking at it more from an emotional perspective.
You know, we have that empathy tent, and at the empathy tent, we've got the banner that has empathy in the eyes test, you know, from the from Cambridge, if you know that, from the autism, and there's 10 images, and then we have people come and take the test, right, the empathy and the eye test, and people love it. I mean, people, you know, when we have the empathy tent, people come up, and we kind of get them involved in that. And some of people are just like, they get them right off the bat, and then others sort of struggle with it. And then I always tell them, if they're struggling with it, I say, Look at the eyes, and then try to create that yourself. And it really helps. Yeah, what would that feel like? And it really does help a lot of people to feel that, you know,
and if I recall correctly, it's just a picture of eyes. Yeah, it doesn't show the rest of it. No, okay, that's interesting. So that I think that would map onto this definition here, and maybe recognize and share these probably overlap a little bit more than I have them overlapping. Here. So identifying and feeling, recognizing and sharing, that's probably about the same thing,
yeah, and that's sensing versus take being overwhelmed with it right now, I would say that's part of empathy. In the empathy circle, someone is speaking, you're you're listening to and you can identify your ID. You actually said, it said, Oh, I'm feeling concerned. And I reflected back, you're feeling concerned. It wasn't, and I could sense it in you too, but I didn't feel overwhelmed with concern into the point where I couldn't listen and stay present with you. So I would say that is a component of empathy,
yeah, and if you are to see it as just this personal distress like if you're higher, if you if I'm so excited to use this, I actually am using this scale in my study coming up, and so I'm excited to see what the outcome is for people who rate themselves highly on that personal distress sub scale, to see if that Has any outcome on their ability to actually engage empathically with another person. Because, if you're just viewing it as a reactivity thing, like I said before, I don't think that you have the ability to to fully engage empathy. Yeah,
that'd be my assumption, too. If you're like, all stressed and worried and stuff, you're going to detach from being present with the person. You're going to kind of block your empathy.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I know that we want to, we want to stick with this and go in order, but I do just want to show you this. Nope, I passed it there, this one. So if it's a reactive process, or if it's like a sympathy process where you're feeling bad for someone that all of those they really tend to minimize the other person and their experience, and it really hyperinflates the individual.
Yeah, I'd love to have more diagrams like this. Be able to model this, I think would be, you know, find, I've been sort of experimenting with some where you have two people and you can see the emotions and the percentage of the awareness the emotions has in people's consciousness and in their body. So, yeah, I really like that.
Oh, I like that idea too. Yeah, this, I actually created this when I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the philosophical stuff. Was like, you know, I just need to put them out there, like, graphically, so I can see size differences. And I think that that is that helps me a lot too. I'm a very vicious person as well. It's
almost like we need a a framework for something like this. This is, like, a very good, you know, just like first sort of draft, but it could get much more sophisticated for how we, you know, kind of model this. But I think it would help with the understanding. So, yeah, it'd be something to explore. Yeah, and a little
teaser for next week is, this is more of what I would hope that we have, like this is the version of empathy that we're talking about, this holistic empathy, where empathy happens in the between, which is, it's it's bi directional, and it's the quality of the relationship and the the interaction that we've set up, and I've got to head out. Okay,
great, excellent. Yeah, well, pick up where we left off next time.
Yeah, sorry that I have to jet out earlier today. Yeah,
if you're able to have more time, I have it in the future, it's gonna get through this. But, yeah, okay,
yeah, we're working on the a big sports Curriculum project right now, and so that's taking up a lot of my bandwidth right now, but I Yes, I don't know that I can commit more than one hour a week to this right now, but then hopefully once I can shift more to my empathy research, again, I want
to hear your discussion with Daryl too, how that camera and how that went.
Yeah, it was great. We were really mostly talking about empathic AI, okay, because he's recently done some research on that, so I wanted to just get his him to sign off on my research direction that I'm that I'm using right now. So anyway, I'll talk to you later.
