To this computer. Let me find the AI button. So I did put, did you see our last meeting? I just put the link in there. I did make that document.
Oh, yes.
So that's I have otter AI, which does transcripts and also does, you know, an AI summary, as well as a zoom AI. So we got double AI. We got Ai Squared.
I love it. You can never have too much AI in your life. It's
amazing with it, with AI, I've been just using it for a whole bunch of stuff, kind of,
yeah, it's been really revolution, revolutionizing things. I'm trying to figure out how to do more of my lit review stuff with AI. I've been putting abstracts through AI to see if it can, like, pull out different things that I'm not catching when I'm reading through it. It's pretty helpful. Yeah,
have your men last week, any new thoughts or,
well, I think we all have COVID, so that's probably Wow, yeah. So, yeah, that's the thing with having a bunch of kids, is you end up getting sick every time somebody in the family gets sick. So no family gets it, yeah, yeah. So it's pretty frustrating this time of year is just every year we know that there's going to always be somebody homesick, like every day. So luckily, my husband works from home. I have some flexibility, like I had a class this morning, but I was able to attend over zoom. So yeah, but as far as empathy thoughts, I mean, it's never far from my thoughts, and so I definitely have been having thoughts about it. This week, I I'm preparing to do a presentation in the lab that I'm working in, just with an update of all of my research. So I kind of would love to like, if you have the bandwidth for it, I think it would be mutually beneficial to like for me to share my presentation with you. Okay,
maybe we can do mutual if you want to share a presentation. I also have a slideshow of definition of empathy that also wanted to share at some point, and maybe not today, but to have that as sort of a foundation to a, first, a script to run through, and then kind of get, would love to get feedback and stuff, because I want to keep refining it. So you want to, like, start with what you
have. I hope we have time today to do both, because one of my slides, is a bunch of different definitions that I have found in the research. So I think it could go both ways. Excuse me, I know that I'm getting sick. So yeah,
I had COVID About three months ago. So yeah, I was, I was a week and a half pretty rough. So
that's no fun. After I had COVID the first time in 2021 I got long haul, and I still have residual like heart swelling and stuff like that. So the prospect of getting COVID again is never a fun idea, just because I don't know how it's going to affect me long term. So anyway, we're all out of tests. So I don't know if what we have right now is COVID, but my kids, best friends had COVID Last week, so that sounds I know. So we'll see. I think we need to get some some tests today. So yeah, do you want to hop into it? Sure. Okay, and I'll be able to give you a quicker version than I will give to the lab on Friday, because it's really introducing all of the stuff that you and I have been discussing, and it's going to be new, completely new to them, but it's not going to be new to you. But I just wanted to walk through it and see if you have any any thoughts of things I could say differently.
Maybe a co host, if you want to screen, share anything. Okay, let
me see
that's not the one. Hang on,
and I haven't completed this presentation as well. I didn't realize I would have such a hard time talking today, so we'll see if I can make it through the whole thing. Okay, are you seeing empathy, a synthesis of historical and current understandings? Okay?
Yeah. I.
Yeah, okay. Okay, so everybody in my lab knows that what I'm studying is empathy, but they don't fully understand what I'm planning to do with it. So that's why I'm presenting this so that we can all be on the same page as to why I'm obsessed with this topic and also why it's so complicated. So my goals for the presentation are to understand the history of the word empathy, understand current attitudes about the topic, explore an alternative philosophical approach, and learn how to interact more effectively with others. And so then I'm going to ask everybody to share their different definitions of empathy, which I think is a very interesting discussion starter, because inevitably, as you have seen, there are a lot of different evidence. So I guess I'll ask you that question. I know I've asked you this before, but what is your one or two sentence definition of empathy,
I kind of the broadest sense. It's it's how we feel and sense in our way into the world, into our own experience, into the experience of others, and experience of sort of like life. So I have a very broad definition of feeling into. It's going back to the German I'm feeling into, and it's very and it's very and there's a lot of components to it.
Great. I love that it I love that you like to keep it broad, because there you'll see that some of the definitions are very, very specific on my next slide, and some of them are really incongruous with each other as well. Okay, so here are some of the definitions that I have just brought together from the literature that I've been reading. I have a lot of I need to reformat this one because it's hard to see what the actual definitions are with all of my references in there. But we have, it's an intellectual perspective, taking, but not experiencing emotions with others. Okay, so that's one set of definitions. Davis calls it something that's reactive. Others call it feeling the emotions of others only. So that's directly contradictory to this definition up here. Others call it correctly identifying and feeling the emotions of others. So that is contradictory to this, because they say that it's just feeling the emotions. This is also including in it the correct identification of the emotions. Here we have the ability to recognize, share the emotional state in mind of the of another, or to understand the meaning and significance of a person's behavior. So I like that definition. It's a lot broader, so it's kind of more of a holistic definition. Here's an evolutionary perspective on it, acting for the good of another. It's a higher form of empathy, so that's kind of more of the compassion or empathic concern side of it. But it's definitely not the same definition as what we have up here, which is seeing another person's perspective, definitely not the same as what we have here, which is a reactive process. This seems to be more volitional. Another idea of this higher level of empathy is objectively seeing their state but keeping them separate. So that's a self other distinction, rather than allowing your self to meld with the other self. And so that's that's very different from this reactive process that is feeling the emotions of others. There's the affect of cognitive and communicative so that one is again, more holistic. Brene Brown calls it vulnerable. I'm just going to speed through the rest of these a skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with another's experience. So that is something that is connecting the self into this argument, into this discussion with the other person. This one is talking about a self awareness as well neural resonance, and so that one's talking about the actual activity that's taking place in the brain, a sense, sense the emotions and understand the emotions of another, so that one's kind of overlapping with some of these over here. So then this is another one, three into related processes, cognitive empathy, which is the perspective taking. There's the affected empathy and empathic concern. I guess I went to the next slide before I was ready to in general, with the exception of people like Paul Bloom, people do see it, like lay people and researchers alike do see empathy as a good thing in most cases. And so that's kind of what I've been seeing in the literature. Does that? How does this jive with what you've been seeing and experiencing as you've talking
there's, I have a document too, where it seems like everybody who gets into empathy does the big literature review, yeah. And I've got a website where I've just gone through all the different ones. So it's just kind of like all over the place. And so those are just. Some of them, I wasn't the the affective cognitive part with Rogers. I don't think he kind of framed it that in so much as affective and cognitive. I do know Goldman. I think he was instrumental in having that distinction between affective, cognitive and and care, or empathic concern, because I kind of base, my definition is grounded in Rogers, you know, so you get into the nuances you can, yeah, you know, I think
the nuance is important here, and so I'm going to read more of Rogers works to make sure that I have that a clearer understanding of that. Go ahead
and put him into the cognitive, affective cognitive category, because there's kind of, that's the current, oh, look at that. Anita is coming today. I wasn't sure if she'd Yes. I wasn't sure if, if you know, hey, Anita,
hi. I see that we were supposed to meet in a couple of hours, but the invitation was extended to join you guys at one. So here I
am, yeah, oh, great. Well, we're just going through this is Jody. She's another empathy researcher. What university BYU is that?
Yeah, Brigham, Young University, and I'm deep diving into the empathy research. And so I've been meeting with Edwin. I've met with him a few times to talk about empathy definitions, and it seems like you've done the same thing. So I'm super excited to meet you
same. Hi, Jodi Edwin, does that mean we won't meet each other at three or my three? Yeah,
we can just meet now if you want. I was just an invitation to meet. We were going to talk about definitions. I think, I can't remember. I think I thought, oh, it'd be great for you to meet Jodi and maybe, you know, share some ideas. She's going through her presentation right now, and she just started with the first step was she was going to ask everyone what their definition was. Now she's going through some of the, you know, a list of definitions that she's gotten from different academics and
Anita, I would love to know your definition, because I've been looking at some of the things you've been posting on LinkedIn the last few days, since we connected last week, and I'd love to know if you have, like, a one or two sentence definition of what Empathy means to you.
I do, but I don't want to interrupt you, so maybe, no, that's this is, this is a discussion
here. I can even go back a slide so you can see, see, I want to, I want to know. So a lot of my research has been qualitative work, asking different people with different backgrounds how they define and how they apply empathy in their lives. And I've been finding qualitatively, and also from the literature that it's a mixed bag. So I'd love to remember this
Sure. So the way I describe empathy is not a pure definition, as in a dictionary definition, but sort of for people to to relate to the word empathy. So what? So what I use is, it's the innate trait that unites us in our common humanity. So empathy is an innate trait that we all possess, that unites us in our common humanity without and I always have a little caveat or a little asterisk without denying or discounting lived experience. So my understanding of empathy is on a continuum where I have pity, sympathy, compassion and empathy. And some people say, Well, why is compassion, like not equivalent to empathy? And there's like an East Coast, West Coast, as far as I can see, perspective like compassion in the West Coast is all about, you know, feeling what someone else is feeling, and then acting to improve their situation or reduce their stress or discomfort. There's a sense of like action, as far as I can tell, from the West Coast compassion folks. And I don't, I don't take anything away from compassion, but I find that compassion is more of a feeling. It's like when you feel what someone else is feeling, but I pay a lot more attention to our capacity for perspective taking so when we consider what someone else is going through. So that's why, you know, when I wrote a book, I wrote it on purposeful empathy. So empathy on purpose, it's empathy that we decide to lean into, because I'm sure you're familiar with Paul Bloom's book. He says, you know, empathy sucks, basically, and it's because he's only looking at it from the perspective of empathy, right? And I think a lot of things can be improved if we were to dial up the cognitive empathy or the purposeful empathy. So it's the innate trait that we all possess that unites us in our common humanity. So we all have a certain like we have the capacity for this whole arena of human emotions and human experiences. We experience loss and fear and shame and disappointment. And love and all of that. So empathy is the thing that allows us to understand what other people are going through. But the asterisk that I use is without denying or discounting lived experience, because we can't ever really know what someone else is going through. So I really love and I'll stop the monolog you've given me the open door. You there's a Turkish born American scholar by the name of Elif Gup chidem, who has a PhD in Islamic art. And I asked her, because she does a lot of work with museum curators and wants to create public spaces for empathy building, and she thinks that museums are a great place for that. I asked her, you know, what did she learn through her studies on Islamic art that informed her thinking about empathy? And she gave me a metaphor that I that is still stuck with me, and it really does animate my way of thinking about empathy. So she talks about the circle as a geometrical shape, all other shapes, like triangles, like our three lines, and then, you know, you can, you can put four dots on a piece of paper, and it makes a square or rectangle, or whatever that shape is that's on a, you know, like a diagonal. And then she, she gave the metaphor of, like, you drop your paint brush into a can of paint, and then you splotch it onto the wall, and it's like 100 different spots of paint. And if you connect them all, they don't have a a name to that shape, right? So we have some shapes have names, and some shapes don't have names. But she said, no matter what you do, like if you no matter what shape you have, if you stretch it to its natural conclusion, if you stretch out all the sides and you stretch it out, you keep stretching, keep stretching, keep stretching, they all form a circle. So the backstory being that the circle encompasses everything. Okay? So that's the first entry point. And then she says, if you think of the circumference of a circle as an infinite number of dots along its circumference, and you add 10 more, or 10,000 more or 10 million more, the shape doesn't change. It just grows or shrinks, if you're adding or subtracting spots. So she says, I want you to imagine right now we're like about 8 billion people on the planet. So think of 8 billion dots along the circumference of this circle. Every single one of them, without exception, is equidistant to the center. So if you use, if you're a believer, you might use the word God. If you're an atheist, you might use breath, whatever you use to say, what animates us, what brings us into this thing that we're experiencing right now, life, whatever, Big Bang universe, God, we're all equidistant to that. And so you can, you can really kind of stretch that meaning to like we're all universally worthy, just by virtue of being born, regardless of what shape, color, creed, country, religion, we've been born into. And then she says, you know, if you think of the circle again, you could have two side by side, or two nearby or two on opposite sides, no matter, no matter where you are in relation to someone another spot, we all have a different perspective on the center, even if we're side by side. So I love the fact that so the definition I use is really kind of like bringing that whole metaphor to life, that empathy is the innate trait that unites us in our common humanity without denying or discounting lived experience. A
quick footnote about Elif she's writing a putting she's editing a book with 30 authors on practices, empathy, practices, toolkit for museums. So we just Rose and I just submitted a chapter on empathy circles, how to do empathy circles, right last Friday. So that's amazing. Edwin, yeah, getting those empathy circles out there
well, and I love that you use the metaphor of the circle, because when we have an empathy circle. It really embodies that exactly
I was thinking about that too, yes, yes.
And Anita, I agree with you wholeheartedly when you say because I've talked with a lot of different people who say that compassion is a higher is kind of like the pinnacle, but the way that I've experienced it is that I've, I've worked with a lot of compassionate people who are not interested in perspective, taking I used to work in West Africa, and we did a lot of development work, and I worked with a lot of people who thought, Oh, well, if I give you $500 then my work here is done, and I feel. Good, because I've given, I've been compassionate, but I haven't actually tapped into a higher level of perspective taking to see if that would be helpful. And so I think that there's, there's got to be somewhere in the way we talk about empathy that also encompasses seeing your perspective, but then also seeing your potential. I
think you have the whole human Are you familiar with human centered design? The whole design community says if you design anything, the first step you need to do is empathize with the people you're designing for. So I totally disagree with the compassion folks that only compassion is an action oriented so I'm in agreement there with your what you're saying.
Well, this is like I said last week, Edwin, I'm really excited to meet like minded people in this space, especially when there's it's so weird that we have so much debate about the definitions of something that should be bringing us together in that common humanity. We're talking about something that's supposed to bring us together, and we're fighting about it. I don't understand it.
You know, it's okay. One of the things because I knew I was going to have this call with Edwin, I wasn't sure I was going to meet you, Jodi, but it's so delightful to meet you. So thanks for letting me crash your party. You know, in in Inuit language, so Canada has a big Inuit population. Up north, there is about 50 different types of snow. So we call snow, okay, but they, but they see all kinds of snow. And even we do, I don't know where you're located, Jody, where are you in the on the planet?
Yeah, I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Okay, so you know snow a little bit, yeah. And my husband is a back country skier, and so we were actually just talking about the different names of snow last week, right? There were, they were terms that I didn't knew those terms,
right? So I feel like it's interesting coming from a culture where there's a need to understand the different types of snow because slight, you know, like a slippery snow is different than a wet snow is, you know, you'll dress differently, you'll bring different equipment, depending on the the type of snow. I think it actually is maybe a little bit I'm being provocative, like, isn't it interesting that the word empathy, if we, you know, think back to its original German and full on is, is, is just one little word to mean so many different things. So like, you know, I watched a 12 minute video that Edwin put out about the different kinds of empathy, right, including imaginative empathy and holistic empathy. And we all need these pre cursor words to to actually like in absence of that first word, we wouldn't we wouldn't know what kind of empathy we're talking about. But what as soon as we do add that other word, then then we have more information. So I actually think, personally, it might be more useful to have the battery of types of empathy that we want to talk about, as opposed to try to get everything. Because I don't, I don't think people from around the world are all going to get or even, you know, in the English speaking world, are all going to get behind one definition of empathy, because there's so many different interpretations of it. So it might be useful to have like this. This codified, you know, I don't know different. I can't speak English, but you know what I'm saying? A typology.
Typology,
a typology of empathy. Yeah,
what's the guy that I can't remember is now is looking for it right now? He did the eight ways the word empathy is used. Oh, that was Batson. Batson. Batson, yeah, so I interviewed him about that a couple times, and his basic thing is, is, is you have to define it the way you want to define it, and then stick with it and then articulate what your definition is. And that's kind of what I'm kind of focusing on, is just here's the way I'm defining it, and then I'm going to try to map on other people's definition into into that model, and then try to be really clear on how I'm defining it. So, oh,
that's something actually I have in my in my presentation here is that something that has become problematic in the research is that people are not understanding the definitions that have been laid out by the people who created different measures, and then they have their own definition of what empathy is, and then they use a measure that doesn't match their definition. So I'm going to go to that slide so I can see the name of the article. I can't remember what it was. Okay, this one right here. Are we really measuring empathy? So in this article, what they found is that there's a lot of disconnect in the way that people are measuring it from the way that they're personally defining it. And so. That is super problematic for the implications of research. Because if you think you're measuring something and you're actually measuring something different, that's extremely problematic. And so then it ends up furthering this, this misunderstanding, because then people, then you end up with articles like this one characterizing empathy and compassion using computational linguistic analysis. I read this whole paper, and this is, you can see Bloom is on this paper, and that's where I was first introduced to this idea of people being against empathy, which I thought across the board, people liked it, but I guess they don't. But what they their definition of it was something that was very different from mine. And so that's when I decided to read Bloom's book, and then I came to understand that, oh, actually, with the definition that he's talking about of empathy, I'm against that too. You know, if we're only going to focus in on the affective part of it and the emotion contagion that is really damaging, and it's not this purposeful dialog that we're talking about. And so I think, I think it's important for us to make sure that we have, even if we don't agree on the definitions, as long as we're clear about our own definitions, then we can move forward and have a productive conversation.
Yeah, the other part for the definitions is with the definition that I'm creating is that it's within the context of the empathy circle. So I want to see whatever definition you have, show it to me in the context of an empathy circle, because I could role play batson's definition, and you could experience it, that it's not what we're what, at least what I'm calling empathy. So I think that's the other thing. So I'm kind of curious how the things that you're coming to definitions, that you're coming up with Jody, how they would map into the dynamics of an empathy circle, and can we even role play some some of those.
I think that would be really interesting. So I mean, if we're taking a Davis definition, and it's very reactive that that becomes more of that, self over overlap, self other overlap, where you lose your own perspective. And Edwin, I experienced some of that last week, and I wanted to bring this up, that even after our conversation, I was thinking about it later and thinking of something that one of us had said, and I couldn't remember which one of us had said it. And so I realized in that moment that I had experienced a full self other overlap, where, if I were to take one of those, you know, one of those measures after our experience that has the two circles to see how far they overlap, I would say that our perspectives were were 100% overlapping because I couldn't remember if you had said something, or if I had said it, because I remembered myself saying it and I was repeating it after you, or if it was my original thought. And so I think that's an interesting thing to bring into it. When we're talking about the the empathy circle is, if we already are closely aligned in our perspectives, then we repeat back to each other, then we find that we're 100% the same perspective. And obviously it's always going to be different, like Anita was saying, because we're two different points on that circle. But I would have to wonder, what does that look like? Because you've experienced so many of these very polarized conversations with people, how much do you find that their circles overlap with each other after they've experienced the empathy circle. Like, I would doubt that it would be that 100% overlap, like I experienced. But would you say it's probably more than it was before they got into the conversation? Would you say they overlap? Like, yeah,
when you reflect what someone is saying, you have to take it in. You have to you take in the energy into your consciousness. So there is a sense that it kind of bridges that self, that a wall, perhaps So, but it does also support a self other distinction, because I'm reflecting back what I'm hearing you say, so it's not, it's not necessarily emerging in the sense of losing yourself, I find it creates a sense of self, because I have, I'm reflecting what you say, so I'm I know it's you who's saying it. So I actually think it helps with self other distinction,
yeah, I'm just saying that that's not how I experienced deadlines, like I'd watched several of your videos where people were experiencing it, but I hadn't actually experienced it myself, and so when I went through it, you saw it happen a couple of times where I lost my train of thought, where I didn't even remember what I had come to say, because I was so engrossed in just listening and reflecting. Back, what, what you were experiencing. So I just thought that that was an interesting, like, insight that I took away from it, that that self other overlap can be
so you were losing, you were losing some of your self other distinction. Yeah. So by, by reflecting it back, interesting, yeah.
So I don't know if we want to say that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know that I'm like trying to balance it with any positive or negatives. I'm just saying that that's what I was experiencing. Do you
think it'd be fair to say somatically or energetically, or some other kind of energy word, where you could feel a cohesion or a transcendence of separateness, but like, intellectually, you know that you're distinct. Like, it's not as if you're dissolving into the other person, the person's dissolving into you, and you've become a unified whole. You still know rationally that you're distinct people, but there's a sense of common ground that has been created through that process,
yeah, and I think that I this is also a process of learning, and as you learn more things, you tend to forget where you learn something, and it just becomes part of how you see the world, right? And so I am a conglomeration of all of the perspectives of people that I've learned from and so and really, when I look back, I think, Oh, I know this thing about empathy. I can't remember where I read it, or I can't remember who said it, but it's something that has made an impact on me. And so I think that self other merging is myself with many, many others, and I'm merging into whatever I'm open to, like whomever's whoever's experiences and perspectives I'm open to. I'm going to take some of that and incorporate it into myself.
Are you familiar with the work of Otto Sharma? So the presencing Institute, he describes the idea that we are stepping into the unknown. So like we're always emerging. We're always like in emergence. So like you're evolving too, not just because of conversations you've had. Your synaptic connections are changing, maybe also through your lineage. There might be like you know, your your your genetics have been informed by many generational experiences that you're not conscious of, that are present in how you show up in the world, but that always and all the time, you are evolving as a person through all these interactions and that in the moment of, you know, empathy circling. And when you're when you're engaged in, you know, the the kind of listening that is required of the empathy circle that there is. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost like, I don't want to over, I don't want to make this too Woo, but it's almost like a quantum experience. It's almost like a spiritual experience that transcends the five dimensions that we know to be our five senses, but there's like an actual quality of knowingness that is more profound than what science so far can prove to us.
Yeah, I agree with you, and I think that those of us who experience it, we can, we can speak to that, that we have experienced that, but there, like you said, there's no way to really quantify that at this point, but it doesn't. It doesn't negate the fact that it's there and there is an energy transfer or an energy merging that happens. Okay?
So there was, um, I'll share the link with you, but there's an Arab woman and a Jewish man from New York, and he and she lives in Montreal, but as or Ottawa, rather. And she came from Morocco originally. And they had some dialogs, public dialogs that were open to the to the public to attend, where they were sharing their experiences of what was going on in Gaza in the earliest days, like in the first couple or two or three months of the war, I guess you could call it. And initially, like, I interviewed both of them. So I interviewed him first, and when I heard about it, there was a part of me that was kind of like, okay, you know, how much is this going to be performative? How much of the, you know, all sorts of questions like, it's so it's so loaded, right? And what you saw in this 10 minute video clip is both of them sharing their experience and having radical empathy. They call it that's how they used it, radical empathy, to hear what was being said and to accept that they were going to go through some moments in their body of different triggers, but to not react to them, to stay present for the radical empathy, and so both of them could really hear each other. And I'm. Kid you not like at the end of those 10 minutes, there's something that showed up in the space around the Zoom call, between the computer and me, around me that had a spirit of loving kindness, like there was something healing about the experience of listening to each other with radical empathy. And so I think the empathy circles is trying hard to give us practice at listening to one another with a degree of loving kindness, where your truth is different from my truth, but I can hear what's behind your truth, and that that too deserves to be honored regard. You know, even though we have different historical perspectives and geopolitical perspectives and whatever. So I don't know what I'm going on about, but I think that empathy is like a gateway to a higher level of consciousness that we can tap into. I think that's the bottom line. I want to
say, very transcendent, or
seeing our common humanity is the term I use. You start saying, Oh, actually, there's a lot of similarity between you and myself, but I do like that self other distinction, and I think that like in four people in the circle, I find that that helps, like, instead of losing myself in terms of speaking with someone, by having, you know, two other people in the circle, I get a reflection from them. And that helps. Having three perspectives on myself helps me sort of with my own identity, because it was just you and I doing the act of listening Jodi that it's like maybe easier to kind of get, you know, lost and oh, where's my boundaries, or something like that. But having multiple people to give you that perspective, to reflect back, I mean, at least for me, gives me a sense of of more of myself. Yeah,
yeah. I appreciate that. I'm going to go forward in my slides, if you don't mind, just to show you some of the things I'm planning on sharing on this. This. This is an interesting quote here. 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 greatest with interdisciplinary research. So that goes along with what we were talking about. So I'm going to talk about some of the history of the term, and talking about ein fueling and how that came into Western thought. Something that I think is really important about this, and I wanted to get your feedback on this, is that when we're talking about feeling into this is a volitional human being, or, as Martin Heidegger would call it, da sign. Are you familiar with that term? So she's able to think about herself as an individual, as a being, and she is projecting her feeling onto the art. And so that's where this idea of I'm feeling comes from, is that esthetic perspective, but I see it as problematic when we bring that into psychology, because it really is demeaning to the other person. It kind of turns them into an object, so we've appropriated it, and then we have that's really led to a lot of these people who are against empathy, because it's, it's me projecting my thoughts and and it's still about me, like we have an inflated sense of our own self, and we, we really want to hang on, let me go to this next slide. We want to focus on the self in in our research, in in psychology, whereas I come from sociology, where we're really more focused on what happens between the two people and or between the groups, and I think that's an important distinction there. When we have this inflated sense of self, then we really diminish the other person. But I also like in light of what we're talking about here, where I experienced, where I lost myself in the empathy circle, I don't want it to become a flip flop, where we we aggrandize the other, and we lose ourselves in the process as well. So maybe we're better off without using the term empathy is kind of one of the ideas that could come out of that. I'm not saying I I agree with that, but if we were the philosophical writings of these different philosophers, most of them are German. So Edwin, there you go. All good things from come from Germany. But if humans as more than just objects, and we need to recognize that there is no way that we will ever fully understand another. Person, and we need to fully respect that, rather than saying, well, we can't understand them. So we demean we, we recognize, as Buber would say, that it's an i thou conversation, rather than I it so it's, it's bringing the I and the or the self and the other to the same level playing field. And so this is kind of what I am seeing from our conversation here, and from the empathy circle experience, and from the philosophical writings that the empathy is something that happens in between the people, like in between myself and between you and I quoted you here, Edwin, you can see that where, if we think that there's a problem with empathy, like empathy is not good for us, that that actually shows that there's a lack of empathy that's happening in the in between, right? Like we've created an atmosphere of empathy, where some people say, you know, I show empathy, I listen all the time, and there's nothing reciprocated. So empathy isn't doing me any good. But if we create this, this culture of empathy, like you've talked about where, where it is an in between thing, and it's like you're saying Anita, where we have this like energy shift, like a cosmic shift, that takes place, that's when we find this really purposeful, transcendent empathy that is more beneficial for everybody. And so I, yeah, I do have lots of issues with the way that different people have conceptualized it and put it into boxes. And I really like the way that you're saying that it's, it's not something that can be easily put into a box. I mean, if it's a circle, can't really put a circle in a box, right? Because that would be confining it to those four, those four sides, whereas it's something that's infinite. So do you have any thoughts on any of that?
I got one, I got, like, a 10 second thing. I'll be right back. Okay?
And I don't know whether or not he uses umlauts on his U, but his name is not spelled with an E, just while he's away, not noticing this. Oh,
okay, hang on, yeah,
the bottom are you right there? Okay, yep,
and you're right because it says it right there. Thank you. I know several people with similar last names, and so it's always hard for me to know how to spell it,
yeah, and the replaced it the the umlaut. So I put in the chat my my dissertation, and it mean it I wrote, I, you know, it was written 2011 so so much has happened since then, but there chapter two. I mean, I'm sure you've explored Susan lanzon, his book, his about empathy.
I haven't have you. Edwin,
yeah, I interviewed her as well about it, and she's writing a book on he's writing her proposal right now, for definite, for a definition book. Yeah. Anyway,
yeah. So chapter two might be of interest, because I've got about four or five pages of definitions of empathy from different places. So you might yes,
that will be very, very useful. Yeah, it definitely seems like you're somebody I need to be connected with I'm working on my PhD right now, and I'm always looking to be mentored by people who are further along in this field, because the people that are on my committee, they're they're incredible researchers, but they don't have a specific focus on empathy. And so I am so happy to learn from people who have been in this field, specifically for years. So your
elevator description of what you're trying to do with your PhD would be
what? Yeah, so my research questions focus around I have two main questions, and I actually don't know exactly how I'm going to study the second question, but the first one is looking at, what do you do after you have empathized with another person? So by that, I mean what what do you do take in the perspective of another person? Do you become something different? Do you go back to who you were before being informed? Do you stay intransigent to their beliefs, and you go back to your own beliefs. I want to understand how people deal with the next step, because I think that the one of the reasons that we struggle with empathy is because we're afraid that it might make us want to see things differently, and so we put up walls around ourselves and we don't empathize because we're afraid of of having to change something like our belief system, for example. Second question that I have is, is focusing around the compassion side of it? What does compassion. And without empathy look like. And how can we inform people who are in helping professions to become more more adept at perspective taking that is that is holistic, that sees the person for who they are and for their potential, but then also is realistic for for the person who is in the helping position like that is like sustainable for them to not be burnt out from it as well. So it's, it's pretty broad, right now, I am designing one study that is going to be an empathy circle. I haven't, I haven't quite figured out how to incorporate the empathy circle as one of my conditions, because it's so different from the other conditions, but looking at having people empathize, versus having them stay true to their convictions and try to convince the other person of their perspective, and then the third condition would be to have have them engage in this empathic listening, where they're reflecting back to each Other and moving through it like an empathy circle. So that's where I'm at. I'm only in my first year of my program. I'm a non traditional student, so I've been raising kids for the last 15 years, and now I'm going back to get my PhD. So that's where I'm at. And I have more questions than I did three years ago, I have more questions than I thought I would have at this point, because I thought, you know, you go and you learn everything that's been studied and and you come up with answers, but I've just come up with questions. That's probably the the lot of the researcher, right? You end up with more questions.
I hope you do, because then you have a pipeline of work ahead of you. Yeah, did you? Did you want to continue your slides so that we make sure we don't
if the rutch is misspelled? This one to give you,
yes, I'm sorry, yeah. She pointed that out. I was explaining that I have several friends with similar last names, and so I was trying to remember if there was an E in there, if there was a T, and I it looks like I did get it wrong, so I will use
our empathy the ease.
So are you saying,
What about self empathy with your Do you have that as part of your model? Um,
no, and there's, there's not enough time to go into all of that, but that is something that I think is important, especially when we're talking about self empathy and self compassion, because the research that I've read about self compassion allows you to save space for that common humanity like it allows you to have more compassion for yourself when you recognize that there is that connection between what you're experiencing and What other people experience as well. So there's just not enough time at this for this one hour discussion that we're going to have on it. But yes, I definitely think that there's an important part of that, and that's a lot of the interviewing that I've been doing has been asking about that as well. So I'll get into it. But let's see. Oh, okay, I wanted to say that I have issues with the empathy, altruism hypothesis, and I want to ask your thoughts on this. Okay, so the way that I understand it is he, he lays out those eight different kinds of empathy, and he asserts that the only version of empathy that leads to this altruistic motivation is empathic concern. So if, if we kind of look deeper into that logic, if you have an altruistically motivated form of empathy that leads to an altruistic form of empathy. That's kind of it's almost like a circular logic thing that he is getting into there, and maybe I'm misunderstanding it. But as I've read his papers, I don't understand how he distinguishes between empathy, this empathic concern, and altruism. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Well, with the empathic concern, it's, he's, he's, it's a reaction, right? He's, you're empathizing, and then it's sort of like the concern is a reaction to the empathy. And so I wouldn't call it. It's also calling just concerned, right? You have concern. It could be joy. It could be, you know? It could be kind of any feeling. So I'm not a real fan of the empathic concern term, because you could put empathic in front of any reaction that you have when you empathize. That doesn't make sense to me. It's kind of a first step.
Yeah, so when I first was reading about his his hypothesis, I thought that
he Edwin, do you? Is she? Yeah, she just froze. You just froze there. Jody, can you see me now? Yeah, sometimes you freeze for a second. That was the longer and it just my
internet connection is unstable.
Can you hear me? Yeah, he could always turn off your video. Might give you more bandwidth there.
Yeah, that's good idea. Okay. Is that working? Okay, yeah, okay. So what I was just saying is that I I had originally understood it to be altruism being an action, but the way that he lays it out is it is the antithesis of egoism, and so egoism can produce acts of service or helping, but then so can altruism. And so altruism is more focused on being motivated by the other person's well being. And so it seems like that is the same thing as empathic concern. So I just don't, I can't understand the distinction that he's making there between, like, empathy, altruism, hypothesis, like empathy, altruism or empathic concern leads to altruism or, like, I don't understand his his semantics here, and maybe it's just a semantic debate that we could get into, but I feel like his logic is circular. My
take on it is that if we, you know, like earlier, when we were talking about typology, if he had the word altruistic empathy, as opposed to empathic concern, those are, in my mind, the same thing. So the idea of altruism is doing something for someone else's well being without any concern for what you get back. If you are getting something back and expecting something back, then you are not engaged in altruism. Altruism is unidirectional, like I am going out of my way to do something for you with and I have zero interest in what happens to me. That's what altruism is. So altruistic empathy is the kind of empathy that would lead to altruism, but not all. Empathy does lead to altruism that I strongly believe, like empathy has the potential for altruism, but doesn't always unnecessarily lead to altruistic behavior, and
that would be where Paul Bloom would come into the argument and say, empathy, from the definition that he's using, doesn't lead to altruism, because it leads to seeking to alleviate your own pain, or feel the empathic joy that comes from alleviating somebody else's pain, correct?
Although he's talking uniquely about affective empathy, whereas I think you know you can have altruistic empathy in the form of public policy, where you are empathizing with a group of people that are suffering, and if you change the public policy around it, then they'll suffer less, and that, I mean, I'm hoping that that's part of the work of empathy too, that it's not just only interpersonal but that it also has social benefit.
So what would you call that? When you're talking about empathizing with that group and then doing something to fix it, that seems like that's a separate step. Like it, yes, it's part of empathy, but it's an action oriented
Yeah, I call it purposeful empathy. I like
it. I like that term a lot.
The other part is that, like, with what he with the definition he's talking about in altruism, how does that play out in an empathy circle? Like, can we point to? Where do you see altruism or empathic concern happening in in an empathy circle? Like, is it or it? Can even role play it. If someone's sharing something that they they have a real struggle right in their life, and they're sharing it, and then you as the listener are listening to it and reflecting it back. You know, at what point does it become all truism or concern? Like, you know, I might hear somebody dealing with some difficulty in their life and and I reflect back, well, I'm hearing you have this difficult but I also am. I'm being present with them, but I also have some concern about their well being. So yes, anyway, it's trying to, really trying to get this kind of concretized in in, in the dynamics of an empathy circle. Because I think it can, you can kind of show that it's like somebody say, Oh, I'm really in a I'm really having a real struggle in my life. You know, my my relationship is, is just in the pits, and I'm just so depressed I want to kill myself. And then the. Listener can reflect back, I hear you're, you're, you know, really having a struggle. You're thinking of killing yourself. And then, you know, I might feel some concern, but I'm kind of just not acting on the concern. I'm just listening and being present with the person, versus, instead of reflecting back, saying, Oh, I'm going to call 911, or something like that, I'm going to take action. So I've stopped kind of being present with you and and reflecting back and what you're saying, you know, being with you. So, you know what I'm saying, like, what are the the nuances there, of the differences? Because a lot of time that the action, I mean, a lot of people say it will say, Oh, empathy is neutral, right? And I don't see that. I think that the empathic being present with someone in their distress or whatever is actually very healing in and of itself. You don't have to take an action of call, 911, or something like that, just being with the person. And that's actually the thing. Oh, any suicide you know Prevention Center, that's what they're doing, is they're just being present with the person. And so, yeah, so anyway, yeah, if you can, I think
what it allows Edwin is a person a sense of agency that they don't need to be taken care of, like the act of standing with or hearing or listening to or holding space for that. That is the altruistic gleam. Yeah.
And they can request something too. They can ask for something instead of you just kind of projecting your solution, calling 911, on, on them. They can keep being heard until they come to a point that said, Oh yeah, they can actually make a request of what it is that they want. So you're more nuanced responding to what would actually be helpful for them. There's so many times I share something with a friend and they give you all this advice, and it's like, I don't need all this advice because you think I'm stupid and haven't thought of all this before. You know so
right? And I think that that's where the problem of being compassionate without being empathetic comes in. Because if you are just trying to fix people's problems, it can be very damaging to them, if they like you said, if they have already thought through that, if they have the capacity to fix their own problem, and somebody swoops in to take care of it for them, it takes away their dignity. And so I can see that as incredibly problematic if we're just if we're seeing compassion as the pinnacle of this continuum, rather than an empathic form of holding space for them and being compassionately present with them. I think that. I think we can't, we can't say that one is better than the other, because even as we've been discussing, we've been talking about a compassionate form of empathy, or an altruistic form of empathy, where you're willing to be with them, be present with them, and also help them make it to the next level.
Well, there is the aspect of the mutuality of it, because it's a pleasant state to be in and to relate with people with through an empathic state. It's like, Hey, I've kind of like lived my life in this empathic sort of a world, so I don't see myself as being altruistic when I listen and I'm empathic, I'm I'm kind of doing it just because that's the shared kind of reality I'd like to have.
Yeah, that's a good point. It is mutually beneficial. It also
reminds me of these two words, so Ubuntu out of South Africa, Namaste, out of India where namaste is the light in me, sees the light in you. I think that's the loose English translation of the Sanskrit word. And then Ubuntu means let me think. Let me think. Let me think I am only because you are and so there's like, a relational aspect to it. I think that's really important. What Edwin just
said, Yeah, and I think if you look at it from a developmental perspective as well, you only have your sense of self because of other people around you. So if you can take that with you into all of your interactions. You don't have a sense of self without others around you. And I think that that that's the beauty of this, this common humanity that we're talking about, is we all are edified together.
And I see the empathy circle is helping with that sense of self. When you have multiple people listening to you. I mean, the world can be pretty chaotic, you know, pretty bleak, but having like two or three, four other people listen to me and hear me where I am in my life, it kind of it gives me sort of a grounding of of my. Identity and my sense of self. So yeah,
yep, I agree with that. I think I'm gonna have to hop off now and get back to sick kids.
They've got COVID or the flu. So yeah, something's
going on. And I didn't realize that my older daughter was homesick too. She just came up from her bedroom. So apparently there are several of us, um, but I will plan on meeting again next week, yeah. And
so weekly. We're meeting week. We meeting weekly to discuss the definitions that's, yeah,
fantastic. So lovely
to meet you. God. Hope your children get well soon, and good luck with your research.
Thank you so much, and I so I have two to do list items. I'm going to change Edwin's last name on my slide, and I'm going to read more of Carl Rogers work on empathy. So I appreciate those two bits of advice,
