“Life is hard,” my three-year-old niece says with conviction, while munching on a biscuit. “But it’s beautiful,” her mother quickly corrects her. “No, no, life is hard,” the little girl insists. For parents, this is of course a funny scene to share with friends on Facebook. However, ironically, right under the posted video is a clip of a televised debate between an anti-vaccine campaigner and a licensed doctor discussing childhood vaccines. This is accompanied by a flood of comments ranging from harsh to downright awful. I couldn’t help but notice the child’s insight: life does indeed seem hard and ugly from certain points of view. Could it be just an impression?
The online world certainly does not faithfully represent the relationships that develop between people when they interact face-to-face. Statistically, many people remain silent, observe, and move on online. But the minority that expresses extremist views in such a public way sets the tone. “Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader’s perception of a story, recent research suggests,”[1] Popular Science magazine explained when announcing that they were closing the comments section on their website. They said that comments undermine the integrity of science and lead to a culture of aggression and mockery that hinders meaningful discourse. However, this vocal minority is growing. While studies in 2012 showed that only 13% of Americans had experienced some form of harassment on social media in the previous year, by 2017 this figure had risen to 41%, with almost half having suffered severe harassment. Is this a problem related to new media? Or does it show that something fundamental is changing in society?
It is most likely a combination of the two. Some researchers, such as Emily Thorson of Syracuse University, believe that the internet only brings out the worst in people. However, they argue that much of the abnormal interaction we see today is a symptom of much larger and older social problems, including racism and misogyny. However, comparative studies in the United States show that empathy levels have been declining for 30 years, with the greatest decline occurring in the last ten years. Up to 75% of today’s students are 40% less empathetic than students 30 years ago, lacking an understanding of why they should help each other or try to see the world from a different perspective.
It is strange to think that empathy can fluctuate like consumer confidence, especially since it has traditionally been assumed to be a natural instinct we are born with. However, psychologists at Yale University have demonstrated that even six-month-old babies exhibit behaviours indicative of empathy. This is not a trait unique to humans, as it has also been observed in primates and mice. The fact that empathy is in decline therefore suggests that elements of the social context can significantly affect even our basic emotional responses. Nevertheless, this conclusion implies that, serious as the situation is, it can be improved by changing the choices we make.
The limitations of “I know how you feel”
Studies in the neurobiology of empathy have revealed a neural mechanism that enables us to unconsciously imitate the actions, posture, and facial expressions of others. For example, we may grimace unintentionally when we see someone looking disgusted at their food. This ability extends to the level of muscle fibres—when someone observes another person being pricked in the arm muscle with a needle, the same neural circuits are activated as in the person being pricked. However, the feelings experienced during this unconscious imitation process are modulated neuronally, meaning we only feel a fraction of what the observed person feels.
It has also been observed that the empathic response differs depending on various external factors. For instance, laboratory studies have demonstrated that our perception of belonging to a group, or the notion of fairness, influences how we feel about someone who is suffering and how intensely we feel it. We are more affected, for instance, when someone from our favourite football team suffers than when someone from the opposing team does, or when someone we believe to be fair suffers than when we believe someone to be cheating. This phenomenon also dictates how we get involved in helping that person. This is the less pleasant truth about empathy: although we have the neural, sensory, and emotional circuitry to help us understand what others are going through and find appropriate responses to help them, this system can malfunction and be influenced, manipulated, or even be abused and depleted.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” This phrase illustrates the limitations of empathy very well, as it is a mental resource that can be depleted. Studies have shown that in professions where empathy must be exercised constantly, such as medicine, social work, the police, psychotherapy, and call centres, it is gradually consumed, giving way to cynicism, anxiety, and even depression. Other variables, such as overtime and busy schedules, also impact this phenomenon, albeit to a lesser extent than researchers had thought.[2] Not only does empathy consume itself, it also consumes other cognitive and emotional resources. Studies have shown that people who devote time to helping others at work find it much harder to connect with their own families because they feel tired and emotionally drained.[3]
This is one of the reasons why we unconsciously choose to use this resource in our relationships with our loved ones. Not only are we more interested in close relationships because they affect us directly, but we generally have to put in less effort, which works to our advantage. Unfortunately, this limits empathy to relatively close circles with whom we form strong bonds and reduces our interest in connecting with those outside them.[4] This is not normally a problem for the functioning of society as a whole, since empathy offers more advantages than disadvantages. However, researchers have demonstrated in laboratory experiments that belonging to a group and the resulting interdependence with its members have a number of negative effects. We are much more willing to tolerate interference from a group member and disperse responsibility to the whole group. In return, however, we are much more intolerant of outsiders and harsher in our judgement of them.[5]
Should we give up empathy?
While empathy has traditionally been considered a force for moral good and the driving force behind many virtuous behaviours, a recent wave of critics has used the above-cited studies to argue that empathy can just as easily be a force for moral failure. They claim that, for the survival of humanity, it would be better for this “parochial, narrow-minded emotion to yield to reason.” Experiments in which scientists create conflict situations in which the automatic empathetic response is to side with one’s own “team” support the idea that empathy also has a “dark” side, causing people to become aggressive towards those they perceive to be on the opposing “team.”
Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at Indiana University and author of The Dark Sides of Empathy, is a proponent of the “excessive empathy” theory. He argues that empathy is an ambiguous moral attribute which is, among other things, to blame for people becoming terrorists due to an excess of empathy towards the group they feel they belong to and consider to be persecuted. Breithaupt is alarmed that the polarisation seen in today’s society, especially online, is also a consequence of the “selective empathy virus,” a term coined by other critics to describe what they call “vampiric empathy.”[6] These critics note that the world is so polarised at the moment that the only empathy deemed acceptable is that shown to one’s own “team,” and those who try to extend it to the opposing “team” are immediately and publicly shunned. The proposed solution to this problem is to learn how and when to “control and block empathy” so as not to be manipulated.[7]
Other experts dispute the idea that empathy has a dark side or a “manufacturing defect,” even though it can sometimes be or seem to be limited in practice.[8] As Breithaupt argues, excessive empathy cannot be the problem because such a thing does not exist. The process by which we feel empathy is also a process of regulating emotions, the sole purpose of which is to help us understand the pain of others from a safe emotional distance.[9] Taking on the suffering of others, or excessive empathy, is extremely rare and is a condition called Williams syndrome.[10] Those who suffer from this syndrome are nevertheless driven by kindness and are altruistic to the point of causing themselves suffering, as they are unable to conceptualise mistrust and will make disproportionate sacrifices to help anyone. For them, there are no sides and no resorting to aggression towards someone’s enemy out of empathy for that person. In fact, we could argue that society is lacking precisely this type of excessive empathy right now.
“Empathy has no light or dark sides. It is a skill that, when engaged in full, gives us deeper understanding of others. If we learn to read other people and use that to manipulate them, we are not being empathic. So too when we vicariously live through others and take their feelings and experiences as our own, we are not being empathic. Such vicarious living lacks mastering the separation of the self and the other, a key component of empathy. Also, when we take in the emotions of others to the point of overwhelming ourselves, that too is not empathy, because we lack the key component of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation helps us to experience the feelings of others while understanding that these emotions belong to the other person,”[11] explains psychologist Elizabeth Segal.
Empathy as a choice
In conclusion, we could say that we are predisposed to show empathy, but social and cultural factors influence whom we empathise with, when, and to what extent. This means that we develop empathy throughout our lives in relation to our social environment. But how much is written in our genes, and how much is an active, continuous process through which we learn to relate to those around us? The largest genetic study on empathy, conducted by an international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, shows that genetic factors can explain only 10% of empathic variation. The remaining 90% is attributed to various factors, including education.
Studies conducted among medical professionals, in whom a decline in natural empathy towards patients has been observed, show that there is also what researchers call “cognitive empathy,” which is empathy that is learned through communication training designed to improve the doctor-patient relationship.[12] Other studies by psychologists show that changing the perception of empathy from an innate trait to a learned skill has made people more open to different racial groups.[13] At the same time, researchers have discovered through experiments that temporarily occupying positions of power reduces neural activity responsible for empathy. However, it is not the capacity for empathy that is reduced, but only the empathic response. This led the researchers to conclude that motivation was the determining factor: people in positions of power “shut down” their empathy centre because they no longer need to interact with others.[25]
Today’s young people do not occupy any positions of power, but they are the first generation to grow up with digital technology, which means they are also the first generation to experience social isolation. In developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, it is estimated that children spend less time outdoors than prisoners—at most one hour per day on average.[14] The time that previous generations spent playing outside and learning to connect with other children and manage relationships is now devoted to digital screens, which cannot teach empathy. Conversely, time spent on phones, the internet, and social media is directly associated with high levels of bullying, anxiety, and depression, as countless studies of adolescents have already revealed. At the same time, the type of information consumed has changed radically between generations in recent decades. The number of people reading literature for pleasure has fallen dramatically in the last ten years, particularly among young people and students.[15] Studies have shown that the number of stories read in early life can predict an individual’s ability to understand the emotions of others, while adults who do not engage with fiction admit that they have difficulty empathising with those around them.[16]
Undoubtedly, society’s shift towards prioritising the individual, who first seeks to love themselves before attempting to love others, has contributed to this self-centred mindset, where the concept of putting oneself in someone else’s shoes has lost its significance and worth. The glorification of brutal competition and the idea of an illusory meritocracy that suggests the poor deserve their poverty teaches young people that they cannot rely on anyone and that altruism is foolish. Relationships are for personal gain and happiness must be achieved alone. In reality, however, we need each other to be mentally healthy and happy, and social isolation, despite being masked by large numbers of “friends” on social networks, is not good for us.
The good news is that if we have entered an empathy recession due to life choices, we can emerge from it by making different choices that cultivate this human capacity to connect deeply with others. The first step is to recognise that we are not made to function independently of each other, but interdependently. We need each other, and this is a strength, not a weakness, that brings us a special kind of happiness.