Center for Building a Culture of Empathy

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The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy is the home of the global empathy movement. Our mission is to build a movement for creating a global worldwide culture of empathy and compassion. We do this through a variety of means.  First is by community organizing.  We bring people together and hold in-person and online meetings and Empathy Circles. Next is by collecting, curating and organizing all the material we find on the internet on the topics. Researching through the arts and sciences. We are putting together a series of documentaries to educate the public and much, much more.

We are also a portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. The site  contains the largest collection of; articles, conferences, definitions, experts, history, interviews, organizations, videos, science and much more about empathy and compassion. To stay up to date on the latest, sign up for our Facebook: Page, Group and Cause now.

Our current project is to develop our Empathy Circles and Conference on, How can we Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion? Contact us if you'd like to be involved in organizing this event. Let's help fill the empathy deficit by making people more aware of the fundamental importance of empathy and compassion in our lives. This is a collaborative project and we invite you to take part. Send an email if you'd like to get involved with the group or with creating this video, etc.  Edwin Rutsch (Facebook - email)

Empathy Cafe Magazine 
Searching the internet for the latest articles. Curated and organized into informative and attractive news pages. Subscribe for daily updates.
 

Empathy and Compassion
The latest news from around the world

 

Empathy and Animals
International News about Empathy & Compassion with, by and for Animals


Teaching Empathy

Articles about teaching & learning how to be more empathic & compassionate.
 

Empathy in the Workplace
News about Empathy in the Workplace
 

Empathy and Justice
International News about Empathy, Justice, Restorative Justice, Mediation and the Law.   more...


Blog Roll
: Join the Quest 
Latest interviews, panel discussions, etc,

We reached the 200 Empathy Circles, Panels and Interviews milestone for our conference on how to build a culture of empathy and compassion!!!  There are over 200 hours of empathy and compassion experts from around the world talking about how we can build a movement to transform the world culture with empathy. This is only the beginning

 

Latest Weekly Empathy Circles

 Empathizing with Paul Bloom's Concerns, Criticisms and Judgments of Empathy

Paul Bloom is a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on language, morality, religion, fiction, and art.

 

Paul's article in the May edition of the New Yorker Magazine, titled "The Baby in the WellThe Case Against Empathy" expresses some of his concerns about the current enthusiasm for empathy.  We are developing some empathic dialog to listen to and empathically hear and respond to these concerns.

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Marco Iacoboni and Edwin Rutsch: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Marco Iacoboni is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Director of the Marco Iacoboni Lab, UCLA Brain Mapping Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of, Mirroring People: The New Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others.

"Empathy plays a fundamental role in our social lives. It allows us to share emotions, experiences, needs, and goals. Not surprisingly, there is much empirical evidence suggesting a strong link between between mirror neurons (or some general forms of neuronal mirroring) and empathy."  

 

In this interview, Marco Iacoboni challenges the traditional Western understanding of human nature as selfish and struggling for surviving and suggests that neurologically and evolutionally we are predispositioned to create empathic connections. A culture of empathy can be increased by: 

  • becoming aware about our biological capacity for empathy through mirror neurons, 

  • having intention to increase culture empathy, 

  • creating more empathic living environment 

  • decreasing the focus on differences and labeling 

  • increasing the focus on us (similarities)

  • increasing empathic behavior of governments, leaders and media....

Empathy Definitions, Measurements & Metrics: Marco Iacoboni, Lidewij Niezink, Edwin Rutsch
In this second interview, Marco Iacoboni, Lidewij Niezink and Edwin Rutsch discuss Definitions, Measurements & Metrics of empathy.  Marco says, "I think what's interesting to me most is to define metrics of empathy. How can I measure this thing?  Why it matters? If we want to design interventions to improve empathy we need to agree upon ways of quantifying it. People do get bogged down in debates on definitions and don't even get to the point of trying to discuss metrics of empathic behavior. This slows down progress, I think"
Sub Conference: Science

Vivian Bohl: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Vivian Bohl is an Estonian philosopher at Tartu University. She is a PhD student and her doctoral work is in the field of social cognition. We talked about the definitions of Empathy. She says,  "Defining empathy has always been a tricky issue and up to now, the conceptual issues surrounding 'empathy' are causing more and more confusion in scientific and philosophical literature. It's about time someone did something to solve these complex conceptual issues. I see that in your project, you are also interested in compassion. This is a very important empathy-related topic, in my opinion.

For me, the best definition of compassion is a Buddhist definition: it is the wish to alleviate the suffering of others and to eliminate the causes for suffering. Since I'm quite happy with that definition, we could discuss what this definition exactly means and also talk about how to become a more compassionate person."
Sub Conference: Science

 
Panel 23 - The Role of Empathy in Crime, Policing and Justice
Chad Posick
Joe Brummer
Michael Rocque
Edwin Rutsch
The role of empathy in policing, both empathy for and by the police, is gaining attention from criminal justice researchers and practitioners. While research on the effectiveness and importance of empathy in policing is limited, the existing research indicates that empathy increases perceptions of legitimacy and trust in the police.
This panel discusses a range of issues related to the role of empathy in criminal behavior, punishment, and policing with a specific emphasis on training police on how to incorporate empathy into their work.
Sub Conference: Justice

 Lou Agosta: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Lou Agosta is on the faculty of the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. He practices psychotherapy in the Chicago. His area of concentration includes the dynamic containing and transforming of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse.

Lou is author of Empathy in the Context of Philosophy which is an exploration of the deep structure of empathy as a fundamentally human capability for creating possibilities of community and human relations. He also writes extensively about the nature of empathy on his website ListeningWithEmpathy.com.


"The short definition of empathy is that it is the capacity to know what an other individual is experiencing because (speaking in the first person for emphasis) I experience it too, not as a merger but as a trace affect or experience that samples the other’s experience. Thus, if one is overwhelmed by the other’s trauma and re-traumatized, one is not using one’s empathy properly. Simply stated, you are doing it wrong. "
Sub Conference: Science

Melanie Sears: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Melanie Sears has been a trainer for the Center of Nonviolent Communications since 1991. She works with businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, individuals, couples and parents in transforming their usual way of operations, interpersonal interactions and dealing with conflict to one which is more compassionate, conscious and effective.

 Melanie presents Nonviolent Communication at conventions, at universities, and at churches.  She has been interviewed on the radio and on TV and is the author of several books including: Humanizing Health Care with Nonviolent Communication.
Sub Conference: NVC and Health Care

 Empathic Listening Demonstration: Melanie Sears Offers Edwin Rutsch Empathy for an Inner Conflict

Melanie Sears is a trainer in Compassionate Communication. She is author of several books including: Choose Your Words: Harnessing the Power of Compassionate Communication to Heal and Connect.  In this second interview with Edwin Rutsch, Melanie offers empathic listening to Edwin for a problematic past experience he had.
Sub Conference: NVC
and Health Care

Sylvia Morelli: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Sylvia Morelli is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab at Stanford University. In her current research, she examines the neural and behavioral basis of empathy and perspective-taking, as well as the neural responses associated with feeling understood by others.

 

We held a wide ranging discussion about the nature of empathy, and her work on researching it.  In a recent study and paper, Sylvia explored the neural and behavioral consequences of feeling understood. 

Sylvia says, when we are understood, or empathized with, the pleasure centers of the brain light up. In other words, being empathized with feels good. "Behavioral research has demonstrated that feeling understood by others enhances social closeness and intimacy, as well as subjective well-being. In contrast, feeling misunderstood can be harmful to social relationships, leading to loneliness and isolation. However, it is still unclear why and how felt understanding exerts such a powerful impact on both interpersonal and intrapersonal well-being" 
Sub Conference: Science: Neuroscience

 
April 27, 2013:  CCARE - Compassion & Business Conference
  I went to the Compassion & Business Conference yesterday at Stanford University and had a lot of fun meeting up with people I had only known online. Fun to meet them in the flesh and be able to give them a big hug. I was also giving out my 'FREE EMPATHY' cards.

The conference was hosted by the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).  It was an important topic - how to bring more compassion into the business world. Lot's of presenters from science, education and business, etc. offering talks, panels and some hands on workshops. I would have liked more hands-on time since the academic part is so readily available online now-a-days... what's so precious is the time to get together with people in deeper personal dialogs. I would love to do some empathy circles in a setting like this.

The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy was a sponsor of the event. Was great to see our logo up on the screen.. I had to take a picture of that. ;-)
 
April 27, 2013: @ California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Spring 2013 Convergence
                                          at UC Berkeley in Dwinelle Plaza
    We held ongoing Empathy Circle and Empathic
 Listening Trainings
" I was a student at the California Student Sustainability Coalition this weekend and I stopped by your tent, and I just wanted to say thank you. The Empathy tent was incredible to experience. And I will use the tools you taught me for the rest of my life."
 
 
April 23, 2013, Tuesday: UC Berkeley, Sproul Plaza - First Day of the Empathy Tent
  Video and pictures of our first day at Sproul Plaza.

Please join us today, Tuesday April 23rd, for our Space on Sproul event, from 10 AM to 4 PM. Look for the big white empathy canopy and a group of people having a great time. We'll have dialogue, music, art, empathic listening, empathy circles, dancing, frisbee, soccer, good company, yoga, meditation, singing, and more. Feel free to stop by at any time, and bring a musical instrument, or an activity, or just bring yourself.

 
April 18, 2013, Thursday:  UC Berkeley, Sproul Plaza - Empathy Circle Trainings
  Edwin will be on the lawn in Sproul Plaza, near Sather Gate at UC Berkeley doing ongoing Empathic Listening and Empathy Circle trainings with anyone that drops by.

 Maureen O'Hara: How to Build a Culture of Empathy  

Maureen O'Hara is Professor in the Psychology Department at National University, La Jolla, CA and President Emerita of Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco. Working with American psychologist Carl R. Rogers, she helped develop the Person-Centered Approach to psychotherapy and large group process.  

More recently her writings have examined the relationship between the "big picture" changes underway and internal psychological adaptation. Combining her background as psychotherapist, organizational consultant and futurist, Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker nationally and internationally on the evolution of new ways of being in a changing world.  She was a contributor to the book, ' Empathy Reconsidered: New Directions in Psychotherapy' .

 

She writes, "In Rogers' original work a key component of the core facilitative conditions for individual growth is empathy. Empathy has since been shown to be the gold standard for effective facilitation in any growth-focused relationship. Empathy is commonly regarded as an individual-to-individual phenomenon in which one person senses the unspoken or inchoate thoughts or feelings of another. Our observations show that group or relational empathy may be even more important than individual empathy in the formation of conscious communities."
Sub Conference: Science

Aurangzeb Haneef: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Pakistan

Aurangzeb Haneef is a religious scholar and teacher in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan.  He completed a Masters of Theological Studies at Harvard University. Earlier, at two universities in Austria and Spain he completed an International Master in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies with a focus on Religion/Islam and Peacebuilding.

In this dialog and interview, we talked about the role of empathy as being foundational to peace building. In Pakistan there is great polarization between the conservative and liberal social factions and they are not talking to each other with empathy. Aurangzeb sees empathy as being central to the the peace building process and he works to create dialog between the different social factions in his classes.
Sub Conference: Science

Dan Zahavi: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Dan Zahavi is a Professor in the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, where he specializes in the social dimension of self-experience; the nature of empathy and its relevance for social cognition; the relation between phenomenology and naturalism; selfhood and unity of consciousness with particular focus on no-self doctrines. Dan is the director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Subjectivity Research.

The center has a grant for an "Empathy and Interpersonal Understanding" project that runs from 2011 to 2015.  The aim of the project is to contribute to investigate two questions:

1) What is empathy and what role does it play in interpersonal understanding?

2) To what extent does interpersonal understanding presuppose a common social and cultural background?

Dan has written numerous articles on the nature of empathy and the center is hosting workshops and conferences on the topic. One conference being held in May 2013, is on the  "Phenomenology of Empathy".    Sub Conference: Science

Riane Eisler: How to Build a Culture of Empathy and Caring

 Riane Eisler is a social scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has inspired both scholars and social activists. Her research has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, and education. She has been a leader in the movement for peace, sustainability, and economic equity, and her pioneering

work in human rights has expanded the focus of international organizations to include the rights of women and children.

 

In her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics,  Riane says;  "When children are taught the “normality” of domination and submission - and society doesn't offer alternatives - they often learn to go into denial and inhibit their capacity for empathy and consciousness,. They then build family, educational, religious, economic, and political institutions based on the these principles when they grow up. And so the cycle repeats itself generation after generation." "Ridged top-down rankings, weather family or state, are artificial barriers to trust, empathy, and caring."

Ian Reifowitz: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Ian Reifowitz teaches history at Empire State College of the State University of New York. He is the author of, Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity


In his article, Obama Calls for Empathy in Israel, Ian writes, "President Obama gave an absolutely terrific speech yesterday in Israel.

 The key section of the speech occurred when the president declared that Israelis need to truly understand how Palestinians see the conflict differently than they do. Obama urged them to "put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes...  In this piece, I want to point out that this concept of putting oneself in the shoes of one's opponent or even just someone different from oneself, i.e., empathy, is at the heart of Obama's entire worldview...

He has drawn on the idea of empathy repeatedly as part of his push to encourage and invigorate ties across lines of race, culture, religion, region, etc. in this country. As I've written in my book Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, empathy is thus central to his call to strengthen our sense of being one American people.
In The Audacity of Hope Obama spoke of empathy as being "at the heart of my moral code" and defined it as "a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes."
Sub Conference: Science

Robert Brooks: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy and Resilience

Robert Brooks is one of today's leading speakers on the themes of resilience, motivation, and family relationships. During the past 30 years, Dr. Brooks has presented nationally and internationally to thousands of parents, educators, mental health professionals, and business people with a message based on encouragement, hope, and resilience. He is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

He is author or co-author of 15 books including: Handbook of Resilience and has written numerous articles about empathy. He writes, "In my workshops and writings I have consistently emphasized the importance of empathy as an essential skill for enriching our lives...  If empathy is not translated into behavior it will indeed be a "sideshow." However, when empathy serves as a guiding light for our behaviors, showing us the path that leads to compassion and caring, it becomes a potent force that will improve the lives not only of our children but ourselves as well. The more we bring together theory, skills, and actions, the more we can engage in activities that permit us to lead purposeful, fulfilling, caring lives.."

 "a common characteristic of individuals who are successful as business leaders, teachers, parents, spouses, or healthcare professionals is their ability to be empathic. Empathic people are skilled in placing themselves inside the shoes of another person and seeing the world through that person’s eyes. It is not surprising that Daniel Goleman listed empathy as one of the main components of emotional intelligence. In my activities as a therapist and consultant as well as in my personal life, I have come to believe that empathy is implicated in all of our relationships, impacting on the satisfaction and effectiveness with which we interact with others."
Sub Conference: Home & Family

Maryam Sakeenah: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Pakistan

Maryam Sakeenah is a social worker, teacher, and freelance writer living in Lahore, Pakistan. She  teaches Literature, Islamic Studies and Sociology.

 

She is leading a project for virtual education for underprivileged school children

Maryam also authored a book documenting Islamic and Oriental responses to the Clash of Civilizations, titled Us Versus Them and Beyond: An Oriental-Islamic Rejoinder to the Clash of Civilizations Theory.

 

I talked with Maryam from her home in Lahore, Pakistan about her article, The Murder of Human Empathy.  This was her response to the recent attacks on Christian homes in Lahore. She writes,   "Empathy is curbed and limited through narrow, parochial banners of ethnicity, nationalism, race and creed so that the empathic drive does not extend to the out-group. The out-group is then ‘otherised’. However, a more severe form of this is dehumanization of the other, often institutionalized by the social superstructure: state, media, education, religion."
 

She calls for leaders (especially religious leaders) in Pakistan to stand up and advocate for fostering empathy for all people.  "Empathy humanizes and civilizes. Its suppression intensifies secondary drives like narcissism, materialism, violence and aggression. The task of religion, education and the media must be to bring out the empathic sociability stretching out to all of humanity..."
Sub Conferences: Education 

Robin Youngson: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Healthcare

Robin Youngson is an anesthesiologist in New Zealand. He is an International leader in the compassionate healthcare movement and founded HEARTS in HEALTHCARE which is an inspirational community of health professionals, students, patient advocates, health leaders, and many others who are champions for compassionate care.
Robin is author of TIME TO CARE: How to love your patients and your job. He says, "my passion is to restore the heart of healthcare and to make caring and compassion the daily lived experience and practice of all in healthcare. Health professionals need compassion and caring in the workplace as much as patients - the rates of burnout, emotional exhaustion and hopelessness are far too high."
Sub Conference: Health Care

Bob Kane, James D'Amanda: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Education

Bob Kane is Director of the Center for Mindfulness & Empathy Education (CMEE) at The Harley School. Bob  teaches Hospice at The Harley School. As an end-of-life care educator and hospice nursing assistant, he continues to mentor high school students to provide comfort care to the dying and their loved ones

James D'Amanda is a Grant Writer and Event Manager at CMEE, as well as, a freelance writer.

The Center for Mindfulness and Empathy Education at the Harley School has the mission to empower Nursery-12 teachers, students, staff and parents with the requisite tools and support necessary to foster a sustained, compassionate presence through the development and nurturing of programs that demand authentic human engagement, stimulating our inborn capacity to compassionately connect to and understand others, embracing their situation as our own...  The center evolved in response to the increasing recognition that mindfulness and empathy play an indispensable role in humanizing our educational systems... We don't have a School uniform. But we do require you to walk in someone else's shoes.
Sub Conferences: Education 

 Julian Walker: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Yoga

Julian has been teaching yoga since 1994 and practicing Mind-Body Healing since 1997. His approach to yoga combines a 20 year fascination with spirituality, science, psychology, music and poetry. He maintains a busy bodywork practice and teaches ongoing classes, chakra-based workshops and transformational retreats. He also writes and blogs on the intersection of spiritually, science and psychology. In this discussion, we explored how yoga can foster empathy.   
Sub Conference: Yoga

Scott Churchill: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

 

Scott D. Churchill is Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas and Editor of The Humanistic Psychologist. His work focuses on development of phenomenological and hermeneutic methodologies. Currently he is studying interspecies communication with Bonoboos. Scott wrote the article, Encountering the Animal Other: Reflections on Moments of Empathic Seeing.  He writes, "Unfortunately, there have not been many psychologists willing to entertain the notion of empathy or intuition as a reliable or even valid mode of access to psychological life of others."

In this article Scott explores the first person (self-centered), third person (detached omnipotent) and empathic second person perspective. "As a whole, the field of psychology has generally provided for the first person perspective to be legitimate means of access only to one's own private experience, while insisting that we must observe all others' experience from a neutral "third person" perspective."
Sub Conference: Science

Sara Konrath: How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Sara Konrath is Assistant Research Professor at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan. Sara is the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research (iPEAR) which is a research lab with a primary focus on the costs and benefits of empathy and related traits (e.g. emotional intelligence, narcissism) and behaviors (e.g. helping, caregiving).

She writes; "Imaginatively taking on another person's thoughts and identifying with their emotions are two habits at the core of empathy. In fact, empathy is not a fixed trait like having brown eyes or long fingers. Empathy is instead a delicate cocktail blending assorted elements of inborn aptitude, social conditioning, personal history, and practice and motivation.

 

The ability to empathize is like a muscle capable of growth, atrophy, disability, and even regeneration (think Scrooge). People have different innate capacities for building certain muscles, just as we have different incentives for being empathetic and experiences in honing our skills to empathize. For some people, empathy comes easily and naturally; for others, concerted effort is required to stretch our imaginations beyond ourselves."

 

We held an engaging two hour discussion about the nature of empathy and how to foster it.
Sub Conference: Science

Bob Sornson: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Education

Bob Sornson was a classroom teacher and school administrator for over 30 years, and is the founder of the Early Learning Foundation.  He works with schools and education organizations across the country, focusing primarily on developing comprehensive programs which support early learning success,

building classroom and school culture to support the development of social and behavior skills, and offering parent training.

 

Bob  is the author of a number of books including: Stand in My Shoes: Kids Learning About Empathy.  "When Emily asks her big sister what the word empathy means, Emily has no idea that knowing the answer will change how she looks at people...  Empathy is the ability to notice what other people feel. Empathy leads to the social skills and personal relationships which make our lives rich and beautiful, and it is something we can help our children learn. This book teaches young children the value of noticing how other people feel. Were hoping that many parents read it along with their children." 
Sub Conferences:
Education 

 

James O'Dea: How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Peace

James O’Dea is the lead faculty for the Shift Network’s Peace Ambassador Training with hundreds of international participants. These trainings are ongoing.

He is on the extended faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and its former President.

James is author of, Cultivating Peace: Becoming a 21st Century Peace Ambassador. 

"When we can really put ourselves in the shoes of the other, when we can reach new depths of empathy, then we can be effective ambassadors of peace....
 

Without empathy there is no way forward for civilization. Individuals who lack empathy are trapped in selfish motivations and ego fixations: they have not learned how to see themselves in the predicament of others. Politicians who lack empathy relate to others through a primitive in-group inclusion or out-group exclusion. This degree of psychological development cannot negotiate any form of middle ground. Conviction is reduced to simplistic binary codes such as "You are either with us or against us.""
Sub Conference: Peace & Empathy

Louise Grant: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Social Work

Louise Grant is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bedfordshire. Louise has been studying the role of empathy in fostering resilience in social workers in the UK.


She says, "My teaching interests are in children and families social work and in particular in developing reflective practice for effective social work and developing supervision knowledge and skills in social workers. My research focus is on reflective practice and developing emotional resilience for social work practice"

Louise is co-author of the study, 'Exploring Stress Resilience in Trainee Social Workers: The Role of Emotional and Social Competencies'. In order to inform the development of interventions to enhance the work-related well-being of early career social workers, this study examined several emotional and social competencies (i.e. emotional intelligence, reflective ability, empathy and social competence) as predictors of resilience in 240 trainees.

Sub Conferences: Health Care and Science

Jodi Halpern: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Healthcare

Jodi Halpern is Associate Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Joint Medical Program and the School of Public Health. As a psychiatrist with a background in philosophy, she investigates how emotions and the imagination shape healthcare decisions of clinicians and patients.

Jodi is author of From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice.


Clinical Empathy: "As a psychiatrist as well as a faculty member in bioethics at UC Berkeley for almost two decades, I’ve investigated what happens to patients when their doctors show a lack of empathy. Doctors were trained to believe that emotional detachment from patients is personally and professionally necessary, but experience shows that patients don’t trust doctors who are aloof or superficially friendly. Yet, only recently have studies proven just how harmful detachment and how beneficial empathy is for healing...."
Sub Conference: Health Care and Science

Dorrie Fontaine: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Healthcare

Dorrie Fontaine, is Dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Virginia. At the school she started the Compassionate Care & Empathic Leadership Initiative (CCELI) "which exists to create dialogue around and preparedness for nurses who deal every day with people in life-changing situations–one-time or chronic illness, terminal disease, end-of-life care and even death itself–and all the highly-charged, complex issues surrounding them.

 The CCELI focuses on systems that optimize patients’ and their family’s quality of life, incorporate compassion and empathy into personal behavior, interprofessional interactions and encounters with patients and families.  We’re developing clinical, educational and research initiatives that further those aims. Our ultimate vision is to reduce human suffering and promote health and well-being by fostering compassionate people and systems."

 

"Can compassion be taught? UVa Nursing's all volunteer army of nurses, physicians, administrators, professors and students are learning concrete ways to insert compassion into every patient interaction -- and they're bolstering their own resilience in the process."

Sub Conferences: Health Care

Mark Honigsbaum: How to Build a Culture of Empathy or Not

Mark Honigsbaum is a Research Associate at the University of Zurich's Institute for Medical History and the author of 'Living With Enza'.

Mark wrote some articles about the role empathy, The Politics of Empathy and Barack Obama and the 'empathy deficit' which was published in the Guardian. We talked about his articles and views on the role of empathy in society

Mark said, "I'd be very happy to talk to you about empathy just so long as you understand that I am primarily an historian of medicine so, while I am all for promoting greater compassion and awareness of the predicament of those less fortunate than myself, I am wary of this notion of empathy as intrinsically pro-social and moral. This strikes me as a very recent notion, traceable to the birth of the psy sciences around the turn of the last century. Moreover, if alleviating the suffering of the poor and disadvantaged is to be more than a feel-good sound bite it has to be married with a real political agenda, which means making choices and taking sides (in my opinion of course)"

Sub Conference: Journalism and Media

Diana Castle: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Acting and Imagination

Diana Castle is a first generation American born of a holocaust survivor. She attended a fine arts high school before graduating with a BFA in theatre with a music minor. She began her career in both musicals and dramatic roles in NYC, in national tours and regional theatre, as well as on stages internationally.
 

 "Diana Castle’s THE IMAGINED LIFE™ – Acting As The Art of The Empathetic Imagination- is a creative philosophy and practical application of your natural empathetic imagination to the art of acting...

Diana works with actors, singers, writers and directors of diverse backgrounds from all over the world in an effort to illuminate an experience of alternative perspectives, facilitate catharsis and create community through her creative philosophy and the empathetic imagined life experience."

 

We had a fun, dynamic and almost 2 hour discussion about the nature of empathy and how to embody it through acting. We explored how to not just talk about empathy, but embody it.
Sub Conference: Arts

 
Panel 21: Philosophy and Empathy
  Anthony I. Jack
Joshua Knobe
Philip Robbins
Edwin Rutsch
This panel brings together three leading researchers in the emerging field of experimental philosophy: a field which uses the experimental methods of the cognitive and social sciences to shed light on philosophical problems. This is a free ranging discussion of recent research and work in progress.
We discuss how our conception of the minds of others relates to empathy of various types, with a particular focus on empathy in the sense of compassion. The discussion touches on dehumanization, objectification, and how empathy relates to our tendency to see minds as embodied, as able to feel different kinds of emotion, and as possessing autonomy or free will.
Sub Conference: Science
 
 Panel 19: The Challenge of Balancing Analysis and Empathy
  Anthony Jack
Helen Riess
Richard Boyatzis
Edwin Rutsch
Recent evidence shows that adopting an analytic frame of mind suppresses brain areas involved in empathy, and emotionally engaging with others suppresses brain areas involved in analytic thought. This presents a challenge for contexts that require both forms of thought.
Managers, teachers and doctors all have professional roles in which optimal performance depends both on a capacity for clear analytic thought, and on their ability to emotionally resonate with others. This panel brings together three experts in the neuroscience of empathy and how to train it. They discuss the challenges involved in fostering a balance between empathy and analysis in professional life, and suggest solutions.
Sub Conference: Science

 Chad Posick: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Criminal Justice System

Chad Posick has a B.S. degree in criminal justice and an M.S. degree in public policy from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He just finished his Ph.D in criminal justice from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He has worked with Project Safe Neighborhoods in the Western District of New York as well as the Department of Criminal Justice Service’s Project Impact. His research areas include restorative justice, cognitive behavioral interventions and action research.

We talked about Chad's research and study: More Than a Feeling: Integrating Empathy Into the Study of Lawmaking, Lawbreaking, and Reactions to Lawbreaking. "Empathy is related, directly or indirectly, to important elements in criminology such as the enactment of harsh penalties for repeat offenders, antisocial behavior, feelings of legitimacy toward the law, and attitudes toward the death penalty. Although empathy is beginning to find its way into criminological discourse, it is still not well understood nor often incorporated into quantitative research. "

Sub Conferences: Science and Justice

 Christopher Germer: How to Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion

Christopher Germer is a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School and a founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He lectures internationally on mindfulness and self-compassion, is author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.

Mindful self-compassion is the foundation of emotional healing - being aware in the present moment when we're struggling with feelings of inadequacy, despair, confusion, and other forms of stress (mindfulness) and responding with kindness and understanding (self-compassion).

 

To build a culture of empathy and compassion, Chris says we need to have a societal discussion about what values are really important to us.  They did this in Bhutan where they have the "gross national happiness" index.  Also, that we need to develop extensive empathy and compassion trainings. He said, the average American watches TV for 4 hours a day. What if we used that time learning about empathy and compassion? What a different world it would be.
Sub Conference: Science

Maria Seehausen: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Reflective Listening

Maria Seehausen is a psychologist and neuroscientist at the Cluster of Excellence: Languages of Emotion of the Free University Berlin, where she works on her dissertation on the effects of empathic paraphrasing on emotion in social conflict. She also works as a freelance mediator, trainer and coach, and is interested in the scientific exploration of intervention techniques used in conflict resolution. Maria is lead on the study, 'Effects of empathic paraphrasing - Extrinsic emotion regulation in social conflict'.

"In the present study, we investigated the effects of empathic paraphrasing as an extrinsic emotion regulation technique in social conflict. We hypothesized that negative emotions elicited by social conflict can be regulated extrinsically in a conversation by a listener following the narrator’s perspective and verbally expressing cognitive empathy.

 

20 participants were interviewed on an ongoing or recently self-experienced social conflict...  it is possible that empathic paraphrasing not only leads to a reduction of negative emotion in participants, but even induces positive emotions, such as happiness and relief about being listened to and validated.'

Sub Conference: Science and Justice

Penny Spikins: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Archaeology

Penny Spikins is Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. One of her main areas of research is on the archaeological evidence for the evolution of empathy and compassion.  "My early research centred on Mesolithic northern England where I retain an interest and enthusiasm, although I'm best known for my later research into the emergence of autism and the evolution of empathising and compassion in the Palaeolithic."  Penny is writing a book titled, 'How Compassion Made Us Human: An archaeology of prehistoric sentiment'
We discussed;
  • why it is important that compassion was key to our evolutionary history.
  • how archaeological evidence can tell us about how compassion evolved.
  • how a capacity to put others first in modern hunter-gatherers works to help them survive, not just as a group but as individual (which helps us understand the evolutionary pressures in the stone age).
  • the building blocks of capacities to put others first in apes, and how humans take those capacities to another level.
    Sub Conference: Science
 
Panel 20:  Empathy in Critical Care - Empathy and Healthcare Conference
Keonnis R. Taylor
Jodi Halpern
Barbara Beach
Marilyn Ababio
Edwin Rutsch
This panel with experts in the field of healthcare explored the role of empathy and compassion in providing medical care.

A few of the questions addressed were;

  •  How do those providing objective medical care, especially around the grim subject of one's own death, provide compassionate care without absorbing the emotions surrounding imminent death?
  • Please describe your work and why the principle of empathy is relevant to it?
  •  The theory of Counter-Transference in Psychology postulates that the practitioner's feelings are entangled with the patient's. Does this also happen in the medical field? etc.
    Sub Conference: Health Care

Mark Rosenblum: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

  Mark Rosenblum is Professor of History and Director of Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding (CERRU) at Queens College, New York. 

CERRU inspires a generation of leaders who value cross-cultural engagement, listening, and empathy to inform positive social change.

"Building Empathy - One of the goals of the program is to increase students’ ability to understand and empathize with a wide range of experience and opinion. During the dialogue sessions, our student facilitators lead groups of students in discussion regarding contentious issues on campus and in the community. Participants are encouraged to listen actively, and without judgment, even if they do not agree."
Sub Conference: Science

Wendy Wood: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)

Wendy Wood is Senior Lecturer at the Mental Health and Therapeutic Practice Faculty of Education, Health and Sciences at University of Derby, UK.  Wendy is also Programme leader for the Compassion Focused Therapy programme.

"I worked within the NHS for 14 years as a Mental Health Nurse then as an assistant psychologist and then as a counsellor in primary care. I also worked for a year as a freelance trainer, therapist and clinical supervisor."

"Compassion Focused Therapy is a psychological approach that was originally developed to help people with high shame and self-criticism, and this course will introduce you to the basic ideas and interventions that are used. This course is for you if you are in a mental health profession, for example psychiatry, psychology, nursing or occupational therapy and you are trained to form and develop psychotherapeutic relationships.

 

Also, if you have basic counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy skills and you would like to develop your skills when working with clients who experience shame and self-criticism thoughts, then this course is for you."
Sub Conference: Science

Walter Osika: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Walter Osika MD, PhD, works as a stress researcher and his research profile is "neuropsychiatric and cardiovascular measures in childhood and adulthood". He has primarily studied self assessed psychological health and cardiovascular regulation in children. He is also participating in epidemiological studies of early exposures and later outcomes in terms of psychiatric and cardiovascular disease, as well as in studies of burn out patients and of autonomic regulation in relation to hearing and cognition." 
Walter is researching how compassion relates to stress and is part of a group that is setting up a Swedish version of the The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education located in Stanford University.

 Anthony Jack: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Anthony Jack, PhD (Tony) is Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and Psychology in the Brain, Mind and Consciousness laboratory in the Department of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.


He says, "I have a PhD in Experimental Psychology and extensive training in Philosophy and Neuroscience. I started out doing largely theoretical work on consciousness, but then got interested by the emerging field of brain imaging. I use fMRI to study attention, consciousness and social processing in the brain." 

Tony has been studying empathy and was involved in a study that looks at the analytic and empathic neural networks and how they relate to each other.  This article 'Empathy represses analytic thought, and vice versa' on Science Blog says,  "When the brain fires up the network of neurons that allows us to empathize, it suppresses the network used for analysis, a pivotal study led by a Case Western Reserve University researcher shows... At rest, our brains cycle between the social and analytical networks. But when presented with a task, healthy adults engage the appropriate neural pathway, the researchers found. The study shows for the first time that we have a built-in neural constraint on our ability to be both empathetic and analytic at the same time."
Sub Conference: Science: Neuroscience

Restorative Empathy Circle 1 with Democrats and Republicans

We hold Restorative Empathy Circles for individuals and groups that are in conflict. These groups can support a wide variety of conflicts.

Restorative Empathy Circles with Democrats and Republicans bring the different political parties and political movements together. This was our first Restorative Empathy Circle.

We asked; what is your most important value and how did it become important to you, how does your value relate to empathy and how can we foster empathic connection and understanding across political lines? 

There seemed to be a consensus about the importance of fostering empathy and compassion in society. We learned a lot about refining and developing the circle process for the next time. Unfortunately we had a bit of computer technical problems with Skype, audio, etc. 

Participants were;

Paul Gilbert: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Compassion

Paul Gilbert is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and Director of the Mental Health Research Unit, Derbyshire Mental Health Trust. He has has authored over 20 books, including, Depression: The Evolution of Powerlessness and the The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life's Challenges.

Paul says, "After years of exploring the processes underpinning shame and its role in a variety of psychopathologies, my current research is exploring the neurophysiology and therapeutic effectiveness of compassion focused therapy."  The publisher describes Compassion-focused therapy (CFT)  as "a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the development of self-compassion in people who are prone to feelings of shame and self-criticism. Created by Paul Gilbert and his colleagues, this therapy is rooted in Mahayana Buddhist psychology, which considers compassion and mindfulness to be central to healing the mind. CFT develops four skills: compassionate attention, compassionate thinking, compassionate behavior, and compassionate feeling.

This therapy has been proven effective for the treatment of eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, and can even benefit those who do not suffer from these disorders as it improves emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and nonjudgment."

In this interview, Paul and Edwin have a wide ranging discussion about shame, depression, empathy and compassion, as well as, how to foster compassion in society.
Sub Conference: Science

Daniel Siegel M.D.: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Daniel Siegel M.D. is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute. His training is in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. Dan is the author of many books on parenting, child development, Mindsight, etc.

including The Developing Mind, Second Edition: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being.

Dan shared his understanding about the importance of empathy and how it works in the brain thought mirror neurons. "When kids are able to watch an interaction that's empathic, empathy isn't just being taught; it's being demonstrated," Talking about the importance of empathic attunement, Dan says, "When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships. Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected."

Sub Conference: Science

Johan Galtung: How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Peace

Johan Galtung is the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959 and is referred to as the "father of peace studies".

Johan has also mediated in over 150 conflicts between states and nations. He has published over 100 books, including 'Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization' and "The Fall of the U.S. Empire - And Then What?” 

 

He co-founded TRANSCEND International which has as its mission: "To bring about a more peaceful world by using action, education/training, dissemination and research to transform conflicts nonviolently, with empathy and creativity, for acceptable and sustainable outcomes."


He has a quote which I find succinctly sums up the relationship between empathy and peace. “By peace we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with empathy, without violence, and creatively — a never-ending process”
Sub Conference: Justice

About the upcoming 'Empathy & Compassion in Society' Conference in London - Nov 23-24, 2012
Vinciane Rycroft is Director and Co-Founder at Mind with Heart, an educators' network for a secular education in empathy and compassion.

In this dialog, Vinciane gives a short overview about the upcoming 'Empathy & Compassion in Society' Conference
that will be held in London - Nov 23-24, 2012.

The Empathy and Compassion in Society Conference will address three topics:
1. Compassion and empathy: scientific definitions, misunderstandings and function.
2. Compassion, the benefits at the personal level.
3. Compassion in action and social cohesion

Richard Levin: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Healthcare

Richard Levin is an internationally recognized physician scientist, scholar, cardiologist and educator. He is also the President and CEO of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. The Gold Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering humanism in medicine.  "It encourages the development of physicians who combine the high tech skills of cutting-edge medical science with the high touch skills of communication, empathy and compassion."

The organization says that, "As the nature of doctor-patient relationship changes, compassion and empathy are essential." The Foundation fosters the development of empathy in healthcare thought a variety of ways and initiatives, such as,  lectures, conferences, physician networking, grants, fostering scientific research, award ceremonies, a website, etc.
Sub Conference: Health Care

Marc Brackett: How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Compassion

 

Marc Brackett is a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He also is Deputy Director of Yale's Health, Emotion and Behavior Laboratory and Head of the Emotional Intelligence Unit in the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy.


He is the lead developer of The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning, an evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) program that currently is implemented in hundreds of schools throughout the United States and abroad. The acronym RULER refers to the five key emotion skills of Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. Marc says authenticity is his most important value.

Sub Conference: Science

 

 Alex Gabbay: How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Movies

Alex Gabbay is a  Filmmaker and Director. His documentary, 'Love Hate and Everything in Between' is about empathy and  looks into the world of neuroscience, psychology, education and technology to explore the extraordinary relevance of empathy in today’s increasingly interconnected world Man’s capacity for kindness and compassion is overshadowed only by his ability to be as cruel and destructive. Can empathy resolve issues of aggression and subjugation, where wars, politics and economic sanctions have failed?

Empathy – a subject increasingly tested by world events and studied by scholars – is put under the microscope in this documentary. Alex and Edwin have a wide ranging discussion about the nature of empathy and his suggestions for building a culture of empathy.  
Sub Conference: Arts

 

How to Build a Culture of Empathy? Jason Marsh

Jason Marsh is editor in chief of Greater Good magazine and website at U.C. Berkeley. Jason is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a co-editor of, The Compassionate Instinct.

How to Build a Culture of Empathy?

First, promote personal contact across different groups. Do this in places like the workplace, schools and so on.  Second, encourage cross-group contact and perspective taking among kids and in schools. Create a curriculum of empathy within schools.

Third, inequality creates a negative spiral, it reduces empathy which creates more inequality, which reduces empathy further, which creates more inequality, etc.  We need to create a positive spiral of more empathy, more equality, more empathy, more equality.

Sub Conferences: Science and Journalism-Media.

 Arianna Huffington: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Arianna Huffington is president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group.  She is the author of numerous books including, On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life.  

Here
is an interview I did with Arianna via email.

How can we build a culture of empathy?

"To a physicist a critical mass is the amount of radioactive material that must be present for a nuclear reaction to become self-sustaining. For the empathy movement, a critical mass is when the empathy habit is cultivated by enough people that it can begin to spread spontaneously. I think of it as an outbreak of a positive infection. And everyone has the potential to be a carrier. So one thing we can do is to spread it as widely as possible...  

 

I think the opposite of empathy is the projection of our own fears onto others. We've seen this over and over again throughout American history. In times of economic upheaval, when huge numbers of people are losing their jobs, losing their homes, and feeling powerless to do anything about it, it has always been the case that people look for scapegoats. Empathy is the antidote to that."

Sub Conference: Journalism and Media.

 Helen Riess: How to Build a Culture of Empathy in Health Care

Helen Riess, M.D. is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School and Director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital
.
 

The mission of the Program is to enhance empathy and interpersonal relationships in healthcare. She is also Chief Technology Officer of Empathetics which offers scientifically based empathy training proven to optimize interpersonal engagement.

Helen is a coauthor of the study, Empathy Training for Resident Physicians. The study concluded;  "A brief intervention grounded in the neurobiology of empathy significantly improved the physician empathy as rated by patients, suggesting that the quality of care in medicine could be improved by integrating the neuroscience of empathy into the medical education."

Empathy is like "getting underneath the skin of another person, to merge temporarily with their experience, then getting out, to reflect on the experience.  Empathy can be taught, although a certain endowment may be inborn, research shows that it is a mutable trait. Our study demonstrated that empathy could be increased significantly in the training group and it decreased significantly in the control group.
Sub Conference: Health Care

Paul Zak: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy with Oxytocin

Paul J. Zak is Professor of Economics and Department Chair, as well as the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He is author of: The Moral Molecule: The source of love and prosperity, which  explores the relationship between Oxytocin, empathy, compassion, trust, etc.
 

"The Moral Molecule is a first-hand account of the discovery of a molecule that makes us moral. It reveals that compassion [and empathy] is part of our human nature, why loneliness can kill you, and why your neighbor may be a psychopath."
Sub Conference: Science

 

James Doty: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Compassion

James Doty is Stanford Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery and founding director of the Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE)  "CCARE is striving to create a community of scholars and researchers, including neuroscientists, psychologists, educators and philosophical and contemplative thinkers around the study of compassion."

Emma Seppala: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy & Compassion

Emma Seppala originates from Paris, France and is Associate Director at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. She is an Honorary Fellow at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds in Madison, Wisconsin.

Her research areas include: Complementary & Alternative Interventions (yoga, meditation); The Science of Happiness, Health, Well-Being; Stress; Trauma; Emotion and Emotion Regulation; Compassion, Social Connectedness; Cross-Cultural Psychology. 

Sub Conference: Science

Lidewij Niezink: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Lidewij hosts the Empathy and Charter for Compassion groups on Linkedin. Her Ph.D was in empathy and altruism. She is a strategic advisor, trainer and innovator, and helps organizations, groups and individuals to implement different aspects of empathic concern into their professional as well as private lives.  

How to build a culture of empathy?  Stop looking for the qualities of empathy and compassion outside of ourselves. We ALL possess these qualities already (as research is showing us). Develop and make use of the methods offered to cultivate empathy and compassion within ourselves according to what speaks to our individual minds and hearts...  Sub Conference: Science

 

Maia Szalavitz: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Coauthor: Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential and Endangered

Empathy - fully expressed in a community of nurturing interdependent people - promotes health, creativity, intelligence, and productivity. In contrast, apathy and lack of empathy contribute to individual and societal dysfunction, inhumane ideologies, and often brutal actions.
Sub Conference: Science

 

 Marco Iacoboni: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy 

Author: Mirroring People: The New Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others

Because mirror neurons re-create for us the distress we see on the screen. We have empathy for the fictional characters - we know how they feel - because we literally experience the same feelings ourselves. 
Sub Conference: Science: Neuroscience

 

Roman Krznaric: Dialogs on How to Build a Culture of Empathy

Author: The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live

I believe that empathy – the imaginative act of stepping into another person’s shoes and viewing the world from their perspective – is a radical tool for social change and should be a guiding light for the art of living. As I describe in this video definition of empathy, it matters not just because it makes you good, but because it is good for you
.

 
Occupy 100% Empathy Tent
 

We've launched a new project to set up an Empathy Tent at some of the occupy encampments in order to support building a culture of empathy and compassion through conflict resolution, empathy circles, empathic listening, mediation, dialog, restorative justice, trainings, etc. See the following links for more;

- 100% Empathy Tent webpage
- Join the Facebook Event for this project.
- Shared and editable Google Doc for the project development

 
Live Chat with Christian Keysers, author: The Empathic Brain

We talk with Christian Keysers, author of The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of Human Nature.

 

He is one of the few scientists that have directly studied mirror neurons. His work on the neural basis of empathy has led to publications in the most prominent scientific journals.
Sub Conference: Science

 

Live chat with Simon Baron-Cohen: Empathy and the Science of Evil

We talk with Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.
 In his new book;
Zero Degrees of Empathy: a New Theory of Human Cruelty (UK)
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (US)
he calls for a redefinition of Evil as a lack of empathy.
Sub Conference: Science

 
 Kristin Neff Talks with Edwin about Empathy and Self-Compassion
Kristin Neff, author of Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, talks with Edwin about the nature of empathy, self-empathy self-compassion and compassion.
"Compassion is a huge value of  mine. Now I like to use the term open-heartedness, because compassion tends to be specific to the context of suffering. Of course we want to have open hearts in the face of suffering, but also want to have open hearts in the face of joy and when we are at our bests and have great successes and achievements. Just keep our hearts open no matter what happens, positive, negative or even neutral.  Open mind and open heart, just trying to stay open."
Sub Conference: Science
 
 Paul Ekman talks about the Nature of Empathy and Compassion with Edwin Rutsch 
  How can we build a culture of empathy?
'The survival of the planet as we know it depends on global compassion...

If I was president, thank god I'm not, I would start a Manhattan Project on global empathy. It has the urgency of the Manhattan Project. It needs the bringing together of the best minds in the world to focus on this issue, because there is an urgency too it. I think Al Gore was right, that time is running out. We can't wait 20 or 40 years to figure out what to do with this problem."
Sub Conference: Science

 
Frans de Waal talks with Edwin about the Nature of Empathy
How can we build a culture of empathy?
I think it is important in society, especially at the moment. Now that we have come out of this period where greed was so good. I think it is important to emphasize that there are alternative ways of looking at society. A society where solidarity is important and caring about others is important. 

The other things, that I'm not an expert on, is education and culture of course. A cultural and educational change that emphasizes empathy more. I would also warn that empathy is not invariably positive. People think that empathy is automatically a positive characteristic. Empathy can be used for bad purposes also.
Sub Conference: Science

 
Interview with Rick Hanson on Empathy
I have a special interest, a particular interest in practical methods, useful things, found at the intersection of psychology, brain science and contemplative practice... I think looking out at the world today, we have a crises of empathy in a way.
Sub Conference: Science
 
Mary Gordon founder of 'Roots of Empathy' talks about the Importance of Empathy
Your quest for an empathic culture, or a Culture of Empathy as you call it, I think is a great quest. I don't think it's ever to late to develop empathy. It starts so naturally... I think we should do everything that we can to cultivate empathy and we can do it at every level. So why would we not.
Sub Conference: Education

Huston Smith Talks with Edwin Rutsch about Empathy

 An Interview with Huston Smith, religious studies scholar and author of many books on world religions including The World's Religions.


"I'm a seeker after truth. For me empathy is at the heart of love. We humans are empathetic creatures.'

Sub Conference: Interfaith

 


MORE - Blog Roll Continued..... .

Let's find 1 million people who want to build a culture of empathy and compassion. We can make that world a reality.  'Like' our new Facebook page and join us on Facebook Causes.

 








 




 




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