Empathy Outline -

Teaching Empathy As a Way of Being
Empathy is a way of being not an specific techniqu
The Awesome empathy training

While learning about empathy is helpful in deepening understanding, it is best to experience empathy at a visceral felt level. In this training we will combine experience and understanding.

We automatically empathize. It can be shut down or expanded.
 

Blocks - How shut down?
We can regulate our empathy

See people as an outgroup

 (Cikara & Van Bavel, 2014) Cikara, M., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). The neuroscience of intergroup relations: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 245–274. doi:10.1177/1745691614527464

Motivations to be more empathic?
(empathy is a biological need)
 

Empathy: A Motivated Account Jamil Zaki Stanford University

Implications for Interventions

How, then, could one intervene to increase empathy?
Empirically supported attempts to do so have come in at least four forms.

• First, Batson and many others have used perspective-taking exercises to increase observers’ empathy during experimental sessions
  (Ames, Jenkins, Banaji, & Mitchell, 2008; Batson, 1991, 2011;
  Coke & Batson, 1978; Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996;
  Stürmer, Snyder, & Omoto, 2005).

• Second, a few existing longterm interventions—typically targeted toward specialized populations such as physicians
  (Riess, Bailey, Dunn, & Phillips, 2012;
  Riess, Kelley, Bailey, Konowitz, & Gray, 2011) or individuals with autism (
  Golan & Baron-Cohen, 2006;
   Hadwin, Baron-Cohen, Howlin, & Hill, 1996)—focus on explicit training in mentalizing, for instance teaching perceivers associations between target facial expressions and emotions.

•  A third strategy that has gained recent popularity adapts Buddhist practices of compassion meditation to increase subjective empathy, neural resonance, and prosociality (Klimecki et al., 2014; Leiberg, Klimecki, & Singer, 2011; Weng et al., 2013).

• Finally, although it has yet to be used in a concerted intervention, some evidence suggests that immersion in narratives, for instance, through reading fiction, can enhance both mentalizing and experience sharing (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar & Oatley, 2008; Mar, Tackett, & Moore, 2010).

• Motivation-based interventions. The data reviewed here suggest a complementary target for intervention: increasing observers’ motivation to engage empathically. Motivation-based interventions are not new and characterize both classic and modern social psychological approaches to increasing ethical, healthy, and adaptive behavior (Lewin, 1952; D. Miller & Prentice, 2013; Yeager & Walton, 2011). Such interventions modulate approach and avoidance motives through techniques such as social influence (Cialdini, 2007; Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008), cognitive dissonance induction (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Stone et al., 1994), and values affirmation (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006; Cohen, Garcia, Purdie-Vaughns, Apfel, & Brzustoski, 2009).

• Promoting the belief that

  •  (a) empathy is often challenging but that

  • (b) empathic abilities are not fixed, but rather malleable, might reduce empathy avoidance, especially when empathy is most difficult. In a recent demonstration of this approach, Schumman et al. (2014) found that inducing a malleable theory of empathy increased observers’ willingness to spend time listening to an outgroup members’ emotional story and to engage in empathy even when it promised to be painful (e.g., listening to cancer patients in a support group).

(having empathic teachers as a role model. who are the empathic teachers?)

(Setting an intention)

There are many definitions of empathy.
 (Wispé, 1986) The distinction between sympathy and empathy: To call forth a concept, a word is needed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 314–321. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.2.314

There are many subprocesses of empathy.

 have some common

Jobs You Can Get with Empathy Training

• Empathy Trainer

• Empathic Listener - coach, - we need to create a new type of job.

• Conflict Mediator -

• Company ??? - articles about how empathy is the skill needed for 21st century Jobs.

• Improve your existing job.

  • better HCD designer

  • better programmer - empathy boot camps for

  • engineers -

RSA Animations

Understand the Definitions of Words

Creating a shared meaning.

Become aware of the meaning of empathy and how it compares to other phenomena like compassion, sympathy and pity,

Visual Models of Empathy
Need some visual models of empathy like the model from the HCD.

Empathy is divergent.
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Mirror Neurons
Learn about mirror neurons and how they work. Mirror neurons

Learning Empathy Outline

Read to learn Empathy

• Reading empathy based literature

• Watching empathy based Movies

Obama

Learning Empathy by Reading Books and Literature

What books convey a deeper understanding an aptitude of empathy

Giving children books that convey empathy

 

Children's Books which Teach Empathy by Cindy Vine
September 16, 2010

"There is so much we can teach our children through books. Especially, if you choose a book that has a message. Empathy should not be a difficult attitude to develop in our children. There are books which cover empathy for children in kindergarten right up to secondary. There are books which deal with cancer, divorce, refugees, war victims, children with special needs, what it's like to get old. You name it, there is a book that will deal with that subject. The thing is, is that to get the message across, you need to read the book as well, so that you can discuss it with your child. Reading could be a share-time in your family. You need to talk about the book, how do you think so and so felt?  If we encourage our children to develop empathy for others, we can create a world where everybody fits in and is accepted regardless of what they look like or where they come from. "

 

 

Books That Teach Empathy
"Teaching kids empathy is one of the most important jobs of being a parent. These great books for all ages help make it easier by celebrating friendship, difference, and the importance of caring for one another."

 

 

Stand in My Shoes: Kids Learning About Empathy 1st Edition
by Bob Sornson Ph.D.
"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. But does it really matter to others if Emily notices how they're feeling? Stand in My Shoes shows kids how easy it is to develop empathy toward those around them. 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. We're hoping that many parents read it along with their children."

 

 

Good Books to Teach Preschoolers Empathy
by Esther Carlstone

"Helping children develop empathy is one of the most valuable lessons a parent can teach. Preschoolers are at the perfect age to start learning to walk in another person's shoes as they will soon be sitting in classrooms filled with all kinds of people -- some similar and some different. Reading books together that highlight compassionate characters, or sharing tales that model empathy, is an effective way to open up a discussion about this important trait and what it really means."

 

Steps you can take.

• Keep  a empathy journal

• Form or join a team to work through this training

• Meet regularly

• Take an in person

•  workshop

• have an empathy mentor

Learning Self- Empathy

• Breath meditation
• Grounding meditation
• Journaling

Perspective Taking
People see from their perspective
 

Different Perspectives and Showing Empathy

• Building A culture of empathy
  • America has a choice - empathy or authoritarianism or a mixture of both?

  • Cultural Transformation

  • Shift the country from an ethos of selfishness and greed to one of empathy and caring.
  • What are the support structures that are needed?
  • there's the quality of a personal culture and a larger social culture.
  • what are some people so into the rules?
  • Empathy and Healthcare
    • empathy is healing - when interacting with the healthcare system, people who experience empathy do better.
• Creating a 'Culture of Empathy' to Do
  • Educate people
  • Connect empathy to Issues
  • Create a resource website for empathy - a Wiki type web
  • Hold monthly meetings
  • Have a newsletter
  • Create videos
• Mirroring others
  • in dance
  • people imitate each other
  • Experiment in dance - go up to people and imitate them
• How to develop deeper empathy, surfing, going deeper
  • roots of empathy program
• Expanding empathy
  • Peter Singer in his book The Expanding Circle that perhaps, evolution itself has
    "bequeath[ed] humans with a sense of empathy - an ability to treat other people's interests as comparable to one's own. Unfortunately, by default we apply it only to a very narrow circle of friends and family. People outside that circle were treated as subhuman and can be exploited with impunity. But over history the circle has expanded . . . from village to the clan to the tribe to the nation to other races to other sexes and . . . other species."
  • empathy with people we know, rings of empathy
  • empathy with people of a similar background
  • similarity with people like you, same age or wealth, profession, etc.
• Listening to all sides. 
  • Giving everyone an opportunity to express their feelings and and be heard.
  • that's what Obama talks about

Methods

Empathy is a way of being not an specific technique

Theory

 

 

Person Centered Approach

 

Empathic Listening
 

Focusing

The power of empathy: how being heard calms the body. 01/06/15

How Focusing differs from Mindfulness

Focusing is empathic connection.

Humans are social animals and need others for emotional connection and well being.

 

Gestalt

Role playing
embosying

 

 

Mindfulness - Meditation

 

 

Human-centered design

Nonviolent Communications

 

Art

 

User Centered Design

• techniques
• visiting people in their environments
• recreating tasks,
• discussing topics
• shadowing
• interviews
• short contextual inquiries,
• contrived activities like ridealongs,
• card sorts,
• concept value tests
• spending more time with people.
• the product is an empathic offering used to deepen the dialog and connection
• Deeper Empathy
  • Getting users involved in participatory design processes or iterative
    deployments of prototypes
  •  planning to have more time with users for discussion, observation, and even active participation in their lives – “going native,” to borrow the extreme term from ethnography
• story telling

Empathy: Design tool and outcome p6
"it’s clear that there is room to explore the techniques available to us from our own discipline and others that could offer closer empathy with our users and a better understanding of their context and needs, which should help us make better products. "