Benefits of Empathy > Sort

Empathy and field dependent thinking.

fosters a bigger picture point of view.

EMPATHY ON THE EDGE
"Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes—a part of our subconscious behavior—causes measurable changes in our cognitive style, increasing our so-called field-dependent thinking. This type of thinking helps us put information in context and pick up contextual cues from the environment, which is essential when we’re seeking to understand how things relate to one another, literally and figuratively.

Research also shows that we are more helpful and generous after an empathic encounter (Decety and Ickes, 2011). Taken together, this empathetic behavior personally motivates us to solve design challenges. "

"Empathy is useful to:

• Help to build trust.

• Build a pathway that enables communication.

• Disarm the coachee’s self-interest.

• Facilitate the development of altruism.

• Encourage bigger picture point of view"

Empathy is a defining feature of Therapy

"An empathic appreciation of the subjectivity of another person is central to the developmental achievement of “mentalization” (Fonagy et al., 2002) and the kindred notion of “Theory of Mind.” Across various theoretical orientations, empathy is seen as a vital aspect of psychotherapeutic, healing and positive and nurturing relationships."
"As a psychotherapist and supervisor of psychotherapy, I believe that empathy is a defining feature of effective treatment (See, for example, Meissner, 1991, and Shedler, 2010)"  Wynn Schwart

Empathy Fosters Creativity

Empathy as Related to Creativity, Dogmatism, and Expressiveness

"Empathy (affective sensitivity) was hypothesized to be positively related to creativity and expressiveness and inversely related to dogmatism, when gender and age were controlled. ....The results of multiple regressions provide support for the hypotheses that empathy is positively related to creativity and inversely related to dogmatism..."
Alfred F. Carlozzia, Kay S. Bulla, Gregory T. Eellsa & John D. Hurlburtb

Empathy help us solve problems

...When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.” -Carl Rogers, A Way of Being, p.12

Empathy allows us to share emotions, experiences, needs, and goals

"Empathy plays a fundamental role in our social lives. It allows us to share emotions, experiences, needs, and goals" Marco Iacoboni

Empathy enhances our ability to receive and process information.
Empathy makes people more helpful and generous

"Empathy is a powerful force.  Research shows that when we are empathetic, we enhance our ability to receive and process information. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes—a part of our subconscious behavior—causes measurable changes in our cognitive style, increasing our so-called field-dependent thinking. This type of thinking helps us put information in context and pick up contextual cues from the environment, which is essential when we’re seeking to understand how things relate to one another, literally and figuratively. Research also shows that we are more helpful and generous after an empathic encounter (Decety and Ickes, 2011). Taken together, this empathetic behavior personally motivates us to solve design challenges." EMPATHY ON THE EDGE

Empathy Circles Handbook
Lidewij Niezink and Edwin Rutsch

Empathy... reduces racism, prejudice and bullying and aggression among children. Empathy fights inequality, boosts creativity and improves the relationship between spouses as well as healthcare professionals and their clients. ().  

Gives you accurate data to work with

Stephen R. Covey

"Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul".

Types of empathy: What do you see as the benefits of giving, receiving empathy?

• being the empathic listener (giving empathy)

• being the receiver of empathic listening  (receiving empathy)

• living in an empathic community or culture

Fight Response, Flight Response, Freeze Response or Empathic Response

Systemic Benefits  of Empathy?

empathic system compared to domination system

empathy versus coercion, violence, and punishment of fellow human beings

Empathy is the foundation of Restorative Justice

Remove Blocks

• Carl Rogers talks about blocks in the free flowing of our visceral feelings. Blocks can happen, we get stuck.  Empathy allows us to emotionally or feelingly go to these blocks and become aware of and experience them and then find creative solutions to move forward.

Fosters Listening

• makes you a better listener

• makes you feel heard

• the way we learn by embodying new lessons.

Context: conflict mediators - need to know how to empathize well.

Fosters inner puzzle solving

• our bodies are like puzzle solving machines. With empathy we see a wider scope of the pieces of the puzzle and can do a better job of effectively putting together the puzzle.

You can enjoy a movie -

• Empathy allows you to feel along with the characters and the drama in a movie. Without empathy you couldn't feel the emotions.

Understanding

• Empathy allows you to be in someone else's shoes

• you will more clearly understand others intentions.

• we can read each others needs and values

• Fosters a better Understanding of your world

Empathy creates more empathy

• Starts a positive empathic spiral

The world opens up to you.

Empathy Benefit of Being Strong

• Stronger personal relationships

  • you will have more satisfying long-term relationships.

  • It is a key ingredient of successful relationships

• Benefit of Being a Strong Individual

  • "Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being. " Carl Rogers

• Benefit having Stronger Social Glue

  • It is the foundation of positive social connections which leads to happiness.

  • It is the foundation of positive social connections which leads to less stress and a longer life.

• Leadership

  • Fosters Leadership

    • It makes good leaders

• Feel trust

• Feel a Sense of Purpose

  • empathy as personal value empathy gives a sense of purpose and a way of being in the world.

Makes you a better actor

• makes you more imaginative and a good actor as well.

• I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.. Meryl Streep

• I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. Meryl Streep

• I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.  Susan Sarandon

• "I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it."  Edward Norton

Kathryn Pavlovich & Keiko Krahnke -

  "empathy enhances connectedness which results in sharing the quantum field of coherence where there is little separation between self and other. This means living beyond self-interest in a coherent world based upon interdependent wholeness rather than atomization and separation. Empathy allows us to find that state of coherent connectedness."

Edwin

"A benefit of empathy is that when other people are against empathy, hate empathy, fear empathy, misunderstand empathy,  trash empathy or try to suppress it, that they can be empathized with."

Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Elizabeth A. Segal,  M. Alex Wagaman, Karen E. Gerdes

"The absence of empathy can lead to destructive behaviors and adversely affect relationships. A lack of interpersonal empathy is associated with narcissism, bullying, violent crime, abusive parenting, spousal battering, and sexual offending."

Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis
Elizabeth A. Segal,  M. Alex Wagaman, Karen E. Gerdes

The Value of Interpersonal Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand what other people are feeling and thinking and it is an essential skill in facilitating social agreement and successfully navigating personal relationships (de Waal, 2009). It is critical to our survival because it requires the accurate perception, interpretation, and response to the emotional signals of others (Preston & de Waal, 2002). Therefore, empathy is a key building block for prosocial behavior, or the actions people take that benefit others and society (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). There is substantial research evidence that empathy is important in the development of healthy relationships (Toussaint & Webb, 2005); it supplies the affective and motivational  foundation for moral development (Eisenberg & Eggums, 2009; Smetana & Killen, 2008); and promotes helping and prosocial behaviors particularly during adolescence (Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002; Batson, Håkansson Eklund, Chermok, Hoyt, & Ortiz, 2007; McMahon, Wernsman, & Parnes, 2006). For youth, higher levels of empathy are associated with increased conflict resolution (de Weid, Branje, & Meeus, 2007) and willingness to come to the defense of a bullied peer (Gini, Albiero, Benelli, & Altoe, 2007). Parental empathy has been cited as crucial for raising healthy children (Curtner- Smith et al., 2006) and partner empathy is cited as a key attribute in satisfying relationships (Busby & Gardner, 2008).
 

The absence of empathy can lead to destructive behaviors and adversely affect relationships. A lack of interpersonal empathy is associated with narcissism, bullying, violent crime, abusive parenting, spousal battering, and sexual offending (Covell, Huss,& Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2007; Elsegood & Duff, 2010; Gini, Albieri, Benelli, & Altoe, 2008; Joliffe & Farrington, 2004; Ritter et al., 2011). In spite of so much compelling research on the value of empathy, definitions and conceptualizations vary greatly. The diversity of definitions and measurement devices makes comparisons between empathy studies challenging (Gerdes, 2011; Gerdes, Segal, & Lietz, 2010).

Empathy can have evolutionary benefits.  "I mean, we evolved arguably based on the reproductive advantages, which is the engine of biological evolution,... the reproductive advantages of empathy." Rick Hanson

 

Empathy leads to transcendence- ? “... When I am somehow in touch with the unknown in me, when I am perhaps in a slightly altered state of consciousness, then whatever I do seems to be full of healing. Then, simply my presence is releasing and helpful to the other. There is nothing I can do to force this experience, but when I can relax and be close to the transcendental core of me, … it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present.” (Rogers, 1980, p. 129)

 

Benefit - Empathy helps the person empathized with resolve pain..  being heard takes the edge off of a painful feeling.

Benefits of Empathy: fosters healing, mediation, reconciliation - Marshall Rosenberg
Session #7 - Empathy (2) - (YouTube:6h16m15s ends at 7:10:30)

• Healing

  • concerns with the concept of mental illness, has lots of problems

  • if we can look at the pain in a certain way we can come out stronger

  • empathy plays a key role, there are three aspects of empathy that play a key role

    • 1. when people in pain get empathy for the present pain - the empathy is the most important thing for addressing the pain. -

      •  Carl Rogers research - empathy was the key ingredient

      • empathy is the key ingredient to healing

      • just to receive empathy for our pain. it's an important contribution to healing.

    • 2. if a person in pain can empathize with the person that stimulated their  pain, that can be healing.

      • does sample role play - father and daughter

      • what's alive with you now about what happened in the past.

      • what are you feeling and needing now.

    • 3.  (YouTube:6h38m1s) changing depression, etc.

      • transforming judgments into unmet needs

•  Mediation  - (YouTube:6h43m5s)

  • with individuals

    • get people to empathize with each other and the problems almost magically resolves themselves

    • mediator - empathizing with peoples feelings and needs.

    • get participants to share their needs

    • mediator helps translate their judgments into needs

    • gives examples of how to do that as a mediator

  • with groups

    • story of tribes in conflict

    • the needs are universal and there is no conflict in needs

  • can be done in family conflicts

• Reconciliation (YouTube: 7h0m0s)

  • ongoing pain between people

  • i.e. Israel and Palestine Story

    • emergency empathy

Empathy: From Bench to Bedside
Chapter 3: The Empathy Altruism Hypothesis  (p.48)
by Dan Batson

• "Empathy-induced altruism has also been found to increate cooperation in completive situations. (e.g. Prisoners Dilemma)"

• In schools empathy-based training has been used to increase mutual care among students (Roots of Empathy - Gordon 2007)

• "...the induction of empathic concern is often an explicit component of techniques used in conflict-resolution workshops. Participants in these workshops are encouraged to express their feelings, their hopes and fears, and to imagine the thoughts and feelings of their on the other side of the conflict (Kelman 1990)" (Batson and Ahmad 2009)

• Empathy helps us relate to each other and work/cooperate together.  We can take empathic action.  for example..  the coordinated work people do after conflict resolution. There's a back and forth dialog and negotiation that takes place in determining how they will relate to each other.

A metaphor for this

• Fosters Health and Well-Being

• Keeps You from Having Negative Feelings

• Is a Healing Antidote to Negative Feelings

• Empathy keep you on secure positive land above the cliff, It is a guard rail that keeps you from falling into off the cliff and into the cesspool or dangerous space. Empathy is also the ladder that helps you climb up out of the cesspool of negative and painful feelings.

Kelly Bryson

the benefit of empathy is feeling joy, great joy, As a counselor he knows that when he is with someone or a couple that is in great emotional conflict and pain he will be able to assist them in coming out of it with empathy. This gives him great joy in the anticipation of what is going to happen and how he is going to be able to contribute to their well being.

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Grow together

earn to resolve conflict

feel deeper intimacy

feel a safe place

feel and be wiser -  is the beginning of wisdom - wisdom is holding many people and their being in our awareness and considering their well being

Empathy gives meaning to your life.

• because of relationships, sharing

• have a purpose your engaged with

• transcending suffering

Fosters Compassion
Empathy is the foundation of Empathic compassion.

It reduces barriers between people

Being Empathic makes you more popular

Empathy doubles the pleasure of positive shared experiences

Relieves pain and stress

• It releases Oxytocin in the body which relieves pain and stress

Fosters Creativity

Integrates conflicting emotions, feelings experiences

Fosters Innovation

• Address peoples needs

• better designed products the support peoples needs.

Releases the barrier and blocks to action

Enhances collaboration

• source of creativity and innovation

Makes you a better communicator

• is the foundation of effective communication

Helps you in every interaction

• It is needed in every human interaction

Makes the world a better place, for you and for those around you.

Makes you more effective at critical thinking and imagination.

Allows people to work together creativity -

• humans are social animals. are able to create cities, big projects, etc. empathy is a foundation of this social capability

 Helps with decision making

• Empathic Listening helps with decision making

Relieve Distress

• Empathic Listening helps relieve distress

 good relationship

Empathy begets Empathy. It can create a virtuous cycle.

after seeing all the benefits of empathy, it's easy to see what an incredible natural resource it is. It's a renewable resource that is under appreciated, cultivated and used.