Empathy, Schmempathy

By Tom Bartlett
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted November 27, 2016

No one argues in favor of empathy. That’s because no one needs to: Empathy is an unalloyed good, like sunshine or cake or free valet parking. Instead we bemoan lack of empathy and nod our heads at the notion that, if only we could feel the pain of our fellow man, then everything would be OK and humanity could, at long last, join hands together in song.

Bah, says Paul Bloom. In his new book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (Ecco), Bloom argues that when it comes to helping one another, our emotions too often spoil everything. Instead of leading us to make smart decisions about how best to use our limited resources altruistically, they cause us to focus on what makes us feel good in the moment. We worry about the boy stuck in the well rather than the thousands of boys dying of malnutrition every day.

Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, calls on us to feel less and think more.

The interview is here.

Why some people are more altruistic than others

Abigail Marsh
TED Talk
Originally posted June 2016

Why do some people do selfless things, helping other people even at risk to their own well-being? Psychology researcher Abigail Marsh studies the motivations of people who do extremely altruistic acts, like donating a kidney to a complete stranger. Are their brains just different?

Medical involvement in torture today?

Kenneth Boyd
J Med Ethics 2016;42:411-412 doi:10.1136/medethics-2016-103737

In the ethics classroom, medical involvement in torture is often discussed in terms of what happens or has happened elsewhere, in some imagined country far away, under a military dictatorship for example, or historically in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia. In these contexts, at a distance in space or time, the healthcare professional's moral dilemma can be clearly demonstrated. On the one hand, any involvement whatever in the practice of torture, countenancing or condoning as well as participating, is forbidden, formally by the World Medical Association 1957 Declaration of Tokyo, but more generally by the professional duty to do no harm. On the other hand, the professional duty of care, and more generally human decency and compassion, forbids standing idly by when no other professional with comparable skills is available to relieve the suffering of victims of torture. In such circumstances, the health professional's impulse to exercise their duty of care, albeit thereby implicitly countenancing or condoning torture, may be strengthened by the knowledge that to refuse may put their own life or that of a member of their family in danger. But then again, they may also be all too aware that in exercising their duty of care they may simply be ‘patching up’ the victims in order for them to be tortured again.

The article is here.

Cook County Sheriff Dart: Jailing poor, mentally ill is unjust

Madhu Krishnamurthy
Daily Herald
Originally posted April 6, 2016

The numbers of mentally ill people housed in the nation's prisons and jails are staggering, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says, and many of them shouldn't be there.

Dart, speaking Wednesday at Elgin Community College, has led a campaign to reduce what he calls the unjust incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. He's been recognized by health advocacy organizations for trying to change the criminal justice system, which perpetuates a revolving door at jails. His presentation was part of the college's Humanities Center Speakers series.

The article is here.

The Role of Compassion in Altruistic Helping and Punishment Behavior

Helen Y. Weng, Andrew S. Fox, Heather C. Hessenthaler, Diane E. Stodola, Richard J. Davidson
PLOS One
Published: December 10, 2015
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143794

Abstract

Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a transgressor. We investigated the relationship between compassion and subtypes of altruistic behavior using third-party paradigms where participants 1) witnessed an unfair economic exchange between a transgressor and a victim, and 2) had the opportunity to either spend personal funds to either economically a) help the victim or b) punish the transgressor. In Study 1, we examined whether individual differences in self-reported empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was associated with greater altruistic helping or punishment behavior in two independent samples. For participants who witnessed an unfair transaction, trait empathic concern was associated with greater helping of a victim and had no relationship to punishment. However, in those who decided to punish the transgressor, participants who reported greater empathic concern decided to punish less. In Study 2, we directly enhanced compassion using short-term online compassion meditation training to examine whether altruistic helping and punishment were increased after two weeks of training. Compared to an active reappraisal training control group, the compassion training group gave more to help the victim and did not differ in punishment of the transgressor. Together, these two studies suggest that compassion is related to greater altruistic helping of victims and is not associated with or may mitigate altruistic punishment of transgressors.

The article is here.

The Arithmetic of Compassion

By Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic
The New York Times
Originally published December 4, 2015

WE all can relate to the saying “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Our sympathy for suffering and loss declines precipitously when we are presented with increasing numbers of victims. In the 1950s, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton studied survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and discovered that a condition he labeled “psychic numbing” enabled them to withstand the psychological trauma of this experience.

Psychologists have since extended Dr. Lifton’s work to show how the concept of psychic numbing has implications in many other situations, such as our response to information about refugee crises, mass extinctions and climate change. This information can be deadening in its abstractness. We struggle to care when the numbers get big. The poet Zbigniew Herbert called this “the arithmetic of compassion.”

How big do the numbers have to be for insensitivity to begin? Not very, it turns out.

The entire article is here.

The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield

By Daniel Engber
The New York Times Magazine
Originally published October 20, 2015

Here are two excerpts:

Then there was a lull in the conversation after Wesley came back in, and Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’

‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.

To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-­dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.

(cut)

Sitting at the keyboard, D.J. also seemed to have a lot to say. His messages were simple and misspelled at first, but his skill and fluency improved. Eventually he could hit a letter every second, and if Anna guessed the word before he finished typing, he would hit the ‘‘Y’’ key to confirm. Anna brought books for him to read, Maya Angelou and others, and discovered that he read like a savant — 10 pages every minute. (She turned the pages for him.) They discussed the possibility of his enrolling in a G.E.D. program.

As D.J. came into his own, Anna kept her mother posted on his progress. In the spring of 2010, Sandra asked if D.J. might like to give a paper for a panel she was organizing at a conference of the Society for Disability Studies in Philadelphia. The panel was on Article 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which lays out the right to freedom of expression and opinion. D.J. wasn’t sure he could do it, Anna said, but she convinced him he should try.

The entire article is here.

Note to readers: The article is long, detailed and (from my perspective) creepy. This case appears to demonstrate where compassion and personal values override good judgment, research, and professional responsibilities.

The Funny Thing About Adversity

By David DeSteno
The New York Times
Originally published October 16, 2015

Here are several excerpts:

In both studies, the results were the same. Those who had faced increasingly severe adversities in life — loss of a loved one at an early age, threats of violence or the consequences of a natural disaster — were more likely to empathize with others in distress, and, as a result, feel more compassion for them. And of utmost importance, the more compassion they felt, the more money they donated (in the first study) or the more time they devoted to helping the other complete his work (in the second).

Now, if experiencing any type of hardship can make a person more compassionate, you might assume that the pinnacle of compassion would be reached when someone has experienced the exact trial or misfortune that another person is facing. Interestingly, this turns out to be dead wrong.

(cut)

As a result of this glitch, reflecting on your own past experience with a specific misfortune will very likely cause you to under appreciate just how trying that exact challenge can be for someone else (or was, in fact, for you at the time). You overcame it, you think; so should he. The result? You lack compassion.

The entire article is here.

Dreading My Patient

By Simon Yisreal Feuerman
The New York Times - Opinionator
Originally published August 25, 2015

I didn’t want him to show up.

He was a bright, handsome and winning patient. His first three sessions had been perfectly ordinary. And yet a few minutes before his fourth session, I found myself ardently wishing for him not to come.

This feeling was puzzling. It had overtaken me suddenly.

My patient was in his late 20s and had decided to enter therapy, as he explained in his first session, because he did not have enough confidence. He talked about not being able to think for himself and make his own decisions, not being able to hold his own at work or find his way when he was around women. He found that he stammered a lot and said the “wrong” things.

The entire article is here.

Not Just Empathy: Meaning of Life TV

Robert Wright and Paul Bloom
Meaning of Life.tv

Bob and Paul discuss empathy, compassion, values, moral development, beliefs, in-group/out-group biases, and evolutionary psychology.  There are some pithy remarks and humorous lines, but a great deal of research and wisdom in this 42 minutes video.  It is truly video worth watching.

Empathy, Is It All It's Cracked Up to Be?

The Aspen Institute
Speakers: Paul Bloom and Richard J. Davidson
Published July 3, 2015

Empathy is typically seen as wonderful, central to cooperation, caring, and morality. We want to have empathic parents, children, spouses and friends; we want to train those in the helping professions to expand their empathy, and we certainly want to elect empathic politicians and policy makers. But empathy has certain troubling features, and questions have begun to arise about just how useful empathy really is and how it might be different from related capacities such as compassion.

The cheapest way to end homelessness is ridiculously simple

By Drake Baer
Business Insider
Originally published May 28, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

What's counterintuitive about housing first is that people get to keep their homes even if they keep using drugs or alcohol. As we reported last February, this method is better at keeping people from lapsing back into homelessness than traditional housing methods, where homeless people have to lock down jobs and stay sober to keep their temporary housing.

So you could say that the Housing First method isn't just more compassionate to the people who suffer from homelessness, it's also more effective at keeping them off the streets and preventing the drain on community funds.

"If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better,” Nan Roman, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Homelessness, told The New Yorker in September. “It's intuitive, in a way. People do better when they have stability."

The entire article is here.

The Evolutionary Roots of Morality and Professional Ethics

By John Gavazzi
Originally published in The Pennsylvania Psychologist

          Every aspect of human existence stems from biological and cultural evolution.  Even though evolutionary psychology is not a priority for clinical psychologists, the goal of this article is to highlight the evolutionary roots of human morals and professional ethics.  At the broadest level possible, morality is defined as the ability to differentiate between right and wrong or good and bad.  Most research in moral psychology highlights that many moral decisions are based on emotional responses and cognitive intuitions of right and wrong.  Moral judgments are typically affective, rapid, instinctive and unconscious.  The speedy cognitive processes and emotional responses are shortcuts intended to respond to environmental demands quickly and effectively.  Most individuals do not take long to determine if abortion is right or not; or if same-sex marriage is right or not.  How are our morals a function of evolution?

  Primatologist Frans de Waal (2013) attempted to answer this question in his book, The Bonobo and The Atheist.  The book is based on his work studying primates as well as other animals, like elephants.  According to de Waal, morality originated within animal relationships first, prior to homo sapiens culture.  He used observations to determine if there are any similarities between primates and humans in terms of morality.  Both are social creatures who depend on relationships to function more effectively in the world.  In order for primates to cooperate, form relationships, and work as groups, reciprocity and empathy are the two essential “pillars of morality” reported by de Wall.  Reciprocity encompasses the bidirectional nature of relationships, including concepts such as give and take, returning favors, and playing fairly.  Empathy, defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, can occur at both the cognitive and affective levels.  In terms of cognitive empathy, a person or a primate needs to have the mental capacity to understand another group members’ perspective.  People and primates also need to gage or feel the emotions of others.  As an example of empathy, humans and primates can both see emotional pain in others, demonstrate distress at what they are witnessing, and seek to console the sufferer.

The entire article is here.

What's Ethics Got to Do with It?

The misguided debate about mindfulness and morality

By Richard K. Payne
Tricycle Blog
Originally posted May 14, 2015

As mindfuness has made greater inroads into public life—from hospitals, to schools, to the workplace—its growing distance from Buddhist thought and practice has become a hotly contested issue. Is mindfulness somehow deficient because it lacks Buddhist ethics, and should Buddhist ethics be replicated in mindfulness programs and workshops?

Psychologist Lynette Monteiro, founder of the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic, points out that the “seeming absence of the explicit teaching of ethics in the MBI [Mindfulness-based Intervention] curriculum” is the “thorniest” basis for criticism. Underlying the discussion of ethics in mindfulness, however, is the presumption that there exists an inherent relation between religion and morality. Yet this focus on morality—thought to define the practice as religious rather than secular, Buddhist rather than non-Buddhist—is based on Western presumptions about religion inherited from Christianity, not Buddhism.

Views on morality and mindfulness tend to fall into three categories: inherent, integral, and modular.

The entire blog post is here.

The Empathic Civilisation

RSA Animate
Uploaded on May 6, 2010

Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Taken from a lecture given by Jeremy Rifkin as part of the RSA's free public events programme.

Watch the full lecture here.

Measuring the Return on Character

Harvard Business Review
April 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Character is a subjective trait that might seem to defy quantification. To measure it, KRW cofounder Fred Kiel and his colleagues began by sifting through the anthropologist Donald Brown’s classic inventory of about 500 behaviors and characteristics that are recognized and displayed in all human societies. Drawing on that list, they identified four moral principles—integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion—as universal. Then they sent anonymous surveys to employees at 84 U.S. companies and nonprofits, asking, among other things, how consistently their CEOs and management teams embodied the four principles. They also interviewed many of the executives and analyzed the organizations’ financial results. When financial data was unavailable, leaders’ results were excluded.

The entire article is here.

Me, My “Self” and You: Neuropsychological Relations between Social Emotion, Self-Awareness, and Morality

By Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Emotion Review July 2011 vol. 3 no. 3 313-315

Abstract

Social emotions about others’ mind states, for example, compassion for psychological pain or admiration for virtue, are an important foundation for morality because they help us decide how to treat other people. Although these emotions are ostensibly concerned with the mental qualities and situations of others, they can precipitate intimately subjective reflections on the quality of one’s own social life and mind, and via these reflections incite a desire to engage in meaningful moral actions. Our interview and neural data suggest that the shift from social emotion to introspection may be facilitated by conscious mental evaluation of emotion-related visceral sensations.

The entire paper is here.

Self-compassion protects against the negative effects of low self-esteem

By S.L. Marshall, P. D. Parker, J. Ciarrochi, B. Sahdra, C. J. Jackson, & P. C. Heaven
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 74, February 2015, Pages 116–121

Highlights
• Low self-esteem predicts poor mental health, but only amongst those adolescents who are low in self-compassion.
• Low self-esteem had little negative effects on those high in self-compassion.
• Self-esteem and self-compassion are statistically distinguishable.
• Self-compassion training may help young people to respond effectively to self-doubt.

Abstract

Low self-esteem is usually linked to negative outcomes such as poor mental health, but is this always the case? Based on a contextual behavioural model, we reasoned that self-compassion would weaken the link between low self-esteem and low mental health. Self-compassion involves accepting self-doubt, negative self-evaluations and adversity as part of the human condition. In a longitudinal study of 2448 Australian adolescents, we assessed how self-esteem interacted with self-compassion in Grade 9 to predict changes in mental health over the next year. As hypothesized, self-compassion moderated the influence of self-esteem on mental health. Amongst those high in self-compassion, low self-esteem had little effect on mental health, suggesting a potentially potent buffering affect. We discuss the possibility that fostering self-compassion among adolescents can reduce their need for self-esteem in situations that elicit self-doubt.

The entire article is here.

Robert Wright: The evolution of compassion

TED Talk Video
Originally published October 2009

Robert Wright uses evolutionary biology and game theory to explain why we appreciate the Golden Rule ("Do unto others..."), why we sometimes ignore it and why there’s hope that, in the near future, we might all have the compassion to follow it.

The Ethicist Who Crossed the Line

By Brad Wolverton
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published October 24, 2014

She was everywhere, and seemingly everyone’s friend, a compassionate do-gooder who worked long hours with underprepared students while balancing several jobs, including directing a center on ethics.

On Wednesday the world learned something else about Jeanette M. Boxill: Her own ethics were malleable.

Most of the blame fell on Julius E. Nyang’oro, a former department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his longtime assistant, Deborah Crowder, after they were identified as the chief architects of a widespread academic scandal there.

The entire story is here.