The use of the term “empathy” has been expanding in recent years, from workplaces to prison systems to conversations about gun control. Research into mirror neurons in the 1980s and 1990s brought sharper focus to the notion of empathy, but it has since acquired numerous dimensions, according to Cris Beam, a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and the author of a new book titled, I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy. Empathy is ingrained in the psyche from birth, although sociopaths and psychopaths may be born with a “disability” — that of missing empathy. Empathy skills also can be enhanced. Beam explored the various facets of empathy in an interview on the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is empathy important to a wide range of people now?
Beam: Yes. We’re seeing empathy as a term surging in many ways. Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book about empathy and said that right now we’re in an empathy era. I’ve found that every hundred years or so, we enter a new surge in all things empathy. The term “empathy” is only 100 years old. So it’s hard to look back further than that. But 200 years ago, [Adam] Smith and [David] Hume were talking about sympathy in much the same ways that we talk about empathy. So we seem to go through these patterns of getting a real interest in connectivity and empathy about every 100 years, and saying that we are as a species interconnected, and that matters. Then we go back into the idea that we’re actually individualistic, and that’s what matters. And then we go back toward empathy. We swing.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are the greatest benefits today with the mindset and the use of empathy in our society today?
Beam: There are so many benefits to empathy. We’re seeing it being used in courtrooms that used to be called the drug courts or the domestic violence courts. We’re now seeing it — in New York at least — in prostitution courts or human trafficking intervention courts, where, rather than getting [prison] time, people are getting services. [However,] they’re still criminalized and still brought in as criminals, which is unfortunate.
Knowledge@Wharton: What about within our children? We see some changes within school systems now of trying to teach empathy.
Beam: There’s a big push for teaching empathy. Part of that is in the anti-bullying curriculum. But as a lot of schools are teaching empathy, there’s a big split as to how to do it. Some people think that it should be skills-based. Is empathy a skill? Is it something that you can learn? Is it something that you can teach like playing the piano?
To read more of Knowledge@Wharton's interview, please click here.
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