October 2, 2021 • 52 mins
Empathy can often be confused with sympathy and regular old compassion. But it's not exactly either one of those. Some say a lack of empathy can indicate sociopathic tendencies, but that's not always true either. So what is empathy and what makes someone prone to empathize? Listen in to this classic episode to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Good Saturday to you.
Chuck Bryant here podcaster co host Stuff you Should Know
to introduce the Saturday Selects episode My pick this week
everybody is empathy. We all need a little empathy in
our lives. And I remember this being a pretty good episode.
This is from April six. Listen close and take heed
(00:24):
how empathy works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Lena my Shoulder
(00:47):
Bryant and Jerry. How about a hug rolland no, actually,
I'm sorry, Jerry's here in spirit. Our guest producer today
is Noel my Beard. He'll is all Brown. Yes, everybody
knows it's Noel Brown. Are you using your empathy voice? Yeah?
Is it working? Ein ful? In? Nobody? Really, it's the
(01:11):
bad eyes. Let's say I cut you for ten dollars.
Oh how are you, sir? I'm feeling um empathetic good.
I'm doing good. I have some very strong opinions on empathy,
and not just empathy, but empathy research in particulars. I'm
sure you're not at all surprised to hear. I'm not
(01:33):
at all surprised to hear. Did you come to the
same or similar conclusions as I did? I don't know
yet because we don't talk about this stuff beforehand. That's true,
that's how we that's the magic going blind. Did you
know that there's like an Atlanta magic thing? Now, what
do you mean, like a society something something along? I
(01:54):
just saw a sign for it, an old fourth ward.
But there's like a seems to be a legitimate magician.
What's that castle in l A, Oh, the Magic Castle.
It's not that, but it's probably something that the people
who do the Atlanta thing or I'm sure aware of
the Magic Castle. Probably And then you did a double
take at the sign and it disappeared in a poop
of smart It would be great. I went to the
(02:18):
Magic Castle once, Lucky. Yeah, it's awesome. I think we
had this conversation because I asked you if you've seen
that documentary about the kids competition at the Magic Castle. Yeah,
I have not, but um, it's a really good choke. Yeah,
if if you can highly recommend it, if you can
get in, you gotta know somebody. You gotta know Ben
Stiller oh really. Now, there was a movie that he
(02:41):
was in that took place in the Magic Castle and
he was like the bad guy. I think I don't
remember what it was. Maybe it was that documentary. Well,
let's talk empathy, chuck. Alrighty wait, hold on, I have
an intro. I have an intro. Okay, are you familiar
with Frank Rich, the left leaning well lefty is heck essayist?
(03:01):
I don't think so. He Uh, he's good. He's about
his He's about as good an essayist as you'll find
on the left. Um, he's a consultant on Veep. He
just he's hilarious and he knows his stuff right. He
usually writes for Harper's, but he's also got a regular
gig in New York Magazine and in New York Magazine.
Recently he published a column I think this week, um,
(03:24):
well this week as of when we're recording this, and
I think it was called like no Sympathy for the
Hillbilly or something like that, and it was basically, this
is really astounding coming from him, but it was basically
him saying, you know what, Um, I know that on
the left people tend to be bleeding heart liberals and
(03:44):
want to empathize with everybody and feel everyone else's pain
and understand where people are coming from. But I believe
that if you voted for Trump and you're angry, or
if I believe if you're angry at the people who
voted for Trump, are angry that Trump is president in it,
you should be angry at the people who voted him
into into office as well. And he basically is beating
(04:06):
a drum, which I also started to see in other
places as well, where it's like, no, you don't have
to understand people who voted for Trump, you don't have
to love your enemy. Let's just go to war with
these people, and it's it's it's legitimate. He is totally
serious too, and it amounts to basically a call to
go to the dark side, to resist everything that you know,
(04:27):
the left has traditionally prided itself on and just go
full bore like culture war against the right, and um,
it just seems like a really bad idea to me.
But one of the things that stuck out to me
about it the most was that it was so contrary
to the um ethos, the prevailing thought of the time,
(04:51):
or at least what made up the Obama administration, which
was we need to be more empathetic, we need to
understand people's plight more. And even after Hillary lost people
into the big post mortems was Hillary didn't connect with
blue collar workers who were out of work. She was
totally out of touch with that, she couldn't empathize with them. Well,
I think further pours mortem has been like Hillary could
(05:11):
empathize with those people all day, but they hated her
and they were never going to vote for And now
Frank Rich is saying, so hate them back is the thing. Again.
I disagree with that, but it really points out how
what a fragile turning point we're at right now this
path in history on America. Are we gonna stay and
just keep trying to be empathetic or we again just
(05:32):
gonna go full board to the dark side and and
just everybody's gonna hate everybody who's just who's not like them.
Quite an intro, thank you for a coastal elite. Oh
I'm not a coastal elite. I'm just kidding. I just
like that phrase. I hope I'm not. Man. I really
don't think I am, and I hope people don't think
(05:53):
I am. I I do stick my pinkie in the
air when I take SIPs of water, and that water
has been st through a m Franciscan monks mouth. First,
I don't think the only water I'll drink. I don't
think you can be a coastal elite if you have
your roots in Toledo, right, exactly. And I don't forget
(06:13):
where I'm from, man, and my family, you know, has
long roots in Tennessee and Mississippi. If you know this
by reading my Wikipedia page, right, does it say that
you're part choctaw On there yet? I'm sure it will soon,
all right. So we're talking empathy here. Um. A lot
of this sounded familiar, so much so that I like
quadruple checked that we had not done this. Um. And
(06:36):
I think we've just talked about it a lot, and
namely and uh in our Mirror Neurons episode. Yeah, um,
and I thought about that one a lot when I
was researching this. Well. I think it's definitely a component
of empathy, but it's not to be confused with empathy.
It's like part of it, I think, is the impression
I have agreed. So, um, empathy, if you look at
(06:57):
our that's a great article. Uh, they do define it. Um,
you know, everyone kind of knows what it is. But
just to be clear, it's not sympathy. It's it's if
you can feel and share someone else's emotions. Is empathy,
which is different than sympathy, and that uh, you're don't
(07:17):
you're not feeling it, but you do care about it,
right right, It's like, um, you can understand why someone
would be feeling like they're feeling. Is intellectual, Yeah, Like
sympathies from the brain and empathy is from say, the heart. Yeah,
and a lot of these words. When we get into
the definitions of empathy and versus compassion, it gets a
little uh, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like people
(07:41):
are kind of splitting hairs with that. To me, chuck
is a huge red flag that the field is not
nearly as established as people like to think. Like, if
there's still confusion on basic terms like empathy and sympathy
and they're used interchangeably, it just means that no one
is doing the right kind of hardcore research. You're publishing
(08:03):
the right kind of hardcore papers that say this is
what it is, or this is what it not, this
is what it isn't. Almost just said, this is what
it not is, this is what it ain't no coastal elite.
But there was an original German word um einfulung, which
means feeling into And that's where empathy comes from. And
if you talk to an expert or a researcher um
(08:27):
these days, they're gonna talk about a couple of types
of empathy, UM effective or maybe emotional empathy and cognitive
empathy and UM. The distinction is, as it turns out,
is pretty important and to me, well, to me, this
is where a little bit of the splitting hairs comes
(08:47):
in because as far as talking about um effective empathy
versus compassion, like is it the same thing or I'm sorry,
cognitive empathy would be more like compassion because you're not
really taking on someone else's pain. So compassion, I think,
is even like a third word. This is so this
is what I came up with. You've got cognitive empathy,
(09:10):
which is sympathy, right you can understand why someone would
be feeling a certain way. Then you've got effective empathy
one d it okay, which is like you're really putting
yourself in that person shoes and you're feeling how they're feeling.
Right then. But then compassion, it seems to me, is
the end goal of this. That's where you actually moved
(09:32):
to act. That's where you do something about it. It's
where you put your hand on someone's shoulder and say
it's gonna be all right, or you know, here's a
check for five dollars, um, get some groceries with it.
Who knows what you're gonna do. But I think to me,
compassion is the act, like the action, the end goal
of empathy, whether it's cognitive or um or effective. That's
(09:57):
that's what I think. And you know what, this fields
are so unestablished that I can just say that stuff. Yeah,
and it's probably right. Let's just say that that's true.
No one can really come along and say definitively that
you're not right right. Uh, So you know, to put
given you an example of what that might mean. Effective
or emotional empathy. Um, if someone if you have a
friend or family member going through a very hard time, uh,
(10:20):
and they're distraught, and then you are also distraught just
like they are, then that is definitely effective empathy. Whereas
you're not just like, oh man, you know your your
uncle passed away. I'm really sorry to hear that, and
I feel terribly for you. But if if you were,
you know, actively taking that on to the point where
(10:41):
you're crying too, and you didn't know the uncle, because
that would be the differentiation. Right, It's like you don't
have a personal stake in it, but you're still taking
it on as if it is your own. Yes, and
then depending on your view of things, And we'll talk
a lot about this. There's this really great see collegiest
named Paul Bloom who has basically dedicated a lot of
(11:03):
his life to shooting down ideas of how great empathy is. Yeah,
I thought he was. I thought he made a lot
of good points and something quite agree with either. But
he's great. He's really good at and poking holes in
the concept of empathy. But he points out that, um that,
I guess it's probably good if somebody's something, someone's in
a great mood and you're empathetic and sharing in that
(11:25):
great mood and amplifying it. But on the flip side
of the coin, if somebody is in a horrifically tragically
sad mood and you're sitting there amplifying that by joining
in part and parcel with it, then you're you're doing
a disservice, right, So in some in some ways, UM, well,
I'll just say Paul Bloom's whole basic, his whole thesis,
(11:49):
and I subscribe to it as well, is that cognitive
is far and away the superior of the two types
of empathy as far as the ultimate goal, which again
to me is compassion. Yes, you want to just pepper
in some of his stuff as we go. Does that
make sense? Because here's a great spot too. Uh. And
this is one of the studies I imagine. I don't
(12:10):
know if you had a problem with it, but a
problem with a lot of these studies. Um. But there
was a study, um, at least one where psychologists said, um,
how much money will you donate to develop a drug
that would save one child's life? Um? And then another
group was asked, how much would you donate to develop
a drug that would save eight kids? And it was
(12:31):
about the same answer. UM. Where things changed was when
they asked a third group about the one child. But
they showed a picture of the kid and like you know,
I said, this is this little Joey. He's fourteen years old,
and this is his sad little face. And then donations
really shot up. And this is where um, what was
his name, Paul Bloom, Paul Bloom, a psychologist. Yeah, this
(12:52):
is where Paul Bloom says that, um, this emotional empathy
is for the birds because A it's it's um, it's narrow,
and B it's very like people tend to want to
help people that are like them. So it's yeah, I
mean biases that the right word super biased. Yeah, And
(13:13):
and it makes no sense. Not only does it not
scale upward as the number of people affect by, say,
like a tragedy increase, it actually goes the other way,
where the more people that are affected by something, the
less empathetic a person tends to be. Whereas if say
it's one person and you know that person's name, and
you see that person's picture on the news, and yeah,
(13:34):
they look like you or your neighbor, your daughter, You're
gonna empathize a lot. But at the same time, there
could be you know, the same thing could be happening
to other people and if you'll just vote a certain way,
you can alleviate their suffering. You wouldn't lift a finger
to do it, especially if it meant slightly higher taxes
for you. So in that sense. Empathy makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah.
(13:56):
I mean he even quoted Mother Teresa and his UH
in the essay, which is UM quote, if I look
at the mass, I will never act. If I look
at the one, I will So he's going with the
heavy hitters there, you know, when you bring Mother Teresa
in there to kind of make a point. Yeah, but
you know he makes a good point. Um. Oh yeah,
(14:17):
Like and and that study does. I didn't have a
big problem with that study because it does kind of
prove that out right. That was Telea Coca and uh
Alana Ritov, their psychologists. And then Ritov and another UM
co author conducted another study where UM that kind of
pointed out one of the problems with empathy, which was
they said, okay, UM, two different groups of people heard
(14:40):
this that UM that a vaccine maker cost a child
her life, kill the child because of the vaccine. Now, UM,
should the vaccine maker be fined? And then one group
was told that the fine would probably make the vaccine
maker UM follow guidelines even more strictly and would probably
(15:01):
prevent accidents, and then the other further accidents, and then
the UM the other group was told that this fine
would probably make the vaccine maker get out of the
business and more people would die because they couldn't get
the vaccine. And both groups said that yes, the vaccine
maker should be punished with um the highest fine possible
(15:24):
with extreme prejudice. Right. So the upshot of all of
this is that especially with UM effective empathy as we
understand it, we we it doesn't It doesn't follow any
kind of rational guidelines, and rather the basis of rationality
being that two is more important than one, and empathy
just doesn't go in that direction. Yeah. But um, Interestingly, UM,
(15:49):
while you can train yourself to be more empathetic, it
definitely to me feels like something that you're sort of
born with to a certain degree, or maybe in the
formative years you might gain UM. But uh. In in
blooms article, he talks about babies and as as soon
as a baby can get up and start getting around,
(16:09):
they're gonna try and comfort. Like if you go into
a preschool and there's another baby crying, you will probably
see another little baby walking over there and patting the
little baby and stroking the baby. There's nothing more adorable
than pretty adorable. Um. And you know it happens in
the animal Kingdom UM, although they did note UM this,
(16:31):
Franz de Wal the Pramatologists notes that it kind of
follows humans in a way and that um, a chimpanzee
might really um like put like hug a victim of
an attack, but it's got to be another chimp. Like
if they're like they will smash the brains out of
(16:51):
another kind of monkey maybe if it wanders into their
little village. That to me kind of underscores this whole,
this whole thing like when we when we look at EMPI,
the the first question that people have is like, why
don't we have more empathy or why don't we have
empathy for everybody? We're all humans, And it seems like
based on France to Walls studies and UM other studies
(17:11):
about the the evolution of in group and out group behavior,
like we we evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of years. I guess more than that. If you're
if you're also looking at the grade apes right to
see other groups that aren't like us as threatening, right,
it makes sense in an evolutionary speaking right, and it's
(17:33):
it's only in like the last uh ten eleven thousand
years that we settled down and started forming cities. But
even then there was in group and out group people
you didn't recognize were coming to kill you for your crops.
So you needed to fight those people. You didn't need
to empathize with them that, oh you're hungry, so you're
gonna take my life. I understand, right. That didn't That
didn't jibe with natural selection. But then you add jets
(17:56):
into the mix, and then TV and then the Internet,
and all of a sudden, we're exposed to more in
groups and out groups and are expected to get along
more civilly than ever before. But our evolution hasn't caught
up quite enough, right, So now we're faced at this
point where it's like, okay, we just need to figure
out how to empathize more, and this last vestige that's
holding back a completely civil global society will fade away.
(18:19):
In France, to all put it pretty well, he said,
this is the challenge of our time, globalization by a
tribal species, and that's where we're facing right now. And
right now it feels like, at least in the United States,
we're backsliding. Yeah, well, that's a good place to take
a break, I think. Yeah, all right, well, we're gonna
come back in just a minute and talk a little
bit about something called the racial empathy gap right after this.
(19:08):
All right, So I promised some talk about race, and
there's something called the racial empathy gap. Um studies of
kind of. I mean, if you walk around as a
living breath and human human being, you can probably tell
that that's something. But they have done studies on it,
and um, a lot of these studies are a little
hinky to me. But uh, in one they showed video
(19:30):
clips of a needle going into someone's skin, uh, notably
a white person's skin at first, and what they found was, um,
white people reacted more or with more empathy when the
needle went into white skin than when it went into
dark skin. Right or they had they showed more signs
(19:51):
of distress, like they started to sweat a little more sure,
their hearts started to beat a little faster. Yeah, that's
where I think mirror neurons might come into play. Um, right, Yeah,
that's what they're like, it's brain wiring. That's a huge
problem with reading about empathy in the popular media. They're
huge jumps from mirror neurons to full on effective empathy
(20:12):
with just the switch of a sentence and then or
the the stroke of a headline, like and so people
are not talking about the same thing. And I'm sure
there's plenty of empathy researchers out there that are just like, guys, guys,
this is not like you're making huge jumps at the conclusion.
Everybody's like, shut up, doesn't matter, We're selling clicks, you know.
(20:32):
But so, yes, that's so. It is surely setting off
mirror neurons. I don't understand how it's being translated into empathy.
Aside from I think a lot of the empathy studies
involves self reporting. So I think what they're doing is
they're saying, oh, well, uh subject nine, Um, their heart
(20:54):
really started beating, and look at this on this questionnaire
they filled out, they really consider themselves an empathetic person,
ipso facto, an empathetic person is responding very empathetically right
now to seeing this needle. Yeah, like, what if they
showed painted someone's skin green, Well, they have they've done
violet tended and actually tell you the truth. As far
(21:16):
as correlating with self reports, um, that that does tend
to be a pretty good um control the truth because
apparently all people respond to that one, Huh, isn't that interesting? Yeah?
It is, actually, Um, there is something going on there though.
I mean we're not like discounting that because they have
(21:36):
done studies that show that minorities, um, maybe don't get
pain medication like they should compared to white people. Uh.
And I don't know. It seems like a racial empathy
gap is a pretty decent explanation for that for sure,
or in the criminal justice system, which we've talked a
lot about, or maybe just in empathy altogether between races. Yet.
(22:01):
So if you're if you're a judge though, and you're
you're not following sentencing guidelines, you're just using your own
personal biases to hand out sentences and you have people's
lives and futures in your hands. Yeah, you're not following
the law, you're following your own bias. You're a piece
of garbage. Well, and you have nothing to do with
you being an empathetic person or not. What about that
judge who remember the guy the swimmer who raped the
(22:25):
girl by the dumpster. It was obvious that judge was
kind of like, oh, look at this kid, like, oh,
I don't want to ruin his future. I don't want
to ruin his future, like that could have been my son.
You know, it's kind of like me. It was clearly
bias and empathy going on because he was like him, right,
And there's no way if that would have been some
black kid that he wouldn't have ruled differently. I just
(22:47):
there's no no one can convince me that that that's
not the truth, right, And I think that there's like
there's another distinction that's eventually going to be hammered out
to Like I don't think he was empathizing with that
swimmer kid. If he was, I could be wrong, who knows,
but I think he was m at the very least
exhibiting a bias that yes, he let the kid off
(23:08):
off the hook, um because he looked like I think
he might have been sympathizing with him though. Sure, Yeah,
because he even flat outsaid like this could ruin his life. Yeah,
he was definitely sympathizing at least for sure. Boy uh
so um. Going back a bit to uh philosopher Adam
Smith way back in the day, I think was clearly
(23:29):
talking about mirror neurons, even though he didn't know that
was a thing at the time when he wrote that
um persons of delicate fibers who notice a beggar's sores
and ulcers are apt to feel an itching or an
easy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies.
I mean, that's absolutely mirror neurons firing off. And we've
been saying that a lot. If you don't know what
we're talking about, listen to, uh feel someone else's pain? Yeah,
(23:52):
can you feel someone else pain? It was from a
few years ago, but it was one of my favorites
we've ever done, just because it's so fascinating. It really is.
The brain is wired like that, and it's it's the
reason why. And this is the you know, the easiest
way to explain it. Like if you see, like in
a football game someone's leg gets broken and you literally
feel like pain shoot through your body, that's those are
(24:14):
mirror neurons. Did you see There is a Simpsons recently
where Kirk van Houghton is back in college and he
goes to like high five. He's like a lacrosse player
and he goes to high five the college mascot, which
is like a guy in a suit of armor, and
he breaks his wrist in like fifty places, and they
show they cut to the sideline and Joe thisman takes
his hat off and throws up into man. I remember
(24:37):
that Siseman thing. I think we talked about that in
that episode. Yeah, I still I don't think I still
have ever seen it. You don't need to. I think
I do, though, Like, how can I be walking and
talking through life and not haven't seen Joe thisman break
his leg. Well, it's one of those things when you
see a body get bent in a very unnatural like direction.
It's just yeah, your your brain is hard wired to
(24:58):
not accept that. I know it makes you faint because
your brain is like, I can't see anymore. Speaking of
the brain, chuck. Um, let's talk a little bit about
the brain, right, So, Um, one of the we've already
kind of touched on. One of the issues that I
think we both have with um empathy research is that
the does the designs of the studies are just so
(25:20):
shoddy it's mind boggling. But then the other part of it,
it's like, well, just leave it to neuroscience. But neuroscience
is still using the same old m R I s
that it was before. And again, all it's showing is
that's where more oxygen is in the part of the brain, right, then,
so we're gonna correlate that to that part of the
brain being lit up. So that means that this part
(25:40):
of the brain has to do with um, looking at
pictures of boops, this is the boob region, right, And
this is like the level that that neurology is is
that as far as behavioral studies goes, Right, you put
these two together, this is the state of the art
with with empathy research, but with the brain as far
as that goes. They have kind of isole aid a
few different parts. And again this is kind of like
(26:03):
we think that this has to do with this process
just because in trial after trial, the same circuit has
been followed or the same region has lit up when
we've applied this stimulus to different people. Um, so there's
a there's there's good evidence that this this does have
to do with say empathizing or whatever. But it's still
(26:24):
it's just a very it's a rudimentary understanding at this point,
I think, compared to say like fifty years from now, right,
So what what they've what they think they figured out
is that there's a part of the brain and I
love parts of the brain. The effective effective empathy part
of the brain is called the insular cortex. That's where
(26:45):
they think that the effective region are part of the
effective region lies the anterior insular cortex, and then the
cognitive empathy UH is thought to reside or originate in
the mid singulate cortex. And actually those came from a
Monesh University research UM paper that's that looked at the
(27:07):
concentration of gray matter, the density of gray matter, and
that's like the neurons, whereas white matters like the connecting material,
right um. And so they're saying people who have UM,
really effective empathy have denser insular cortexas cortices, and then
people who have really serious cognitive empathy have dense midsingulate cortices.
(27:35):
That's where it's at right now. Yeah, they did a
pretty interesting test um this uh Tanya Tania singer in
this dude name Mattheo Ricard. He's a Buddhist monk. And
I get the idea that they picked this guy because
he can very much control his brains and emotion, right,
(27:57):
So what they did was he's a Buddhist monk. They
did some f M R I brain scanning on this guy,
and they said, all right, sir, Mr ricard Um. He's like,
please call me met you met you. We would like
you to engage in some different types of compassion and
meditate and direct that meditation towards people who are suffering.
(28:19):
And then they hooked him up to the to the
brain scan magic machine, and they found that the meditative
states UM. It was actually surprising to them. It did
not activate parts of the brain that are usually activated
by non meditators when they think about pain. But he said,
you know it was. It was good for me. Basically,
it was a warm, positive state. And he said, all right, now,
(28:43):
put yourself in this what you know they would call
the emotional empathetic state UM. And I guess he's able
to turn that on like a switch, right, He's like
watch this, yeah exactly, and blood just comes out of
his nose. Yeah. In different parts of the brain lit up.
And he said, this empathetic sharing very quickly became intolerable
(29:04):
to me. I felt emotionally exhausted, very similar to being
burnt out. So that's one of the big arguments against
this emotional or effective empathy is that you you can't
take on everyone else's pain like this. Let's say you're
a social worker or you're a nurse or a doctor, like,
it's gonna drive you insane. Oh yeah, well you'll you'll
(29:27):
burn out. It's called empathy distress. Yeah. And when they've
talked to patients like hospital patients, they don't want that either.
They won't They want maybe someone who has some sympathy.
But patients are more likely to feel better. But I
was just imagining a doctor coming in and just falling
to pieces your your condition. Doctors aren't like coming yeah,
(29:49):
well you don't. Yeah, like you said, you don't want
a doctor like, No, They feel better if their doctor
is kind of clinical and reassuring and really seems like
they have it together, which makes Yeah, And you don't
want somebody who's like, frankly, I could care less whether
you live or die. I want somewhere in between those two,
which which is where oh my god, you're gonna die,
(30:10):
Like you don't want that out of your doctor. No,
But it seems like the middle of that, those two specs,
that those two ends of the spectrum is where cognitive
empathy comes in. We'll chuck, how about we take a
break here? Second break that sounds good and we'll come back,
we promise. All right, man, what do you want to
(30:54):
talk about Sasha Baron Cohen? I still have never actually
looked up whether that's his brother or cousin or what. Simon. Yeah,
psychologist Simon Baron Cohen wrote a book in two thousand
eleven called The Science of Evil. And he's he's way
down with empathy. Yeah, and I guess that they describe
(31:15):
him as a thoughtful defender is what Bloom describes him
as of empathy. Um. And he has a ranking system,
an empathy curve from zero to six and zero is
no empathy basically or sociopath and six is you, I guess,
the most hardcore of uh, emotional impaths. Yeah, you're in.
(31:39):
You call it a constant state of hyper arousal. And
he had this one woman that he used in his
little example named Hannah, who was a therapist. It's probably
a great job for her, but she's just one of
these people that, uh, by all accounts, is just wired
that way, like her friends and her family and her patients,
(32:00):
like she just really feels for them all, Like it's
not just her job, which is in in some ways
that it probably helps some people but in other ways,
it's really probably number one off pudding, and even if
everybody liked it, it's bad for her in the end.
Like you you're we're not We're not designed to carry
(32:22):
everybody's problems and issues with us all the time. Yeah,
And that's kind of the main point Bloom is making,
is that people like Hannah are headed for, headed towards burnout,
just headed for. And he also does make the point
that friends and family don't like they need a certain
amount of that empathy. But you don't want someone that's
always like in that state, Like you also want someone
(32:45):
that's like, all right, let's turn that frown upside down
and let's go out and take a walk, you know, Like,
you don't want someone that's always cries when you cry,
you know, right, you're just gonna be like wrong, I
thought I had it bad. But and you can extend
that also to um the way that people react in
some ways, to say like a mass tragedy or something
(33:07):
like that, like look look at new Town. Right the
Sandy Hook shooting, twenty small kids were killed. Six adults
were also killed at the elementary school. It was the
most horrific tragedy I think that ever took place in
the United States. It was basically the one that everyone
who believes in very strict gun control was waiting for.
(33:27):
Was new, knew was gonna happen sooner or later, and
thought this is gonna be the tipping point, and it
didn't happen right. What people reacted to with was outpourings
of donations, lots of stuffed animals. Apparently there were three
for every resident of the town were sent um yeah
and UM, lots of thoughts and prayers and if you
(33:51):
ever have seen um, you know Anthony Geslnick He yeah,
he has a Netflix special I think it's still on
called Thoughts and Prayers and watch that and he explains
to you just how valuable your thoughts and prayers are,
especially on Twitter. UM. But Paul Bloom points out is
like this actually proved to be This outpouring proved to
(34:12):
be an additional burden on this town which is already
suffering tremendously. But like they had to UM. There was
something like eight volunteers who were tasked with handling all
the donations UM, whether it was stuffed animals or money,
and they apparently had to get a warehouse to put
all the stuffed animals in and I think even some
of the public officials were like, please stop sending us stuff,
(34:34):
send stuff, but send it to other people. We've got
everything we need. Send it to other people. And everyone said, no,
shut up, this is about us, not you. And I
think that that's part of um effective empathy, that outpouring
of stuff that seems like a nice gesture that makes
you feel better but doesn't actually help in any real
substantial way. I think that kind of underlies or betrays
(34:58):
what um, what effective empathy is all about, and why
why we are moved to do something with effective empathy
because we're feeling something right then, and writing a checker
sending a teddy bear is a good way to to
feel better, for us to feel better, Whereas cognitive empathy
would be like, um, I'm going to see to it
(35:21):
that every senator who blocked the gun control bill following
New Town is voted right out of office. That would
be cognitive empathy. You're empathizing with the parents, you're empathizing
with future kids who haven't been killed yet, and you're
gonna do what you can to make sure it doesn't happen.
Rather than writing a check. UM, or sending a teddy bear.
(35:42):
Those two me are the real distinctions between cognitive and
effective empathy as far as that ultimate goal is concerned,
which is again compassion, but compassion is doing what you
can to improve the outcome for the greater good. Yeah,
that's interesting and I Another thing that UM kind of
(36:04):
jumped out to me was these psychologists Vicky Helgesen and
Heidi Fritz. They were researching why women are more likely
I think twice as likely as men to get depressed
and experienced depression. And they thought, you know, they said,
you know what, I think it's because women are more
empathetic and and you know, emotionally empathetic. And they take
(36:24):
this on and uh, they said that there's a propensity
for what they called unmitigated communion, which is in a a quote,
an excessive concern with others and placing others needs before
one's own end quote. And they you know, gave people
and this is one of those like a nine item questionnaire.
How much can you really learn? Um? But uh, some
of the statements agree to disagree with. We're like, for
(36:45):
me to be happy, I need others to be happy.
I can't say no when someone asked for help often
worry about others problems and kind of across the board,
women score higher than men do on this and UM,
you know, I think a lot of that probably has
to do with with evolution to with, you know, women
having to care for their babies right out of the gate.
(37:06):
Which took took his wife? You know, although it took
took we know, never took a wife. Um took to
cut around. He got around. But the women that took
took would would knock up. They would immediately be in
charge of those babies. And that's what um, that primatologist
talked about two was. You know, this is kind of
straight up evolution. Our natural selection is right out of
(37:29):
the gate, we have this empathy because we have to
care for young and then um, I think we already
mentioned too, and then that definitely evolves into protect the tribe,
right because we're better off if the people around us
are healthy and happy and ready to ward off attacks. Um.
(37:49):
But the the idea that women are more prone to
experience a effective empathy or just even empathy in general,
it's actually got a has a biological basis. To tell
you the truth to chuck um in in adolescence or puberty.
Apparently girls have They score high for effective empathy throughout
(38:11):
their entire adolescence, where between about ages thirteen and sixteen,
boys effective empathy declined. They take a little vacation, Yeah,
and they say, oh, oh you feel bad, You're about
to feel worse because I'm gonna give you a swirly. Yeah.
I don't know what it srely is, but it's a
it's where you stick someone's head in the toilet and
flush swirl. Never heard of that. Fortunately, I had only
(38:36):
heard of it, never witnessed it or had it done
to me. We did nuggies and uh was it wedgies
when you did the underwear. Yeah. Yeah, they're terrible. They
are terrible, and that's bullying behavior. And there are some
theories about bullies too that they actually use empathy to
manipulate people, like they they'll use it again stem Well, yeah,
(39:03):
they they they used cognitive empathy to calculate the best
most effective way to hurt somebody, and then um, they
turn off any potential like effective empathy. Um, when they're
actually carrying out their active bullying. Yeah. And with the
teenagers too, they they say that if you develop effective
(39:25):
and cognitive empathy, Um, that you're going to be happier,
you're gonna argue less with your parents, you're gonna have
more healthy relationships, which you know, it kind of all
makes sense sure, And they also were saying too, and
we will will get into how to increase your own
empathy if you think that kind of thing is a
good idea. Um, But that babies learn empathy out of
(39:48):
the out of the gate by being empathized with, by
being treated warmly by their parents and other adults, being
responded to in a warm manner, that that actually is
the beginning of empathy. And it's like you said, you
can see a little kid in a preschool go over
in comfort or console another little kid, um who's in distress. Boy,
that's why I when I hear about neglect like baby
(40:11):
and infant neglect is just man, that's like the most
heartbreaking thing you can imagine. It's like a baby just
like left in a room to cry and cry and
cry forever. Plus Also, when we were talking about the
breastfeeding episode, that body to body contact of being held
shows or has been shown to affect their development if
(40:32):
they don't have it enough. It's just all sorts of
terrible things that happen to you when you're neglected as
a baby. Yeah, it's terrible, So Chuck, there are plenty
of people who say, well, we need to empathize more.
So just get out there and learn how to empathize.
And there's plenty of people out there who will teach
you techniques on empathizing with people more, and they may
be worth trying, Like I found them very helpful in
(40:52):
a lot of cases, especially on interpersonal communication. Right. But
as far as like changing the world down a massive
scale for for the better, is it a good idea
to go out and just empathize, empathize, empathize, because there's
a big question mark with that. Who exactly are you
supposed to empathize with? Like with just about every problem,
(41:13):
there's a group that's being helped by something and a
group that's being har harmed by something, especially when it
comes to public policy, right, So which group you're gonna
empathize with? If you empathize with the current victims and
you change public policy to help them, well, then you're
leaving the people who are currently benefiting out in the cold. Right,
So there's a big question of who you should empathize
(41:33):
with at any given point in time, which makes this
whole behavioral science nudge politics BS that is ultimately behind
this whole push to empathize more um that that's not
taking that into consideration. And then there's this kind of
a second facet to that, which is studies have found
(41:53):
that when you increase empathy in people, um, they tend
to pathize more with their own group, but it also
in kind increases hostility in those people towards out groups.
You know what I'm saying, Like, they see their friend
who's being hurt is more of a victim and how
could you do this to them? And now I want
(42:15):
to get you back because one of the sour sides
of empathy is that it frequently comes with a taste
for retribution too, I think is how Paul Bloom put it,
the dark side of empathy. So just yeah, there is
a dark side. There's a dark side to everything in there. Yeah,
except you, I'm all dark side, You're all light kind.
(42:41):
So we'll finish up here with a bit on people
with autism, because there's this stereotype, um that if you
everyone's probably heard it that you know what, people with
autism lack empathy and they don't understand emotions. And if
you know anybody who uh either has autism or is
(43:02):
a parent of a child with autism, they will dispel
that myth pretty straight up just from their own lives. Um.
But these people did some studying and some research because
they were like, that's not good enough for me, and
it's not good enough to just say that, Like, you know,
every autism is different for everyone, So some people have
(43:23):
empathy or people with autism show empathy, so but everyone's different,
So who cares about investigating that? Yeah? So I really
love the approach they took here. They were kind of
really wanted to keep digging, which I really respected. So, uh,
they said, you know what, I think it might be
going on here. There's this other um condition called alexathemia.
(43:43):
And alexathemia means you have a difficult time understanding your
own emotions. So you might, you know, you might have
a feeling that you're experiencing an emotion, but you just
don't know what it is. And about ten percent of
people have it in the regular population. About fifty people
with autism have alexithemia. But they're not the same thing. No,
(44:06):
And these guys actually found that um, people with autism
who do not have alexithemia tend to display empathy. Yeah,
and even you know, lots of empathy. Lots of empathy. Yeah, empathy.
They got binders full of empathy, finders full of empathy that.
Oh yeah, we remember when that was the most controversial
(44:28):
thing going in politics. Oh man, finders full of empathy.
Uh yeah, like they had they scored you know, very
strong when it came to measuring empathy. Uh. And what
they did was they you know, that makes sense. The
way they did it's very I really like this study.
They had four groups, uh, individuals with autism and alexithemia, Uh,
(44:49):
individuals with autism without it, individuals with alexithemia but not autism,
and then people that didn't have either one. And it
basically seems to kind of prove that, Yeah, it's just
not true that people with autism don't have empathy. It's
really alexithemia is what's going on, right, Which is I
(45:10):
think a novel finding or a novel hypothesis. I don't
think this is part of a larger field. I think
these these guys came up with that. Yeah, and did
you see that other study the UM from Goldsmith's University
of London about the facial expressions. Yeah. I thought that
was pretty interesting too. Yeah, that they they investigated that. Um,
(45:31):
if you expose people with autism to the sounds of
people's voices and ask them to rate what emotion that
person is experiencing, they're far better at um calling that
correctly than faces. And apparently it's because people with autism
tend to spend much less time studying faces, not because
they can't empathize. They just aren't using cues that um
(45:54):
people without autism use to um conclude what emotions people
are experience dancing. Yeah, really interesting stuff. And I don't
know why this didn't get more play because it still
seems like people are kind of banging that drum that,
you know, people with autism that aren't empathetic. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know why either. It just makes sense that, yeah, um,
(46:17):
we need to do an entire episode on autism. Yeah,
maybe alexophemia. I've never heard of that. We also need
to do one on psychopaths too, which is another group
that tends to be pointed to is kind of incorrectly
as far as empathy goes, Where if you're lacking empathy,
you're a psychopath. What actually turns out that if you
have what's called a shallow affect, meaning like you're across
(46:38):
the board emotionally, you're pretty stunted and um, shallow or superficial,
that's what really qualifies you as a psychopath, not just
missing empathy. UM. But yet again it's another popular misconception
that's being allowed to persist. I'm just irritated, Chuck. I've
got a great quote though, from Paul Bloom and I
(46:58):
also want to say that I think, um, that empathy
also the different kinds of empathy also get divided among
the genders as well. And we even said, we've even
talked about that study that concluded that women tend to
suffer from depression because they're more empathetic. I think that
maybe that's the case, and there is a biological basis
for it in adolescence. But one thing that seems to
(47:21):
persist everywhere is that, um, different types of empathy or
different techniques for empathy to produce empathy can be learned,
they can be taught. And I think if you just say, like, well,
wait a minute, I really want to solve this problem,
I'm not going to fly off the handle or I'm
not gonna lose my marbles. I'm gonna like really put
some thought into it, and I can still be compassionate,
(47:41):
but I don't have to completely experience someone else's pain.
I don't think that that's a biological imperative one way
or another. I think if you decide to make a
choice or a change in the way you approach situations,
that has nothing to do with gender. So I just
wanted to point that out. Yeah, and as far as
teaching empathy, Like, there's been a little bit of poopo
ing of emotional empathy, but I think it's I think
(48:03):
it's definitely like a pretty good thing to do as
a parent to try and teach your child to like, Hey,
you know, how would you feel if someone was doing
this to you? Yeah, And that's how they learn Yeah, exactly.
You don't learn it on your own. I think it
has to be imparted by good parents, agreed, and um. Again,
(48:23):
the the goal, and this is a Paul Bloom quote,
The goal isn't to to love every single person like
you love the people closest to you, but to value
other people just for the very fact that they're human.
Beings right, that's the goal that everybody's looking for with
with empathy, and he says, quote, our best hope for
the future is not to get people to think of
(48:45):
all humanity as family. That's impossible. It lies instead in
an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don't
empathize with distance strangers, their lives have the same value
as the lives of those we love. That's the key. Interesting. Yeah,
good stuff, good stuff. We should subtitle this one Empathy
(49:06):
A Lucy Goosey episode, also known as what Paul Bloom says.
Thank you Paul Bloom. Yeah, big big ups to Paul Bloom. Uh.
And since I said big ups to Paul Bloom, that
means it's time for a listener mail chuck. Um, I'm
gonna call this hook worms nice um, Hello from the
(49:31):
Sunny South, United States. Southerners aren't lazy and dumb, they
just had hookworm. Great title. By the way, Josh brought
back a childhood memory, and I finally had to write end. Guys.
I grew up in Florida, so we spent most of
the summer with our shoes off. Uh. And I remember
my mother distinctly reminding me to wear shoes. Uh, so
I wouldn't get the ground ditch. It's never happened. I
(49:53):
called my mom, who is now eighty eight years old,
to verify a few facts and about when I was
a little girl, I believe around five to seven or
eight years before school started, my mother would give me
a worm treatment on my feet. I explained to her
what I had learned during the podcast about hookworms and
how they affected the body. When I mentioned how they
cause severe anemia and caused the body to be more
(50:14):
susceptible to illness, she remembered a story about my father's cousin.
Apparently the cousin was so and became so incredibly ill
she was very close to dying. They took her to
the hospital and found out she was severely anemic, and
before they began any other diagnostics, they decided to test
her for hookworm and bingo. As my mother said, she
was full of them. She had a high worm burden.
(50:35):
She did uh. Mom said it took three treatments to
get rid of the worms. The story was she was
so infested they literally came out of her mouth when
she was being treated. Oh my god, Wow, that is
the best story I've heard in a while, and she
put in parentheses. I know, right, because I think she
anticipated that reaction. That's why you don't want to be
(50:57):
uh six point oh um effective empathetic person. Yeah, that's right. Uh.
This cousin is actually still alive and in her early nineties,
so uh, this would have been in the nineties. I
hope she doesn't listen to this show. Hookworm and Fancy
Free in Florida. As from Terry Brunson of Panama City. Nice.
(51:18):
Thanks a lot, Terry. That was a great email. It
had everything had. It was a roller coaster ride. There
was a cousin who had worms coming out of her mouth. Laughed,
I cried. There was a mom, an old cousin. I'd
like to know what the worm treatment consisted of. I'll
bet there was dead cat and they're somewhere. Oh my god. Uh.
(51:39):
If you want to tell us about your family's weird remedies,
we want to know the ingredients and you can tweet
them to us at s Y s K podcast, or
you can hang out with us on Facebook at facebook
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know or Facebook dot
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(52:01):
Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Good Saturday to you.
Chuck Bryant here podcaster co host Stuff you Should Know
to introduce the Saturday Selects episode My pick this week
everybody is empathy. We all need a little empathy in
our lives. And I remember this being a pretty good episode.
This is from April six. Listen close and take heed
(00:24):
how empathy works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Lena my Shoulder
(00:47):
Bryant and Jerry. How about a hug rolland no, actually,
I'm sorry, Jerry's here in spirit. Our guest producer today
is Noel my Beard. He'll is all Brown. Yes, everybody
knows it's Noel Brown. Are you using your empathy voice? Yeah?
Is it working? Ein ful? In? Nobody? Really, it's the
(01:11):
bad eyes. Let's say I cut you for ten dollars.
Oh how are you, sir? I'm feeling um empathetic good.
I'm doing good. I have some very strong opinions on empathy,
and not just empathy, but empathy research in particulars. I'm
sure you're not at all surprised to hear. I'm not
(01:33):
at all surprised to hear. Did you come to the
same or similar conclusions as I did? I don't know
yet because we don't talk about this stuff beforehand. That's true,
that's how we that's the magic going blind. Did you
know that there's like an Atlanta magic thing? Now, what
do you mean, like a society something something along? I
(01:54):
just saw a sign for it, an old fourth ward.
But there's like a seems to be a legitimate magician.
What's that castle in l A, Oh, the Magic Castle.
It's not that, but it's probably something that the people
who do the Atlanta thing or I'm sure aware of
the Magic Castle. Probably And then you did a double
take at the sign and it disappeared in a poop
of smart It would be great. I went to the
(02:18):
Magic Castle once, Lucky. Yeah, it's awesome. I think we
had this conversation because I asked you if you've seen
that documentary about the kids competition at the Magic Castle. Yeah,
I have not, but um, it's a really good choke. Yeah,
if if you can highly recommend it, if you can
get in, you gotta know somebody. You gotta know Ben
Stiller oh really. Now, there was a movie that he
(02:41):
was in that took place in the Magic Castle and
he was like the bad guy. I think I don't
remember what it was. Maybe it was that documentary. Well,
let's talk empathy, chuck. Alrighty wait, hold on, I have
an intro. I have an intro. Okay, are you familiar
with Frank Rich, the left leaning well lefty is heck essayist?
(03:01):
I don't think so. He Uh, he's good. He's about
his He's about as good an essayist as you'll find
on the left. Um, he's a consultant on Veep. He
just he's hilarious and he knows his stuff right. He
usually writes for Harper's, but he's also got a regular
gig in New York Magazine and in New York Magazine.
Recently he published a column I think this week, um,
(03:24):
well this week as of when we're recording this, and
I think it was called like no Sympathy for the
Hillbilly or something like that, and it was basically, this
is really astounding coming from him, but it was basically
him saying, you know what, Um, I know that on
the left people tend to be bleeding heart liberals and
(03:44):
want to empathize with everybody and feel everyone else's pain
and understand where people are coming from. But I believe
that if you voted for Trump and you're angry, or
if I believe if you're angry at the people who
voted for Trump, are angry that Trump is president in it,
you should be angry at the people who voted him
into into office as well. And he basically is beating
(04:06):
a drum, which I also started to see in other
places as well, where it's like, no, you don't have
to understand people who voted for Trump, you don't have
to love your enemy. Let's just go to war with
these people, and it's it's it's legitimate. He is totally
serious too, and it amounts to basically a call to
go to the dark side, to resist everything that you know,
(04:27):
the left has traditionally prided itself on and just go
full bore like culture war against the right, and um,
it just seems like a really bad idea to me.
But one of the things that stuck out to me
about it the most was that it was so contrary
to the um ethos, the prevailing thought of the time,
(04:51):
or at least what made up the Obama administration, which
was we need to be more empathetic, we need to
understand people's plight more. And even after Hillary lost people
into the big post mortems was Hillary didn't connect with
blue collar workers who were out of work. She was
totally out of touch with that, she couldn't empathize with them. Well,
I think further pours mortem has been like Hillary could
(05:11):
empathize with those people all day, but they hated her
and they were never going to vote for And now
Frank Rich is saying, so hate them back is the thing. Again.
I disagree with that, but it really points out how
what a fragile turning point we're at right now this
path in history on America. Are we gonna stay and
just keep trying to be empathetic or we again just
(05:32):
gonna go full board to the dark side and and
just everybody's gonna hate everybody who's just who's not like them.
Quite an intro, thank you for a coastal elite. Oh
I'm not a coastal elite. I'm just kidding. I just
like that phrase. I hope I'm not. Man. I really
don't think I am, and I hope people don't think
(05:53):
I am. I I do stick my pinkie in the
air when I take SIPs of water, and that water
has been st through a m Franciscan monks mouth. First,
I don't think the only water I'll drink. I don't
think you can be a coastal elite if you have
your roots in Toledo, right, exactly. And I don't forget
(06:13):
where I'm from, man, and my family, you know, has
long roots in Tennessee and Mississippi. If you know this
by reading my Wikipedia page, right, does it say that
you're part choctaw On there yet? I'm sure it will soon,
all right. So we're talking empathy here. Um. A lot
of this sounded familiar, so much so that I like
quadruple checked that we had not done this. Um. And
(06:36):
I think we've just talked about it a lot, and
namely and uh in our Mirror Neurons episode. Yeah, um,
and I thought about that one a lot when I
was researching this. Well. I think it's definitely a component
of empathy, but it's not to be confused with empathy.
It's like part of it, I think, is the impression
I have agreed. So, um, empathy, if you look at
(06:57):
our that's a great article. Uh, they do define it. Um,
you know, everyone kind of knows what it is. But
just to be clear, it's not sympathy. It's it's if
you can feel and share someone else's emotions. Is empathy,
which is different than sympathy, and that uh, you're don't
(07:17):
you're not feeling it, but you do care about it,
right right, It's like, um, you can understand why someone
would be feeling like they're feeling. Is intellectual, Yeah, Like
sympathies from the brain and empathy is from say, the heart. Yeah,
and a lot of these words. When we get into
the definitions of empathy and versus compassion, it gets a
little uh, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like people
(07:41):
are kind of splitting hairs with that. To me, chuck
is a huge red flag that the field is not
nearly as established as people like to think. Like, if
there's still confusion on basic terms like empathy and sympathy
and they're used interchangeably, it just means that no one
is doing the right kind of hardcore research. You're publishing
(08:03):
the right kind of hardcore papers that say this is
what it is, or this is what it not, this
is what it isn't. Almost just said, this is what
it not is, this is what it ain't no coastal elite.
But there was an original German word um einfulung, which
means feeling into And that's where empathy comes from. And
if you talk to an expert or a researcher um
(08:27):
these days, they're gonna talk about a couple of types
of empathy, UM effective or maybe emotional empathy and cognitive
empathy and UM. The distinction is, as it turns out,
is pretty important and to me, well, to me, this
is where a little bit of the splitting hairs comes
(08:47):
in because as far as talking about um effective empathy
versus compassion, like is it the same thing or I'm sorry,
cognitive empathy would be more like compassion because you're not
really taking on someone else's pain. So compassion, I think,
is even like a third word. This is so this
is what I came up with. You've got cognitive empathy,
(09:10):
which is sympathy, right you can understand why someone would
be feeling a certain way. Then you've got effective empathy
one d it okay, which is like you're really putting
yourself in that person shoes and you're feeling how they're feeling.
Right then. But then compassion, it seems to me, is
the end goal of this. That's where you actually moved
(09:32):
to act. That's where you do something about it. It's
where you put your hand on someone's shoulder and say
it's gonna be all right, or you know, here's a
check for five dollars, um, get some groceries with it.
Who knows what you're gonna do. But I think to me,
compassion is the act, like the action, the end goal
of empathy, whether it's cognitive or um or effective. That's
(09:57):
that's what I think. And you know what, this fields
are so unestablished that I can just say that stuff. Yeah,
and it's probably right. Let's just say that that's true.
No one can really come along and say definitively that
you're not right right. Uh, So you know, to put
given you an example of what that might mean. Effective
or emotional empathy. Um, if someone if you have a
friend or family member going through a very hard time, uh,
(10:20):
and they're distraught, and then you are also distraught just
like they are, then that is definitely effective empathy. Whereas
you're not just like, oh man, you know your your
uncle passed away. I'm really sorry to hear that, and
I feel terribly for you. But if if you were,
you know, actively taking that on to the point where
(10:41):
you're crying too, and you didn't know the uncle, because
that would be the differentiation. Right, It's like you don't
have a personal stake in it, but you're still taking
it on as if it is your own. Yes, and
then depending on your view of things, And we'll talk
a lot about this. There's this really great see collegiest
named Paul Bloom who has basically dedicated a lot of
(11:03):
his life to shooting down ideas of how great empathy is. Yeah,
I thought he was. I thought he made a lot
of good points and something quite agree with either. But
he's great. He's really good at and poking holes in
the concept of empathy. But he points out that, um that,
I guess it's probably good if somebody's something, someone's in
a great mood and you're empathetic and sharing in that
(11:25):
great mood and amplifying it. But on the flip side
of the coin, if somebody is in a horrifically tragically
sad mood and you're sitting there amplifying that by joining
in part and parcel with it, then you're you're doing
a disservice, right, So in some in some ways, UM, well,
I'll just say Paul Bloom's whole basic, his whole thesis,
(11:49):
and I subscribe to it as well, is that cognitive
is far and away the superior of the two types
of empathy as far as the ultimate goal, which again
to me is compassion. Yes, you want to just pepper
in some of his stuff as we go. Does that
make sense? Because here's a great spot too. Uh. And
this is one of the studies I imagine. I don't
(12:10):
know if you had a problem with it, but a
problem with a lot of these studies. Um. But there
was a study, um, at least one where psychologists said, um,
how much money will you donate to develop a drug
that would save one child's life? Um? And then another
group was asked, how much would you donate to develop
a drug that would save eight kids? And it was
(12:31):
about the same answer. UM. Where things changed was when
they asked a third group about the one child. But
they showed a picture of the kid and like you know,
I said, this is this little Joey. He's fourteen years old,
and this is his sad little face. And then donations
really shot up. And this is where um, what was
his name, Paul Bloom, Paul Bloom, a psychologist. Yeah, this
(12:52):
is where Paul Bloom says that, um, this emotional empathy
is for the birds because A it's it's um, it's narrow,
and B it's very like people tend to want to
help people that are like them. So it's yeah, I
mean biases that the right word super biased. Yeah, And
(13:13):
and it makes no sense. Not only does it not
scale upward as the number of people affect by, say,
like a tragedy increase, it actually goes the other way,
where the more people that are affected by something, the
less empathetic a person tends to be. Whereas if say
it's one person and you know that person's name, and
you see that person's picture on the news, and yeah,
(13:34):
they look like you or your neighbor, your daughter, You're
gonna empathize a lot. But at the same time, there
could be you know, the same thing could be happening
to other people and if you'll just vote a certain way,
you can alleviate their suffering. You wouldn't lift a finger
to do it, especially if it meant slightly higher taxes
for you. So in that sense. Empathy makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah.
(13:56):
I mean he even quoted Mother Teresa and his UH
in the essay, which is UM quote, if I look
at the mass, I will never act. If I look
at the one, I will So he's going with the
heavy hitters there, you know, when you bring Mother Teresa
in there to kind of make a point. Yeah, but
you know he makes a good point. Um. Oh yeah,
(14:17):
Like and and that study does. I didn't have a
big problem with that study because it does kind of
prove that out right. That was Telea Coca and uh
Alana Ritov, their psychologists. And then Ritov and another UM
co author conducted another study where UM that kind of
pointed out one of the problems with empathy, which was
they said, okay, UM, two different groups of people heard
(14:40):
this that UM that a vaccine maker cost a child
her life, kill the child because of the vaccine. Now, UM,
should the vaccine maker be fined? And then one group
was told that the fine would probably make the vaccine
maker UM follow guidelines even more strictly and would probably
(15:01):
prevent accidents, and then the other further accidents, and then
the UM the other group was told that this fine
would probably make the vaccine maker get out of the
business and more people would die because they couldn't get
the vaccine. And both groups said that yes, the vaccine
maker should be punished with um the highest fine possible
(15:24):
with extreme prejudice. Right. So the upshot of all of
this is that especially with UM effective empathy as we
understand it, we we it doesn't It doesn't follow any
kind of rational guidelines, and rather the basis of rationality
being that two is more important than one, and empathy
just doesn't go in that direction. Yeah. But um, Interestingly, UM,
(15:49):
while you can train yourself to be more empathetic, it
definitely to me feels like something that you're sort of
born with to a certain degree, or maybe in the
formative years you might gain UM. But uh. In in
blooms article, he talks about babies and as as soon
as a baby can get up and start getting around,
(16:09):
they're gonna try and comfort. Like if you go into
a preschool and there's another baby crying, you will probably
see another little baby walking over there and patting the
little baby and stroking the baby. There's nothing more adorable
than pretty adorable. Um. And you know it happens in
the animal Kingdom UM, although they did note UM this,
(16:31):
Franz de Wal the Pramatologists notes that it kind of
follows humans in a way and that um, a chimpanzee
might really um like put like hug a victim of
an attack, but it's got to be another chimp. Like
if they're like they will smash the brains out of
(16:51):
another kind of monkey maybe if it wanders into their
little village. That to me kind of underscores this whole,
this whole thing like when we when we look at EMPI,
the the first question that people have is like, why
don't we have more empathy or why don't we have
empathy for everybody? We're all humans, And it seems like
based on France to Walls studies and UM other studies
(17:11):
about the the evolution of in group and out group behavior,
like we we evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of years. I guess more than that. If you're
if you're also looking at the grade apes right to
see other groups that aren't like us as threatening, right,
it makes sense in an evolutionary speaking right, and it's
(17:33):
it's only in like the last uh ten eleven thousand
years that we settled down and started forming cities. But
even then there was in group and out group people
you didn't recognize were coming to kill you for your crops.
So you needed to fight those people. You didn't need
to empathize with them that, oh you're hungry, so you're
gonna take my life. I understand, right. That didn't That
didn't jibe with natural selection. But then you add jets
(17:56):
into the mix, and then TV and then the Internet,
and all of a sudden, we're exposed to more in
groups and out groups and are expected to get along
more civilly than ever before. But our evolution hasn't caught
up quite enough, right, So now we're faced at this
point where it's like, okay, we just need to figure
out how to empathize more, and this last vestige that's
holding back a completely civil global society will fade away.
(18:19):
In France, to all put it pretty well, he said,
this is the challenge of our time, globalization by a
tribal species, and that's where we're facing right now. And
right now it feels like, at least in the United States,
we're backsliding. Yeah, well, that's a good place to take
a break, I think. Yeah, all right, well, we're gonna
come back in just a minute and talk a little
bit about something called the racial empathy gap right after this.
(19:08):
All right, So I promised some talk about race, and
there's something called the racial empathy gap. Um studies of
kind of. I mean, if you walk around as a
living breath and human human being, you can probably tell
that that's something. But they have done studies on it,
and um, a lot of these studies are a little
hinky to me. But uh, in one they showed video
(19:30):
clips of a needle going into someone's skin, uh, notably
a white person's skin at first, and what they found was, um,
white people reacted more or with more empathy when the
needle went into white skin than when it went into
dark skin. Right or they had they showed more signs
(19:51):
of distress, like they started to sweat a little more sure,
their hearts started to beat a little faster. Yeah, that's
where I think mirror neurons might come into play. Um, right, Yeah,
that's what they're like, it's brain wiring. That's a huge
problem with reading about empathy in the popular media. They're
huge jumps from mirror neurons to full on effective empathy
(20:12):
with just the switch of a sentence and then or
the the stroke of a headline, like and so people
are not talking about the same thing. And I'm sure
there's plenty of empathy researchers out there that are just like, guys, guys,
this is not like you're making huge jumps at the conclusion.
Everybody's like, shut up, doesn't matter, We're selling clicks, you know.
(20:32):
But so, yes, that's so. It is surely setting off
mirror neurons. I don't understand how it's being translated into empathy.
Aside from I think a lot of the empathy studies
involves self reporting. So I think what they're doing is
they're saying, oh, well, uh subject nine, Um, their heart
(20:54):
really started beating, and look at this on this questionnaire
they filled out, they really consider themselves an empathetic person,
ipso facto, an empathetic person is responding very empathetically right
now to seeing this needle. Yeah, like, what if they
showed painted someone's skin green, Well, they have they've done
violet tended and actually tell you the truth. As far
(21:16):
as correlating with self reports, um, that that does tend
to be a pretty good um control the truth because
apparently all people respond to that one, Huh, isn't that interesting? Yeah?
It is, actually, Um, there is something going on there though.
I mean we're not like discounting that because they have
(21:36):
done studies that show that minorities, um, maybe don't get
pain medication like they should compared to white people. Uh.
And I don't know. It seems like a racial empathy
gap is a pretty decent explanation for that for sure,
or in the criminal justice system, which we've talked a
lot about, or maybe just in empathy altogether between races. Yet.
(22:01):
So if you're if you're a judge though, and you're
you're not following sentencing guidelines, you're just using your own
personal biases to hand out sentences and you have people's
lives and futures in your hands. Yeah, you're not following
the law, you're following your own bias. You're a piece
of garbage. Well, and you have nothing to do with
you being an empathetic person or not. What about that
judge who remember the guy the swimmer who raped the
(22:25):
girl by the dumpster. It was obvious that judge was
kind of like, oh, look at this kid, like, oh,
I don't want to ruin his future. I don't want
to ruin his future, like that could have been my son.
You know, it's kind of like me. It was clearly
bias and empathy going on because he was like him, right,
And there's no way if that would have been some
black kid that he wouldn't have ruled differently. I just
(22:47):
there's no no one can convince me that that that's
not the truth, right, And I think that there's like
there's another distinction that's eventually going to be hammered out
to Like I don't think he was empathizing with that
swimmer kid. If he was, I could be wrong, who knows,
but I think he was m at the very least
exhibiting a bias that yes, he let the kid off
(23:08):
off the hook, um because he looked like I think
he might have been sympathizing with him though. Sure, Yeah,
because he even flat outsaid like this could ruin his life. Yeah,
he was definitely sympathizing at least for sure. Boy uh
so um. Going back a bit to uh philosopher Adam
Smith way back in the day, I think was clearly
(23:29):
talking about mirror neurons, even though he didn't know that
was a thing at the time when he wrote that
um persons of delicate fibers who notice a beggar's sores
and ulcers are apt to feel an itching or an
easy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies.
I mean, that's absolutely mirror neurons firing off. And we've
been saying that a lot. If you don't know what
we're talking about, listen to, uh feel someone else's pain? Yeah,
(23:52):
can you feel someone else pain? It was from a
few years ago, but it was one of my favorites
we've ever done, just because it's so fascinating. It really is.
The brain is wired like that, and it's it's the
reason why. And this is the you know, the easiest
way to explain it. Like if you see, like in
a football game someone's leg gets broken and you literally
feel like pain shoot through your body, that's those are
(24:14):
mirror neurons. Did you see There is a Simpsons recently
where Kirk van Houghton is back in college and he
goes to like high five. He's like a lacrosse player
and he goes to high five the college mascot, which
is like a guy in a suit of armor, and
he breaks his wrist in like fifty places, and they
show they cut to the sideline and Joe thisman takes
his hat off and throws up into man. I remember
(24:37):
that Siseman thing. I think we talked about that in
that episode. Yeah, I still I don't think I still
have ever seen it. You don't need to. I think
I do, though, Like, how can I be walking and
talking through life and not haven't seen Joe thisman break
his leg. Well, it's one of those things when you
see a body get bent in a very unnatural like direction.
It's just yeah, your your brain is hard wired to
(24:58):
not accept that. I know it makes you faint because
your brain is like, I can't see anymore. Speaking of
the brain, chuck. Um, let's talk a little bit about
the brain, right, So, Um, one of the we've already
kind of touched on. One of the issues that I
think we both have with um empathy research is that
the does the designs of the studies are just so
(25:20):
shoddy it's mind boggling. But then the other part of it,
it's like, well, just leave it to neuroscience. But neuroscience
is still using the same old m R I s
that it was before. And again, all it's showing is
that's where more oxygen is in the part of the brain, right, then,
so we're gonna correlate that to that part of the
brain being lit up. So that means that this part
(25:40):
of the brain has to do with um, looking at
pictures of boops, this is the boob region, right, And
this is like the level that that neurology is is
that as far as behavioral studies goes, Right, you put
these two together, this is the state of the art
with with empathy research, but with the brain as far
as that goes. They have kind of isole aid a
few different parts. And again this is kind of like
(26:03):
we think that this has to do with this process
just because in trial after trial, the same circuit has
been followed or the same region has lit up when
we've applied this stimulus to different people. Um, so there's
a there's there's good evidence that this this does have
to do with say empathizing or whatever. But it's still
(26:24):
it's just a very it's a rudimentary understanding at this point,
I think, compared to say like fifty years from now, right,
So what what they've what they think they figured out
is that there's a part of the brain and I
love parts of the brain. The effective effective empathy part
of the brain is called the insular cortex. That's where
(26:45):
they think that the effective region are part of the
effective region lies the anterior insular cortex, and then the
cognitive empathy UH is thought to reside or originate in
the mid singulate cortex. And actually those came from a
Monesh University research UM paper that's that looked at the
(27:07):
concentration of gray matter, the density of gray matter, and
that's like the neurons, whereas white matters like the connecting material,
right um. And so they're saying people who have UM,
really effective empathy have denser insular cortexas cortices, and then
people who have really serious cognitive empathy have dense midsingulate cortices.
(27:35):
That's where it's at right now. Yeah, they did a
pretty interesting test um this uh Tanya Tania singer in
this dude name Mattheo Ricard. He's a Buddhist monk. And
I get the idea that they picked this guy because
he can very much control his brains and emotion, right,
(27:57):
So what they did was he's a Buddhist monk. They
did some f M R I brain scanning on this guy,
and they said, all right, sir, Mr ricard Um. He's like,
please call me met you met you. We would like
you to engage in some different types of compassion and
meditate and direct that meditation towards people who are suffering.
(28:19):
And then they hooked him up to the to the
brain scan magic machine, and they found that the meditative
states UM. It was actually surprising to them. It did
not activate parts of the brain that are usually activated
by non meditators when they think about pain. But he said,
you know it was. It was good for me. Basically,
it was a warm, positive state. And he said, all right, now,
(28:43):
put yourself in this what you know they would call
the emotional empathetic state UM. And I guess he's able
to turn that on like a switch, right, He's like
watch this, yeah exactly, and blood just comes out of
his nose. Yeah. In different parts of the brain lit up.
And he said, this empathetic sharing very quickly became intolerable
(29:04):
to me. I felt emotionally exhausted, very similar to being
burnt out. So that's one of the big arguments against
this emotional or effective empathy is that you you can't
take on everyone else's pain like this. Let's say you're
a social worker or you're a nurse or a doctor, like,
it's gonna drive you insane. Oh yeah, well you'll you'll
(29:27):
burn out. It's called empathy distress. Yeah. And when they've
talked to patients like hospital patients, they don't want that either.
They won't They want maybe someone who has some sympathy.
But patients are more likely to feel better. But I
was just imagining a doctor coming in and just falling
to pieces your your condition. Doctors aren't like coming yeah,
(29:49):
well you don't. Yeah, like you said, you don't want
a doctor like, No, They feel better if their doctor
is kind of clinical and reassuring and really seems like
they have it together, which makes Yeah, And you don't
want somebody who's like, frankly, I could care less whether
you live or die. I want somewhere in between those two,
which which is where oh my god, you're gonna die,
(30:10):
Like you don't want that out of your doctor. No,
But it seems like the middle of that, those two specs,
that those two ends of the spectrum is where cognitive
empathy comes in. We'll chuck, how about we take a
break here? Second break that sounds good and we'll come back,
we promise. All right, man, what do you want to
(30:54):
talk about Sasha Baron Cohen? I still have never actually
looked up whether that's his brother or cousin or what. Simon. Yeah,
psychologist Simon Baron Cohen wrote a book in two thousand
eleven called The Science of Evil. And he's he's way
down with empathy. Yeah, and I guess that they describe
(31:15):
him as a thoughtful defender is what Bloom describes him
as of empathy. Um. And he has a ranking system,
an empathy curve from zero to six and zero is
no empathy basically or sociopath and six is you, I guess,
the most hardcore of uh, emotional impaths. Yeah, you're in.
(31:39):
You call it a constant state of hyper arousal. And
he had this one woman that he used in his
little example named Hannah, who was a therapist. It's probably
a great job for her, but she's just one of
these people that, uh, by all accounts, is just wired
that way, like her friends and her family and her patients,
(32:00):
like she just really feels for them all, Like it's
not just her job, which is in in some ways
that it probably helps some people but in other ways,
it's really probably number one off pudding, and even if
everybody liked it, it's bad for her in the end.
Like you you're we're not We're not designed to carry
(32:22):
everybody's problems and issues with us all the time. Yeah,
And that's kind of the main point Bloom is making,
is that people like Hannah are headed for, headed towards burnout,
just headed for. And he also does make the point
that friends and family don't like they need a certain
amount of that empathy. But you don't want someone that's
always like in that state, Like you also want someone
(32:45):
that's like, all right, let's turn that frown upside down
and let's go out and take a walk, you know, Like,
you don't want someone that's always cries when you cry,
you know, right, you're just gonna be like wrong, I
thought I had it bad. But and you can extend
that also to um the way that people react in
some ways, to say like a mass tragedy or something
(33:07):
like that, like look look at new Town. Right the
Sandy Hook shooting, twenty small kids were killed. Six adults
were also killed at the elementary school. It was the
most horrific tragedy I think that ever took place in
the United States. It was basically the one that everyone
who believes in very strict gun control was waiting for.
(33:27):
Was new, knew was gonna happen sooner or later, and
thought this is gonna be the tipping point, and it
didn't happen right. What people reacted to with was outpourings
of donations, lots of stuffed animals. Apparently there were three
for every resident of the town were sent um yeah
and UM, lots of thoughts and prayers and if you
(33:51):
ever have seen um, you know Anthony Geslnick He yeah,
he has a Netflix special I think it's still on
called Thoughts and Prayers and watch that and he explains
to you just how valuable your thoughts and prayers are,
especially on Twitter. UM. But Paul Bloom points out is
like this actually proved to be This outpouring proved to
(34:12):
be an additional burden on this town which is already
suffering tremendously. But like they had to UM. There was
something like eight volunteers who were tasked with handling all
the donations UM, whether it was stuffed animals or money,
and they apparently had to get a warehouse to put
all the stuffed animals in and I think even some
of the public officials were like, please stop sending us stuff,
(34:34):
send stuff, but send it to other people. We've got
everything we need. Send it to other people. And everyone said, no,
shut up, this is about us, not you. And I
think that that's part of um effective empathy, that outpouring
of stuff that seems like a nice gesture that makes
you feel better but doesn't actually help in any real
substantial way. I think that kind of underlies or betrays
(34:58):
what um, what effective empathy is all about, and why
why we are moved to do something with effective empathy
because we're feeling something right then, and writing a checker
sending a teddy bear is a good way to to
feel better, for us to feel better, Whereas cognitive empathy
would be like, um, I'm going to see to it
(35:21):
that every senator who blocked the gun control bill following
New Town is voted right out of office. That would
be cognitive empathy. You're empathizing with the parents, you're empathizing
with future kids who haven't been killed yet, and you're
gonna do what you can to make sure it doesn't happen.
Rather than writing a check. UM, or sending a teddy bear.
(35:42):
Those two me are the real distinctions between cognitive and
effective empathy as far as that ultimate goal is concerned,
which is again compassion, but compassion is doing what you
can to improve the outcome for the greater good. Yeah,
that's interesting and I Another thing that UM kind of
(36:04):
jumped out to me was these psychologists Vicky Helgesen and
Heidi Fritz. They were researching why women are more likely
I think twice as likely as men to get depressed
and experienced depression. And they thought, you know, they said,
you know what, I think it's because women are more
empathetic and and you know, emotionally empathetic. And they take
(36:24):
this on and uh, they said that there's a propensity
for what they called unmitigated communion, which is in a a quote,
an excessive concern with others and placing others needs before
one's own end quote. And they you know, gave people
and this is one of those like a nine item questionnaire.
How much can you really learn? Um? But uh, some
of the statements agree to disagree with. We're like, for
(36:45):
me to be happy, I need others to be happy.
I can't say no when someone asked for help often
worry about others problems and kind of across the board,
women score higher than men do on this and UM,
you know, I think a lot of that probably has
to do with with evolution to with, you know, women
having to care for their babies right out of the gate.
(37:06):
Which took took his wife? You know, although it took
took we know, never took a wife. Um took to
cut around. He got around. But the women that took
took would would knock up. They would immediately be in
charge of those babies. And that's what um, that primatologist
talked about two was. You know, this is kind of
straight up evolution. Our natural selection is right out of
(37:29):
the gate, we have this empathy because we have to
care for young and then um, I think we already
mentioned too, and then that definitely evolves into protect the tribe,
right because we're better off if the people around us
are healthy and happy and ready to ward off attacks. Um.
(37:49):
But the the idea that women are more prone to
experience a effective empathy or just even empathy in general,
it's actually got a has a biological basis. To tell
you the truth to chuck um in in adolescence or puberty.
Apparently girls have They score high for effective empathy throughout
(38:11):
their entire adolescence, where between about ages thirteen and sixteen,
boys effective empathy declined. They take a little vacation, Yeah,
and they say, oh, oh you feel bad, You're about
to feel worse because I'm gonna give you a swirly. Yeah.
I don't know what it srely is, but it's a
it's where you stick someone's head in the toilet and
flush swirl. Never heard of that. Fortunately, I had only
(38:36):
heard of it, never witnessed it or had it done
to me. We did nuggies and uh was it wedgies
when you did the underwear. Yeah. Yeah, they're terrible. They
are terrible, and that's bullying behavior. And there are some
theories about bullies too that they actually use empathy to
manipulate people, like they they'll use it again stem Well, yeah,
(39:03):
they they they used cognitive empathy to calculate the best
most effective way to hurt somebody, and then um, they
turn off any potential like effective empathy. Um, when they're
actually carrying out their active bullying. Yeah. And with the
teenagers too, they they say that if you develop effective
(39:25):
and cognitive empathy, Um, that you're going to be happier,
you're gonna argue less with your parents, you're gonna have
more healthy relationships, which you know, it kind of all
makes sense sure, And they also were saying too, and
we will will get into how to increase your own
empathy if you think that kind of thing is a
good idea. Um, But that babies learn empathy out of
(39:48):
the out of the gate by being empathized with, by
being treated warmly by their parents and other adults, being
responded to in a warm manner, that that actually is
the beginning of empathy. And it's like you said, you
can see a little kid in a preschool go over
in comfort or console another little kid, um who's in distress. Boy,
that's why I when I hear about neglect like baby
(40:11):
and infant neglect is just man, that's like the most
heartbreaking thing you can imagine. It's like a baby just
like left in a room to cry and cry and
cry forever. Plus Also, when we were talking about the
breastfeeding episode, that body to body contact of being held
shows or has been shown to affect their development if
(40:32):
they don't have it enough. It's just all sorts of
terrible things that happen to you when you're neglected as
a baby. Yeah, it's terrible, So Chuck, there are plenty
of people who say, well, we need to empathize more.
So just get out there and learn how to empathize.
And there's plenty of people out there who will teach
you techniques on empathizing with people more, and they may
be worth trying, Like I found them very helpful in
(40:52):
a lot of cases, especially on interpersonal communication. Right. But
as far as like changing the world down a massive
scale for for the better, is it a good idea
to go out and just empathize, empathize, empathize, because there's
a big question mark with that. Who exactly are you
supposed to empathize with? Like with just about every problem,
(41:13):
there's a group that's being helped by something and a
group that's being har harmed by something, especially when it
comes to public policy, right, So which group you're gonna
empathize with? If you empathize with the current victims and
you change public policy to help them, well, then you're
leaving the people who are currently benefiting out in the cold. Right,
So there's a big question of who you should empathize
(41:33):
with at any given point in time, which makes this
whole behavioral science nudge politics BS that is ultimately behind
this whole push to empathize more um that that's not
taking that into consideration. And then there's this kind of
a second facet to that, which is studies have found
(41:53):
that when you increase empathy in people, um, they tend
to pathize more with their own group, but it also
in kind increases hostility in those people towards out groups.
You know what I'm saying, Like, they see their friend
who's being hurt is more of a victim and how
could you do this to them? And now I want
(42:15):
to get you back because one of the sour sides
of empathy is that it frequently comes with a taste
for retribution too, I think is how Paul Bloom put it,
the dark side of empathy. So just yeah, there is
a dark side. There's a dark side to everything in there. Yeah,
except you, I'm all dark side, You're all light kind.
(42:41):
So we'll finish up here with a bit on people
with autism, because there's this stereotype, um that if you
everyone's probably heard it that you know what, people with
autism lack empathy and they don't understand emotions. And if
you know anybody who uh either has autism or is
(43:02):
a parent of a child with autism, they will dispel
that myth pretty straight up just from their own lives. Um.
But these people did some studying and some research because
they were like, that's not good enough for me, and
it's not good enough to just say that, Like, you know,
every autism is different for everyone, So some people have
(43:23):
empathy or people with autism show empathy, so but everyone's different,
So who cares about investigating that? Yeah? So I really
love the approach they took here. They were kind of
really wanted to keep digging, which I really respected. So, uh,
they said, you know what, I think it might be
going on here. There's this other um condition called alexathemia.
(43:43):
And alexathemia means you have a difficult time understanding your
own emotions. So you might, you know, you might have
a feeling that you're experiencing an emotion, but you just
don't know what it is. And about ten percent of
people have it in the regular population. About fifty people
with autism have alexithemia. But they're not the same thing. No,
(44:06):
And these guys actually found that um, people with autism
who do not have alexithemia tend to display empathy. Yeah,
and even you know, lots of empathy. Lots of empathy. Yeah, empathy.
They got binders full of empathy, finders full of empathy that.
Oh yeah, we remember when that was the most controversial
(44:28):
thing going in politics. Oh man, finders full of empathy.
Uh yeah, like they had they scored you know, very
strong when it came to measuring empathy. Uh. And what
they did was they you know, that makes sense. The
way they did it's very I really like this study.
They had four groups, uh, individuals with autism and alexithemia, Uh,
(44:49):
individuals with autism without it, individuals with alexithemia but not autism,
and then people that didn't have either one. And it
basically seems to kind of prove that, Yeah, it's just
not true that people with autism don't have empathy. It's
really alexithemia is what's going on, right, Which is I
(45:10):
think a novel finding or a novel hypothesis. I don't
think this is part of a larger field. I think
these these guys came up with that. Yeah, and did
you see that other study the UM from Goldsmith's University
of London about the facial expressions. Yeah. I thought that
was pretty interesting too. Yeah, that they they investigated that. Um,
(45:31):
if you expose people with autism to the sounds of
people's voices and ask them to rate what emotion that
person is experiencing, they're far better at um calling that
correctly than faces. And apparently it's because people with autism
tend to spend much less time studying faces, not because
they can't empathize. They just aren't using cues that um
(45:54):
people without autism use to um conclude what emotions people
are experience dancing. Yeah, really interesting stuff. And I don't
know why this didn't get more play because it still
seems like people are kind of banging that drum that,
you know, people with autism that aren't empathetic. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know why either. It just makes sense that, yeah, um,
(46:17):
we need to do an entire episode on autism. Yeah,
maybe alexophemia. I've never heard of that. We also need
to do one on psychopaths too, which is another group
that tends to be pointed to is kind of incorrectly
as far as empathy goes, Where if you're lacking empathy,
you're a psychopath. What actually turns out that if you
have what's called a shallow affect, meaning like you're across
(46:38):
the board emotionally, you're pretty stunted and um, shallow or superficial,
that's what really qualifies you as a psychopath, not just
missing empathy. UM. But yet again it's another popular misconception
that's being allowed to persist. I'm just irritated, Chuck. I've
got a great quote though, from Paul Bloom and I
(46:58):
also want to say that I think, um, that empathy
also the different kinds of empathy also get divided among
the genders as well. And we even said, we've even
talked about that study that concluded that women tend to
suffer from depression because they're more empathetic. I think that
maybe that's the case, and there is a biological basis
for it in adolescence. But one thing that seems to
(47:21):
persist everywhere is that, um, different types of empathy or
different techniques for empathy to produce empathy can be learned,
they can be taught. And I think if you just say, like, well,
wait a minute, I really want to solve this problem,
I'm not going to fly off the handle or I'm
not gonna lose my marbles. I'm gonna like really put
some thought into it, and I can still be compassionate,
(47:41):
but I don't have to completely experience someone else's pain.
I don't think that that's a biological imperative one way
or another. I think if you decide to make a
choice or a change in the way you approach situations,
that has nothing to do with gender. So I just
wanted to point that out. Yeah, and as far as
teaching empathy, Like, there's been a little bit of poopo
ing of emotional empathy, but I think it's I think
(48:03):
it's definitely like a pretty good thing to do as
a parent to try and teach your child to like, Hey,
you know, how would you feel if someone was doing
this to you? Yeah, And that's how they learn Yeah, exactly.
You don't learn it on your own. I think it
has to be imparted by good parents, agreed, and um. Again,
(48:23):
the the goal, and this is a Paul Bloom quote,
The goal isn't to to love every single person like
you love the people closest to you, but to value
other people just for the very fact that they're human.
Beings right, that's the goal that everybody's looking for with
with empathy, and he says, quote, our best hope for
the future is not to get people to think of
(48:45):
all humanity as family. That's impossible. It lies instead in
an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don't
empathize with distance strangers, their lives have the same value
as the lives of those we love. That's the key. Interesting. Yeah,
good stuff, good stuff. We should subtitle this one Empathy
(49:06):
A Lucy Goosey episode, also known as what Paul Bloom says.
Thank you Paul Bloom. Yeah, big big ups to Paul Bloom. Uh.
And since I said big ups to Paul Bloom, that
means it's time for a listener mail chuck. Um, I'm
gonna call this hook worms nice um, Hello from the
(49:31):
Sunny South, United States. Southerners aren't lazy and dumb, they
just had hookworm. Great title. By the way, Josh brought
back a childhood memory, and I finally had to write end. Guys.
I grew up in Florida, so we spent most of
the summer with our shoes off. Uh. And I remember
my mother distinctly reminding me to wear shoes. Uh, so
I wouldn't get the ground ditch. It's never happened. I
(49:53):
called my mom, who is now eighty eight years old,
to verify a few facts and about when I was
a little girl, I believe around five to seven or
eight years before school started, my mother would give me
a worm treatment on my feet. I explained to her
what I had learned during the podcast about hookworms and
how they affected the body. When I mentioned how they
cause severe anemia and caused the body to be more
(50:14):
susceptible to illness, she remembered a story about my father's cousin.
Apparently the cousin was so and became so incredibly ill
she was very close to dying. They took her to
the hospital and found out she was severely anemic, and
before they began any other diagnostics, they decided to test
her for hookworm and bingo. As my mother said, she
was full of them. She had a high worm burden.
(50:35):
She did uh. Mom said it took three treatments to
get rid of the worms. The story was she was
so infested they literally came out of her mouth when
she was being treated. Oh my god, Wow, that is
the best story I've heard in a while, and she
put in parentheses. I know, right, because I think she
anticipated that reaction. That's why you don't want to be
(50:57):
uh six point oh um effective empathetic person. Yeah, that's right. Uh.
This cousin is actually still alive and in her early nineties,
so uh, this would have been in the nineties. I
hope she doesn't listen to this show. Hookworm and Fancy
Free in Florida. As from Terry Brunson of Panama City. Nice.
(51:18):
Thanks a lot, Terry. That was a great email. It
had everything had. It was a roller coaster ride. There
was a cousin who had worms coming out of her mouth. Laughed,
I cried. There was a mom, an old cousin. I'd
like to know what the worm treatment consisted of. I'll
bet there was dead cat and they're somewhere. Oh my god. Uh.
(51:39):
If you want to tell us about your family's weird remedies,
we want to know the ingredients and you can tweet
them to us at s Y s K podcast, or
you can hang out with us on Facebook at facebook
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know or Facebook dot
com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Uh send us an
email The Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and join us is always at our home on the web.
(52:01):
Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know
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