How Empathy Works

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 find out.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, you may have noticed this past Saturday, you got
an extra episode of Stuff you should know. That's why,
as case selects. That's right, it was not a mistake.
What we decided to do here after nine plus years
is um you know. Maybe you don't know that we
have nine plus episodes. Uh, so we're gonna start throwing

(00:21):
out all I don't want to call it a rerun. Well, no,
it's a it's a hand selected curated episode by us. Yeah,
a classic if you will that. Joshua, pick one out,
I'll pick one out. Might be Newsy, it might just
be one of our favorites, and we're gonna run those
on Saturday. If you haven't heard it, check it out.
If you have, we'd love for you to listen again. Sure,

(00:43):
so check it out in your podcast feed. It's as
simple as that. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
how Stuff works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck, Lena, my Shoulder,

(01:06):
Bryant and Jerry. How about a hug Roland No, actually,
I'm sorry, Jerry's here in spirit. Our guest producer today
is Noel no my beard heels all Brown yes, everybody
knows it's Noel Brown. Are you using your empathy voice? Yeah?
Is it working needful? In nobody? Really? That's the b

(01:31):
D eyes. Let's say I cut you for ten dollars. Oh,
how are you, sir? I'm feeling 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 at all

(01:52):
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? Society something something along? I just saw a

(02:14):
sign for it, an old fourth Ward. But there's like
a seems to be a legitimate magicians with'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 ticket to sign
and it disappeared in a poop of smile. It would

(02:36):
be great. I went to the 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, and I have not,
but um, it's a really good choke. Yeah, if you
can highly recommend it. If you can get in, you
gotta know somebody. You gotta know Ben Stiller. Oh really no,

(02:58):
there's a movie that he 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. Wait, hold on,
I have an intro. I have an intro. Are you
familiar with Frank Rich, the left leaning, well lefty as

(03:18):
heck essayist. I don't think so. He Uh, he's good.
He's about his He's about as good an essayists 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,

(03:40):
he published a column I think this week, um, 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

(04:01):
people tend to be bleeding heart liberals and 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, you should be angry
at the people who voted him into into office as well.

(04:23):
And he basically is beating 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's totally serious too, and it amounts to basically a
call to go to the dark side. To resist everything

(04:45):
that you know, 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

(05:09):
the time, 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,
one of 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 a further post mortem has
been like Hillary could empathize with those people all day,

(05:31):
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 gonna go full board to

(05:53):
the dark side, and and just everybody's gonna hate everybody
who's just who's not like them. White 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 I am. I do stick

(06:14):
my pinky in the air when I take SIPs of water,
and that water has been strained 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, you know,
And I don't forget where I'm from man, and my family,

(06:34):
you know, has long roots and 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 Quadripple checked that we had not done this. Um,

(06:55):
and 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

(07:16):
our not 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 a 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

(07:37):
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 yea, 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. Some times I feel like

(08:00):
people 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 researcher publishing

(08:22):
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 einfilung, which
means feeling into and that's where empathy comes from. And
if you talk to an expert or a researcher um

(08:46):
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 it and to me, well, to me,
this is where a little bit of the splitting hairs

(09:06):
comes 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,

(09:29):
which is sympathy, right, you can understand why someone would
be feeling a certain way. Then then you've got effective empathy,
empathy which this one dude calls 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

(09:50):
That's where you actually moved to act. That's where you
do something about it. That's where you put your hand
on someone's shoulder and say it's gonna be all right,
or 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

(10:14):
or um or effective. And that's that's what I think.
And you know what, this field is 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 giving you an example of
what that might mean effective or emotional empathy. Um, if

(10:35):
someone if you have a friend or family member going
through a very hard time, uh, 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 are you know, actively taking that

(10:58):
on to the point where you're crying too, and you
didn't know the uncle, because that would be the differentiation rights,
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 psychologist

(11:19):
named Paul Bloom who has basically dedicated a lot of
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 some quite agree with either. But
he's great. He's really good at 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

(11:41):
a great mood and you're empathetic and sharing in that
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,

(12:03):
I'll just say Paul Bloom's whole basically, his whole thesis
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

(12:26):
this is one of the studies I imagine. I don't
know if you had a problem with it, but I
had 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?

(12:49):
And it was 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 Joe.
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,

(13:11):
this 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
I mean biases that the right word super biased. Yeah,

(13:32):
and and it 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,

(13:54):
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 fifty 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. I mean he even quoted Mother

(14:16):
Teresa in his uh in this 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.
Like and and that study does. I didn't have a

(14:39):
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 in 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 this,

(14:59):
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 prevent accidents,

(15:22):
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. Extreme prejudice. Right.

(15:44):
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 the basis of rationality being that who is more
important than one right and empathy just doesn't go in
that direction. Yeah. But UM, Interestingly, UM, while you can

(16:09):
train yourself to be more empathetic, it definitely to me
feels like something that you were 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, they're gonna

(16:29):
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. It's a
pretty adorable um. And you know it happens in the
animal kingdom. Um. Although they did note um this, Franz

(16:50):
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 jimp. Like if they're
like they will smash the brains out of another kind

(17:11):
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 empathy, 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 here, And it seems like based on France
to Walls studies and um other studies about the the

(17:31):
evolution of in group and out group behavior. Like we
we evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years,
but 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 it's only

(17:53):
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,
we're 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 into the mix,

(18:16):
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 out completely civil

(18:36):
global society will fade away. 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

(18:59):
racial empathy gap right after this. All right, so I

(19:27):
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 clips of a needle going

(19:52):
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 of distress, like they
started to sweat a little more, sure, their hearts started

(20:14):
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 that'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 with just
the switch of a sentence and then or the the

(20:35):
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.
But so, yes, that's so. It is surely setting off
mirror neurons. I don't understand how it's being translated into empathy.

(20:59):
A side 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 twenty nine, Um,
their heart really started beating and look at this on
this questionnaire they filled out, they really consider themselves an
empathetic person. Ipso fact though an empathetic person is responding

(21:24):
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 tinted and actually can tell you the
truth as far as correlating with self reports. Um, that
that does tend to be a pretty good, um control
to tell you the truth because apparently all people respond

(21:46):
to that one. Huh didn't that interesting? Um, there is
something going on there though, I mean, we're not like
discounting that because they have 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

(22:08):
that for sure, or in the criminal justice system, which
we've talked a lot about, or maybe just in empathy
altogether between races. 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

(22:30):
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, I nothing to do with
you being an empathetic person or not. What about that
judge who U remember the guy the swimmer who raped
the 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

(22:51):
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.
And there's no way if that would have been some
black kid that he wouldn't have ruled differently. I just
there's no no one can convince me that that that's
not the truth, right, And I think that there's like

(23:11):
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 um at the very least
exhibiting a bias that yes he was, he let the
kid off off the hook Um because he looked like him.
I think he might have been sympathizing with him though,

(23:33):
because 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
talking about mirror neurons, even though he didn't know that
was the thing at the time when he wrote that, um,
persons of delicate fibers who notice a beggar's sores and

(23:57):
ulcers are apt to feel an itching or an easy sensation,
and 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 great, feel someone else's pain? Yeah, 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.

(24:18):
But 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 mirror neurons. Did you see There's a Simpsons recently
where Kirk van Houghton is back in college and he

(24:39):
goes to like high five. He's like a lacrosse player.
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
head off and throws up into man. I remember that
sisman thing. I think we talked about that in the episode. Yeah,

(24:59):
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 Theisman 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 hardwired to not accept that. I
know it makes you faint because your brain is like,

(25:22):
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 shoddy it's mind boggling. But
then the other part of it, it's like, well, just

(25:43):
leave it to neuroscience. But neuroscience is still using the
same old m R 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 of brain has to
do with UM. Looking at pictures of boops, this is

(26:03):
the boom region, right, And this is like the level
that that neurology is is ad 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 isolated a few different parts. And again this
is kind of like we think that this has to

(26:24):
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 it's just a very it's a rudimentary understanding

(26:46):
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 UM part
of the brain and I love parts of the brain.
The effect active effective empathy part of the brain is
called the insular cortex. That's where they think that the
effective region are part of the effective region lies the

(27:09):
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 Monash University research UM
paper that's that looked at the concentration of gray matter,

(27:29):
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 cortexes cortices, and then people who have
really serious cognitive empathy have dense midsingulate cortices. That's where

(27:54):
it's at right now. Yeah, they did a pretty interesting
test um this uh Tanya Tania singer and 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. So what they

(28:17):
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 mete you. We would like you to engage in
some different types of compassion and h meditate and direct
that meditation towards people who are suffering. And then they

(28:39):
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

(29:02):
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 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 to me. I

(29:24):
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 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 burn out. It's

(29:47):
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. I was just imagining
a doctor coming in and just falling to pieces at
your your condition. Doctors are coming yeah, well you don't Yeah,

(30:09):
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 sense. 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? Like you don't want

(30:30):
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. Yeah, well, Chuck,
how about we take a break here, second break, That
sounds good, and we'll come back, we promise. All right, man,

(31:13):
what do you wanna talk about Sasha Baron Cohen? I
still have never actually looked up whether that's his brother
or cousin or what. 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 him as a thoughtful defender is

(31:35):
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. You call it a constant

(31:59):
state of hype 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, like she just really

(32:20):
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 putting 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 everybody's problems and issues

(32:43):
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 toward burnout, she said it
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 one that's always like
in that state, Like you also want someone that's like,

(33:05):
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 I thought, had a bad
but and and you can extend that also to um,
the way that people react in some ways, to say
like a mass tragedy or something like that, like look

(33:27):
a 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. Was New New
was gonna happen sooner or later, and thought, this is

(33:50):
gonna be the tipping point. And it didn't happen. Right.
What people reacted to with was outpourings of donations, lots
of stuffed animal moles apparently there were three for every
resident of the town were sent. Um yeah, and UM,
lots of thoughts and prayers. And if you ever have

(34:10):
seen um, you know Anthony Geselnick, he he yeah, he
has a Netflix special I think it's still on called
Thoughts and Prayers, and you 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

(34:31):
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.

(34:53):
Send stuff, but send it to other people. We've got
everything we made, 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

(35:17):
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 check
or 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

(35:40):
it 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

(36:01):
a teddy bear. Those to 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. Yeah, that's interesting. And I Another thing

(36:21):
that UM kind of 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.

(36:42):
And they take this on and uh, they said that
there's a propensity for what they called unmitigated communion, which
is 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.

(37:03):
We're like for me to be happy, I need others
to be happy. I can't say no when someone has
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

(37:24):
out of the gate. Which took took his wife. You
know although it took took we know never took a wife.
Um took took kind of a round. 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 primatologists talked about two was you know,
this is kind of straight up evolution. Our natural selection

(37:47):
is right out of 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. But the idea that

(38:09):
women are more prone to experience, say, 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 their entire adolescence, where

(38:32):
between about ages thirteen and sixteen, boys effective empathy declined. 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 is, but it's a it's
where you stick someone's head in the toilet and flush swirling.

(38:52):
Never heard of that, fortunately, I had only heard of it,
never witnessed it or had it done to me. We
did noggies and uh, was it wedgie's 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,

(39:13):
that they actually use empathy to manipulate people like they
they'll use it against them. Well, yeah, yeah, 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

(39:37):
their active bullying. Yeah. And with the teenagers too. They
they say that if you develop effective 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 kind of all makes sense. Sure, And they
also were saying too, and we will will get into

(39:59):
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 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

(40:20):
like you said, you can see a little kid in
a preschool go over and comfort or console another little kid,
um who's in distress. Boy, that's why when I hear
about neglect like baby 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

(40:42):
were talking about the breastfeeding episode, that body to body
contact of being held shows or has been shown to
affect their development if they don't have it enough. It's
just all sorts of terrible things that happened to you
when you're neglected as a baby. Yeah, it's terrible, So Chuck,
there are plenty of people who's a well, we need
to empathize more. So just get out there and learn

(41:03):
how to empathize. And there's plenty of people out there
here will teach you techniques on empathizing with people more
and they may be worth trying. Like I found them
very helpful in a lot of cases, especially on interpersonal communication. Right,
But as far as like changing the world on a
massive scale for for the better, is it a good
idea to go out and just empathize, empathize, empathize, because

(41:25):
there's a big question mark with that, who exactly are
you supposed to empathize with? Like with just about every problem,
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

(41:45):
leaving the people who are currently benefiting out in the cold. Right.
So there's a big question of who you should empathize
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

(42:06):
taking that into consideration. And then there's this kind of
a second facet to that, which is studies have found
that when you increase empathy in people, um, they tend
to empathize more with their own group, but it also
in kind increases hostility in those people toward out groups.

(42:27):
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
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

(42:47):
is a dark side. There's a dark side to everything
in there. Yeah, except you from all dark side. You're
all hit kin. So we'll finish up here with a
bit on people with autism, because there's this stereotype, um

(43:08):
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 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

(43:31):
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 empathy or show 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

(43:52):
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, and alexithemia 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,

(44:14):
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, And these guys actually found that, um,
people with autism who do not have alexathemia tend to
display empathy. Yeah, and even you know, lots of empathy.

(44:38):
Lots of empathy. Yeah, empathy. They got binders full of empathy,
finders full of empathy. Oh yeah, we remember when that
was the most controversial 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, the makes

(45:00):
sense the way they did, it's very I really like
this study. They had four groups, uh, individuals with autism
and alexithemia, Uh, 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,

(45:21):
it's just not true that people with autism don't have empathy.
It's really Alexithemia's what's going on right, Which is I
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. I thought that was

(45:46):
pretty interesting too. Yeah, that they they investigated that, UM,
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 UM calling that correctly
then faces. And apparently it's because people with autism tend

(46:06):
to spend much less time studying faces, not because they
can't empathize. They just aren't using cues that UM people
without autism use to UM conclude what emotions people are experiencing. 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

(46:30):
autism that aren't empathetic. Yeah, I don't. I don't know
why either just makes sense that, yeah, um, we need
to do an entire episode on autism. Yeah, maybe alexophenia.
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.

(46:51):
What actually turns out that if you have what's called
a shallow affect, meaning like you're across 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

(47:15):
quote though from Paul Bloom, And I 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 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,

(47:35):
and there is a biological basis for it in adolescence.
But one thing that seems to 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

(47:58):
thought into it, and I can still be passionate, 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 wanting to
point that out. Yeah, And as far as teaching empathy,
like there's been a little bit of poopo ing of

(48:20):
emotional empathy, but I think it's I think 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?
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, the the goal,

(48:44):
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 all humanity as family.

(49:05):
That's impossible. It lies instead in an appreciation of the
fact that even if we don't empathize with distant strangers,
their lives have the same value as the lives of
those we love. That's the key. Very interesting. Yeah, good stuff,
good stuff. We should subtitle this one Empathy a Lucy

(49:26):
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 listener mail. Chuck Um, I'm gonna
call this hook worms nice um. Hello from the Sunny South,

(49:51):
United States. Southerners aren't lazy and dumb, they just had hookworm.
Great title. By the way, Josh brought back a childhood memory,
and if I only had to write end guys who
grew up in Florida. So we spent most of the
summer with our shoes off uh, And I remember my
mother distinctly reminded me to wear shoes UH so I
wouldn't get the ground ditch. This never happened. I called

(50:13):
my mom, who was 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 susceptible

(50:33):
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.

(50:54):
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

(51:17):
a 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 ship Hookworm and Fancy
Free in Florida. As from Terry Brunson of Panama City. Nice,

(51:37):
Thanks a lot, Terry. That was a great email. I
had everything had. It was a roller coaster ride. There
was a cousin who had worms coming out of her mouth.
I 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 in there somewhere. Uh.

(51:58):
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
hit me up at Josh Underscore um Underscore Clark. 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

(52:19):
the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and
join us as always at our home on the web,
stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com