Everyday Philosophy: How much empathy is too much empathy?
The Buddhist teacher Matthieu Ricard calls this dilemma “empathy fatigue.” In a study of doctors and nurses, Ricard and his collaborator Tania Singer, a neuroscientist and director of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, found that those who have empathy—who identify directly with their patients’ difficulties—get burned out. Those who have
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Empathy is a “capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices”. It encourages us to take shortcuts towards familiar and accessible feelings, values, and beliefs. Of course, all of this makes sense when we take an evolutionary perspective. As Bloom observes, “we are constituted to favour our friends and family over strangers,... See more
Ian Murray • Burst your bubble… about empathy | WARC
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Against empathy
Anxiety is the enemy of empathy. Fear makes us egocentric; egocentric makes us blind. An amygdala/prefrontal-cortex two-step that narrows the search parameters of the pattern recognition system. Pretty soon, as anxiety climbs too high, we lose our ability to find one another.
Steven Kotler • Last Tango in Cyberspace: A Novel
Ironically, emotional empathy is detrimental to the very people you serve.
Anne Berube • The Burnout Antidote
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At some point it becomes clear that we have to be intelligent about how we live with this inborn empathic mechanism. Here are some pointers:
Angelo Dilullo • Awake: It's Your Turn
Research shows that in practice emotional empathy amplifies and hides bias.16 Most people have more empathy for people they can relate to, people who look and sound like them, or people they already care about.
Anne Berube • The Burnout Antidote
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Wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far? To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding. To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of art. Theater, fiction, horror stories, love stories. This is what art does. Good or bad, it imagines the insides, the heart of the other, wheth
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