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Developing Empathy Through Literature

Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

Empathy, as we have been lately discussing (see HERE and HERE), is crucial for being respected by your friends, coworkers, and community. And fostering empathy in our kids is crucial if we desire that they will grow up with integrity and honor.

Several suggestions have been made in my earlier posts on how best to foster this set of skills, including the value of reading literature. But in a recent post in another blog, Engaging Peace, the message of the literature approach was delivered in such a powerful manner, that I decided to devote a whole post on my own blog just on this topic.

The Engaging Peace Post

In the Engaging Peace post, the author, Kathleen Malley-Morrison, writes:

“What feeds the roots of empathy? One answer is: literature, specifically literature demonstrating the ways that pain, fear, love, joy, and a remarkable range of human reactions unite all of humanity, regardless of the divisive little categories like age, sex, religion, and ethnicity that we shove people into.”

To give us a sense of the power of literature to promote empathy, Kathleen tells us about her own experience reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is based on Remarque’s experiences as a German soldier in World War I.

The quote from the book that particularly touched Kathleen’s heart occurs during a scene in which Remarque’s character, Paul Bäumer, has just witnessed the death of a French soldier whom he has stabbed:

“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

Wow! I was originally deeply affected by those lines many years ago. Returning to the depths of those feelings now provided me a vivid sense of the awesome power of literature.

Harvard Psychologist Takes On This Topic

The Better Angels of Our Nature is a brilliant book by Harvard University professor of psychology, Steven Pinker. There, we learn that human violence has not only dramatically declined, empathy for a wide range of people has surged.pinker

One of the conditions that fosters such psychological development, the good professor explains, is the availability of stories that reveal the humanity of people that lie outside of our immediate circle of family and friends. printing-press-invention-6Professor Pinker notes that prior to the invention of the printing press there were very few books available. Those people who lived in the upper classes rarely had much direct contact with the lower classes. A nobleman’s quick glance while passing by a downtrodden worker often merely left the impression of a filthy, smelly soul, hardly human at all. After novels became available, a nobleman might read of a poor young woman pressed into very sad circumstances by a cruel person of the upper classes, and discover tears running down his cheeks. To discover that people all over the world, in all classes, and other religions have very similar desires, dreams, and feelings that we can all relate to, increases empathy and the desire to deal with a wider range of humanity in kind and respectful ways.

Research On This Topic

David C. Kidd and Emanuel Castano recently published an impressive article in the journal Science. It not only summarizes the research supporting the value of empathy, but also describes five studies that they carried out demonstrating the value of reading literature for enhancing empathy.

Of particular importance here is that their studies indicate that reading just any book is not likely to significantly improve empathy skills. Neither nonfiction or popular fiction did the trick. Only what they referred to as “literature” clearly enhanced empathy skills even though there was some indication that most folks liked the popular fiction best.

Why might literature be so effective? In my view, nonfiction books tend to deal with things–rock formations, how to do quilting, etc. If you choose to read one of these books it is because you share a common interest with the author. No time is spent on getting to intimately know people who have opinions and views that are much different than yours.

With popular literature, the author typically presents an exciting plot, with clear views about the good guys and bad guys. Consider as an exemplar, the movie Star Wars, a phenomenally successful form of popular fiction. Within minutes, we come to know who the bad and good guys are. And the bad guys are pretty much completely evil, and the good guys, ever so swell. Moreover, the plot is rather simple–the good guys have to kill as many bad guys as they can, with the ultimate goal of destroying their headquarters known as the Death Star.

In contrast, with literature there is often room left between the words that allow the reader to give some thought to filling in for themselves what may be felt or done. Literature invites us to consider others not like ourselves, and whether those opposed to the main characters are really completely bad. And even the good guys might have more to their characters than mere goodness. Why did that character do this? We get some hints, but we have some creative work to do in order to reach some tentative ideas. All of this extra thought processing leads to a more developed sense of empathy.

Selecting Literature that Promotes the Development of Empathy Skills

If you hand your five-year old son a copy of Henry James’s classic literary work, Wings of a Dove, chances are that before finishing the first half of a page, he will end up crying out that it is way too boring for him. Young children require a different level of challenge when reading literature than teenagers and adults in order to be sufficiently engaging to them. Here are some suggestions for making your selections based on the age of the reader.

For children within the age range of 4 to 8, I recommend the free guide titled “Developing Empathy Though Children’s Literature.” It has been published by the US government, and you can retrieve it on line at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED427316.pdf. The authors have done yeomen’s work in selecting a variety of excellent books that tend to be available at local libraries.

It is enormously important to read these books with your kids, and to pause now and then to ask them questions about what is occurring. “How do you think Sally is feeling right now?” is one worthwhile question. “Why do you think she is feeling that way?” is another. So too is, “If you were Sally’s friend, is there something you might do to help her?”

Now, for kids a little older than 8, I have found that good selections are harder to come by. The books for this age range tend to be the simple popular fiction type. I, therefore, wrote a trilogy of coming of age novels to fill in this gap.

The first in the trilogy is titled A Hero Grows In Brooklyn, and although you can buy an inexpensive paperback copy of it, I have made it available to be downloaded for free (For your free download, click HERE). Part of the plot involves a boy named Steve who, at age thirteen, has to move in the middle of the school year because his family has been thrown into poverty. On the first day in his new school, he has to use his dreaded free lunch pass that is provided to students who can’t afford to pay for their lunch. Here’s a little section from that work:

Steve gets in his lunch line. The aroma of chicken soup, peanut butter sandwiches, and fried fish cakes drifts into his nostrils.  He picks out a peanut butter sandwich, a container of milk, and some ice cream.  Then he shows the cashier his free lunch pass. 

Ron DeFelipo, standing right behind Steve, starts to laugh and says to Mysterious Jane, “Look at this! This guy can’t afford to buy himself lunch!  What a joke!”

When Steve hears this, it feels like a knife has been stuck in his gut.  His face becomes hot, he pleads with himself not to have tears well up in his eyes, and he looks down avoiding everyone’s eyes.

Mysterious Jane looks at Steve, then turns to Ron, shoves him, and says, “You have no brains.”

When Steve gets back to his table, his appetite is gone. He picks at his food for a while, thinking he’s not going to be eating again until past six. With sourness spreading in the pit of his stomach, he comes to accept that he isn’t going to get any food down right now, and so he pushes his tray away.

Here we begin to get to know a character who is struggling with the embarrassment of being poor. Meanwhile, another character, Ron seeks to humiliate him. Mysterious Jane, in contrast, displays empathy.

In another type of literature, Ron would be treated as a character that is just one awful guy. Not so in A Hero Grows in Brooklyn. Here we come to see that through the help of the talented social skills of Steve, Ron begins to develop into someone that is far more mature than when we are first introduced to him. The other characters, as well, mature as the story unfolds, and the reader grows with them.

The other two novels in the trilogy take the same characters that we met in the first of the series into high school. More and more mature themes are addressed as they approach their date of graduation.

Together, these novels challenge readers to explore social and emotional issues within a context that teenagers find themselves fully engrossed in.

Interestingly, the feedback I received about these novels indicate that adults enjoy them as much as teenagers. You can learn more about these novels HERE.

For adults, in addition to my own trilogy, I recommend making selections from the list of fiction finalists of the National Book Awards, which, each year, is readily retrievable from a Google search. For those who prefer short stories, O’Henry Award winners are great. Some of these stories were used in the research study published in the journal Science that was mentioned earlier in this post and found to increase empathy. You can find collections of these short stories by doing an internet search using the key words, “short stories, O’Henry Award Winners.

Well, that’s all the time we have for today. Here’s hoping you join us again real soon at From Insults to Respect. Until then, may your life be full of delightful wonder.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

 

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Empathetic: To Be, Or Not To Be?

In an earlier post titled, “Empathy, Kindness, and Maturity,” I heaped praise on empathy.

There I spoke about a dog who had recently passed away, and how my empathy helped the owner through his anguish. Further, I presented arguments that empathy motivates individual behavior that aids in solving communal challenges.

Since writing that post, I learned of a study by Sidney Blatt and his colleagues based on data from the large NIMH Depression Collaboration Project. These researchers found that the most effective practitioners shared the following qualities; being perceived by pateints as more caring, empathetic, and sincere then the less effective practitioners.

So, to me, empathy is a pretty good thing–I mean, what’s not to like?

Well, Paul Bloom, psychologist and Yale professor, recently has argued in a piece titled, “Against Empathy,” that it’s a bad thing—that it makes the world worse. Is he kidding me?

The Case Against Empathy

Dr. Bloom tells us that while we’ve been taught that putting yourself in another’s shoes cultivates compassion, it actually blinds you to the long-term consequences of your actions.

In defending his position, Dr. Bloom tells us about the warm glow that many get when they give to charity.

“So, what they do when they give, is to give to a lot of different charities, and give a little bit of money to each one because for each one they get a little rush–‘Oh, I’m helping the blind babies. Oh, I’m helping the farm workers. Oh, I’m helping the chickens.’ The problem is that when you give a small amount of dollars to a charity, often it doesn’t do much good because the dollars they need to process your donation, in some cases, actually ends up with the charity taking a loss on your donation.” 

In addition to the charity example, Dr. Bloom tells us:

“Empathy’s engagement, being caught up in the suffering of victims, is usually the number one argument in a democratic country for going to war…. If we ever go to war against ISIS, a full blown military war, it will be motivated by our feelings for the suffering of their victims. But that’s just one consideration. Other considerations are, how many people will die in the war? How many other victims will the war create? But our empathy, our selfish moralizing, zooms us in and says, ‘Oh, my God, there are these people who are suffering, let’s bomb the crap out of them; Let’s destroy the whole country to save these people.’ And then people are later surprised that apparently we killed, you know, we killed 50 thousand people. Gosh, who would have known?”

Is Dr. Bloom Right?

It seems to me that the good professor confounds in his argument the experience of empathy with what one chooses to do when experiencing empathy. Yes, in some situations in which we experience empathy we could choose to take actions that in the long run causes more harm then good, but in other situations we act in enormously helpful ways.

When we choose to try to help a person or group for whom we have empathy, this is called altruism if it is not motivated chiefly by self-gain. In natural settings, altruism has been clearly observed in human beings during disasters and the almost universal protection of parents of their offspring.

Consistent with Dr. Bloom’s position, there is some evidence available that indicates that sometimes people will, upon experiencing empathy, act altruistic without much thought to the consequences. For example, in a study carried out by C. H. Fellner and J. R. Marshall, these researchers found that some kidney donors told them that they had silently made up their minds about the “right thing to do” as soon as they were asked to consider whether they would be willing to make the sacrifice to save the life of a member of their family. These donors reported that they were not really very curious about, or interested, in what the doctors were telling them. They appeared to have applied a simple moral decision rule as soon as they realized what the physician was driving at.

This type of evidence is far from conclusive because the donors may have retrospectively distorted their accounts to present themselves in a favorable light. However, a number of other studies (see HERE and HERE) has led me to support the hypothesis that there are indeed times when people do make moral decisions without much careful thought. That said, I believe that in most situations that require some significant physical and material cost (e.g., exertion, time loss) such costs do influence helping decisions (see Black, Weinstein, and Tanur for a review of this research evidence).

I think that Dr. Bloom’s real worthwhile point is not that empathy is bad, but rather, when we experience empathy we should be careful. If our empathy seems to be urging us to be helpful in some way, we would be wise to indeed consider the long term, as well as short term consequences of our actions. This, in truth, is how all of our decisions are best made.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their stress management skills and their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

 

 

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Empathy, Kindness, and Maturity

sad boy“Rickey, you’re looking like you’re feeling blue,” I said softly to this 13-year boy I had been counseling for a few months. As I looked at him, I observed some sadness rising up within me.

“Ever since I remember, I always slept with my dog, Prince,” Rickey mournfully replied.  “This morning, when I woke up, he was…he was…he was dead.  He died!”  A tear began to run down his cheek.  “I really loved him, and now he’s dead!” More tears.

By now, a strong wave of sadness had washed over me.  My voice became choked up, and no doubt my facial muscles twisted into a distinct look of deep concern.  This reaction was not an act.  I didn’t say to myself that the professional thing for me to do here is to appear concerned.  My feelings of concern came to me as naturally as the warm feelings that come over me when I see a striking sunrise.

What is Empathy?

empathy 1When we experience empathy we feel what we believe are the emotions of another. Empathy promotes prosocial behavior. For social beings, negotiating interpersonal decisions is as important to survival as being able to navigate the physical landscape.  Empathy motivates individual behavior that aids in solving communal challenges as well as guide group decisions about social exchange. Its influence extends beyond relating to someone else’s emotions, it correlates with an increased positive state and likeliness to aid others.

Is Empathy a Sign of Maturity?

empathy 2Empathy is not a type of skill that you either have or don’t have–it varies by degrees.  It begins at a very early age.  We see this when babies, upon hearing another baby cry, display signs of distress. And upon seeing a parent distressed while trying to reach for an object that is just out of reach, most toddlers will often crawl to the object and push it closer to the parent until the parent can pick it up.

As children get older, their empathy tends to increase. Boys, early in their teenage years tend to have a short period in which their empathy development goes a bit into reverse, but at about age 15, they begin to move forward again in developing this skill. This development tends to continue into young adulthood for both males and females, and for many, even well beyond.  Since more fully developed skills of empathy tend to be more effective in achieving goals in the long run, people often view this as a sign of maturity.

Can Empathy be Learned?

empathy 3Because empathy increases as a person gets older, we may become complacent when seeing our youth acting insensitive, or even downright cruel. We might simply chalk it up to immaturity, decide to rely on time itself to do its job to increase empathy, and therefore end up doing nothing to foster its development.  In my view, this is a serious mistake. Many research studies have demonstrated that a number of methods can be used to increase empathy, and it makes sense that we utilize them to benefit individuals and their communities.

Methods that Increase Empathy

We can teach children to reach more mature levels of empathy in several ways. For example, when we read to them, we can pause from time to time and ask how each of the characters in the stories are probably feeling.  If one of empathy 4them is likely to be sad, we can express sadness in our face, thereby modeling an empathic response.  We can then ask, “If the sad character was a friend of yours, what do you think would be a kind thing to do?” When the child comes up with a helpful suggestion, we could enthusiastically express our agreement that such an act would indeed be kind and then say that we respect people who are kind. If the character is happy, we can model the expression of happiness and ask a few questions about why the character is happy.

Here’s another idea. Have children learn on a daily basis in cooperative groups. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning. Research has demonstrated that when this happens often enough, students not only learn more, they enhance their skill at getting along and increase their empathy. In these studies, throughout the day there was time for the development of individual goals, but daily students had to learn to function under cooperative conditions as well.

Although to my knowledge cooperative learning research has been studied exclusively within school settings, I believe families can effectively use this approach.  For example, whenever the family goes on an outing, a parent can say something like, “Let’s all work together to make this a great time. Before we go, let’s take a few minutes to think up some ways we can all chip in to make this happen.” Then, each member of the family takes a turn suggesting what he or she can do to cooperate to achieve this shared goal.  During the trip, parents can make sure they notice whenever someone is cooperating and play it up as being very appreciated.

Jack Star

For older children, and for us grown-ups as well, the most consistent way to increase empathy is through meditation. In an earlier post (see here) I presented a detailed description of a simple form of meditation and presented the scientific evidence for practicing this ancient art to reduce stress and ruminating on angry memories. Well, as it turns out, practicing meditation has been shown to also increase empathy, along with its close relative, kindness.

By the way, one of my favorite kindness stories involves the psychologist and philosopher, Professor William James, his son, Willie, and the professor’s brother, the esteemed writer, Henry James.

The two brothers. Henry is on the left and Professor William James is on the right
Henry is on the left and William James is on the right

A Story About Kindness

When Willie had grown to be a young man, a biographer who was working on a book about his recently deceased Uncle Henry, asked to speak with him.

“Did you get to know your Uncle Henry?” the biographer asked.

“Oh, yes. He would live with us for months at a time. When I was very young, I grew to love him because he took a very genuine interest in me. Most adults back then would just nod at me and maybe muss my hair, but Uncle Henry, he would take the time to engage me with challenging questions. Like he’d ask me what I had been thinking and feeling about things and people.  And he always wanted to know what I thought other people were thinking and feeling. He had a nice, kind way of listening, too.”

“Can you recall for me a particular incident that occurred between you two that stands out in your mind that captures something special about your Uncle Henry?”

“Oh, yes.” Of all the events that occurred between Willie, the incident that stood out most vividly for him is the following:

One day, 9-year old Willie learned that his Uncle Henry was going abroad. The news saddened him for his absence would last a full year.

Upon Uncle Henry’s return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the literary community entreated Willie’s dad, Professor William James, to throw a grand party for his brother to welcome him home and to discuss his latest literary achievements.

On the night of the party, Little Willie pleaded with his father to let him attend, but the professor insisted it was simply not a proper event for a young boy.

That night, Little Willie snuck out of his bedroom and peered through the banister posts at the top of the stairs.  And when the grand proceedings began, oh, what a sight to remember.

All the great literary figures came—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorn, and on and on. Each person who greeted Little Willie’s Uncle Henry did so with such awe and respect that Willie found this absolutely astonishing.

The next morning, Little Willie found Henry in the library already hard at work on his latest manuscript. Willie exclaimed, “Uncle Henry, Uncle Henry, the way everybody treated you last night, saying what a great man you are! Uncle Henry, what does it take for a man to be great?”

Henry smiled, put down his fountain pen, took a second or two to rub his chin, and then leaned forward toward Willie.  “Willie, there are three things a man must do to be truly great. First, he must be kind; second, he must be kind; and third, he must be kind.”

Well, that’s my post for the week. Until next time, may you find the empathy within to remain ever mindful not to judge others by what you can or cannot see on the surface. Understand that the true wealth of individuals lies deep within, and it may be your kindness, caring and compassion that will tap into the riches of their souls.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.