Incivility in America has risen to the level of a national crisis, according to a survey of U.S. adults by the public relations firm Weber Shandwick (2017). Respondents said they see rudeness at every turn—not just the stuff spewing from TV news, politicians, and social media, but even while driving, shopping, and working. Many perceive that at the heart of this lack of civility is unwillingness to understand or show concern for others' feelings—basically, a troubling loss of empathy.
Have we Americans lost our collective sense of empathy?
Caring Less About Caring
One answer to that question might be found in a series of studies conducted over the past few decades designed to measure college students' empathic concern and perspective taking. The studies asked students to respond to statements like "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me" and "I try to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before I make a decision." Affirmative responses predict more prosocial behaviors, like volunteering and donating money, and fewer antisocial behaviors, like verbal aggression. Thus, we might find it alarming that these studies' find that between 1979 and 2009, levels of empathic concern and perspective taking dropped by 48 and 34 percent, respectively (Konrath, O'Brien, & Hsing, 2011).
More recently, a team of Harvard researchers reported that when they asked 10,000 middle and high school students whether achievement, happiness, or caring for others was most important, 80 percent chose achievement or happiness over benevolence. As one student put it, "If you're not happy, life is nothing. After that, you want to do well. And after that, expend any excess energy on others" (Weissbourd & Jones, 2014, p. 1).
Where, we might wonder, are kids getting such antisocial messages? Movies? Video games? Well, no—it's from us. In the Harvard study, 80 percent of students said their parents were more concerned about their achievement than about them caring for others. Students were three times more likely to agree than disagree with the statement, "My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I'm a caring community member in class and school" (Weissbourd & Jones, 2014, p. 1). The same went for students' perceptions of what teachers value.
So, if we've somehow rewired kids' brains to feel less empathy, what we can do to bring it back?
Feeling Your Pain
Let's first examine what happens in our brains when we experience empathy—that is, feel with others. We humans have an amazing capacity to experience others' emotions. Brain research shows that we fire almost identical neural networks when we see others in pain as when we experience pain ourselves (Singer & Klimecki, 2014). In other words, we actually feel other people's pain—which can prompt us to rush to their aid.
Yet this can also create empathic distress or burnout when we feel others' pain too intensely or for too long. For example, the longer students stay in medical school, the less empathy they feel (Neumann et. al, 2011). Studies also reveal that we mute our empathic responses when we view those in pain as members of a different group (such as players on a different team) or as deserving of their pain (for instance, if we saw them playing unfairly) (Singer & Klimecki, 2014).
So, in a world of 24-hour access to other people's suffering on television and computer screens, we might be forgiven for experiencing some empathic burnout. One response to such distress might be to insulate ourselves from those feelings by casting others as members of an out-group or chalking up their misfortunes to their own misdeeds.
Compassion: Mightier than Empathy?
A better response, however, would be to recognize that what's often more important than empathy is a different emotion, one that fires entirely different neural networks in our brains and causes us to feel for other people—becoming concerned for their well-being and wanting to help them, yet not necessarily mirroring their emotions. This emotion is compassion. As it turns out, we're more likely to help others when we feel compassion versus empathy (Batson, 2009). Moreover, it's possible to cultivate compassion. "Loving kindness training" is a type of meditative exercise during which people generate feelings of kindness toward those close to them and then apply those feelings toward strangers and those with whom they disagree. After such training, people are not only more likely to engage in altruistic acts, they also feel happier (Frederickson et al., 2008).
So perhaps instead of encouraging kids to feel empathy, we should help them develop compassion for others by, for instance:
▪ Strengthening perspective taking. Educators can help students consider what other people are thinking, feeling, and motivated by as we discuss literature, history, and science—or listen to different approaches to solving math problems.▪ Helping kids practice caring. As with anything, compassion takes daily practice—which we can provide students through well-chosen classroom jobs or community service.▪ Measuring and valuing compassion. What we measure is what we get. Schools might include measures of compassion in climate surveys, tally total hours of community service, and celebrate students who engage in "random acts of kindness."
As the Harvard team noted in its report, the sad irony of parents' overemphasis on kids' personal achievement and happiness is that it produces neither; if anything, such emphasis creates stressed-out kids who lack the coping skills to bounce back from disappointment. Meanwhile, numerous studies have shown that when we help others, we increase our own sense of well-being (Weissbourd & Jones, 2014). Therein lies, perhaps, the key lesson to offer students: that the most important achievements and the greatest happiness are to be found in helping others.
