empathy is trainable

Louis Gossett Jr as Sgt Emil Foley in the film An Officer and a Gentleman

Hard empathy is different than “Empathy is Hard”

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The distinction between Hard Empathy and Soft Empathy needs to be better known. Soft empathy does not work with bullies, psychopaths, and the criminally insane; which are difficult individuals where Hard Empathy can make a difference. The innovation proposed here is to think of empathy, like so many things these days, as existing on a spectrum between empathy as “empathic listening” and empathy as “tough love.” A rigorous and critical empathy includes both options, which map to the difference between “soft empathy” and “hard empathy,” and a sliding scale of possibilities in-between.

The way forward

Top Ten Empathy Trends for 2023

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Empathy is a practice and priority, not a mere psychological mechanism. Practicing empathy is a way of being in the world, creating a safe space of openness, acceptance and toleration. In the face of a contagion of Omicron, we need a contagion of empathy.

Google Founders, Larry and Brin, from the back back cover of Forrester Magazine, 2005: Don't be evil, man! The front cover shows them wearing saint halos.

Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 2): “CEO” now means “Chief Empathy Officer”

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Empathy is one of those things that are hard to delegate. This role shows up like another job responsibility with which the CEO of the organization is tasked—along with everything else that she already has to do. As if she did not already have enough alligators snapping at various parts of her anatomy, one has to be nice about it, too? But of course empathy is not niceness, though it is not about being un-nice. It is about knowing what others are experiencing, because one has a vicarious experience and then processing that further to expand boundaries and exercise leadership. 

Teenage Girl Being Bullied By Text Message

Empathy versus bullying: online bullying and what to do about it

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The paradox is the anti-social nature of social networking. The computer screen isolates the person even as the person is trying to connect. The contrary is also the case. The screen connects the person when the person wants to be alone, rudely announcing an incoming message by beeping, demanding one’s attention. Sometimes the screen brings out the anti-social tendencies instead of the pro-social ones, enabling one to be inauthentic, hiding behind a false self.

Arnon (Rolnick PhD) and Lou discussing online therapy, online empathy, and Sherry Turkle's memoire The Empathy Diaries

Reclaiming Empathy in Online Therapy: An Imaginary Conversation with Sherry Turkle

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Professor Turkle, Sherry, launches a Jeremiad – remember the Prophet Jeremiah? – against buzzing, beeping, interrupting devices, which give us acquired attention deficit, and carries her concerns in the direction of online therapy. If empathy is being copresent with another person, where is the empathy online? Find out in the engaging conversation between Lou and Arnon about Sherry’s penetrating and incisive work!

Resistance to empathy: like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up hill?!

Resistance to Empathy (Part 1): Organizational Resistance to Empathy and How to Overcome It

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that make organizations successful are not always the qualities that enhance their empathy. Hear me say it, and not for the last time: the things that make us good at business, including the corporate transformation of American medicine and education, do not always expand our empathy. What to do about it? The battle is joined. The recommendation? Let your customers, constituents, or stake-holders train you in empathy: Realize that if you do not respond empathically, the customers are just going to go quietly to the competitor that does. Empathy is good for business. If the customer has a complaint that he is having trouble expressing, then use one’s listening skills to get to the bottom of things.

Empathy, Brain Science, Stress Reduction – the Video!

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This is your mind on neuroscience – mirror neurons: do they exist, and if not, what about it?
Sperry on the split brain: the information is in the system: how to get at it
The neuroscience of trauma – and how empathy gives us access to it
MRI research: as when Galileo looked through the telescope, a whole new world opens