Handle With Care

In an ‘it’s all about me’ world, there’s a greater push to understand and care about other people. But how do you build empathy, and does it help or hinder our wellbeing? 

- Trudie Mcconnochie

Step aside, gratitude, there’s a new wellness buzzword in town: empathy. Research into empathy has increased in recent years, and some workplaces are starting to incorporate it into teambuilding programmes. But there’s also concern in certain quarters that empathy may be declining, thanks to a society which – as Barack Obama put it in a 2006 speech about America’s empathy deficit – “tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe and entertained”.

Put simply, empathy is the ability to step into another person’s shoes and feel what they feel. It isn’t, however, the same as sympathy, explains Roman Krznaric, author of Empathy: Why it Matters and How to Get it.

“Sympathy is about having an emotional response to someone – but one that isn’t shared [with them],” Krznarictells Good Health from his home in Oxford, UK. “Empathy’s that extra step of thinking ‘what is it really like to be the other person with their experiences and their view of the world?’”

A decline in empathy is difficult to measure; however, research does show we’re more focused on ourselves than ever before. A report in the journal Psychological Science last year found individualistic practices and values have been increasing around the globe since 1960. For his part, Obama was so concerned about this empathy deficit he mentioned empathy in more than 60 subsequent speeches during his presidency.

“Empathy is the key to making relationships work, whether it’s within a family situation or in the workplace, and it’s an important part of human wellbeing,” Krznaric says. “We’re social creatures.”

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