## Metadata author:: [[@Hidden Brain]] publish_date:: reviewed_date:: ## Highlights - psychopathy have the opposite profile there, often perfectly able to understand what other people feel. But they don't share those emotions. That's fascinating. It's almost like these are different muscle groups, and you need all all the muscle groups to be functioning to in some ways actualize your full capacity for empathy. I love that analogy. Yeah, that's the perfect way of putting it. So At the same time that parents and books and motivational speakers and fate traditions site the value of empathy, there's also some evidence that empathy might be changing over time and not necessarily in a good way. Ah, you cite research that compares the average level of empathy in 2009 to the average in 1979. [(Time 0:13:40)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c0ed1d7f205624b6ededaf) - notes:: ASD struggle with cognitive empathy but not emotional empathy - the end of the day for in some ways, the same reason. Yeah, yeah, because she feels as though they're negative. Mood will seep into her and sort of leave her unable to interact well with her family. And I think this is part of the double edged sword of empathy for people in caring professions. On the one hand, many of these people are driven to their work by a preternatural care for others. But on the other hand, that same care can cause them to lose themselves, especially if they're in really intense medical settings where they're surrounded by sort of chronically surrounded by other people's deep suffering and as a result. Oftentimes, I think people in caring professions feel like they're stuck in a double [(Time 0:30:23)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c0edc07f205624b6ee0223) - notes:: People are more empathic towards their own tribe and even if empathetic to outsiders the tribe takes precedence tribalism - avoid the table mawr. It was almost as though they were trying to keep physical distance between them and something that would make them feel empathy, either because it would feel bad or because it would force them to do something like donate that maybe they didn't really want to do. I think a lot of us have this experience when we see, for instance, a homeless individual on the sidewalk ahead of us. I've heard of people who crossed the street to avoid that encounter, maybe because they don't want to sort of see that person suffering close up because it will make them feel sad or guilty or both things. Some irony there isn't that which is the person who is likely to actually be more empathic is also the person who is likely to cross the street because they [(Time 0:32:39)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c0ee147f205624b6ee0a28) - notes:: Defensive dehumanization, turning off your empathy to protect yourself from the effects of others. Also reminds me of “if you can’t take care of yourself how can you take care of others” or the gas masks on airplanes “a fix your own first before helping others” - and the trick here was that that the psychologists made it such that sometimes that actor was wearing a Manchester United jersey. Sometimes they were wearing a jersey of Liverpool, which at the time was Manchester United's most hated rival. And other times they were wearing a blank jersey. And what they found was that Manu fans were more than willing to help fellow Manu fans, but also more than willing to basically step over a Liverpool fan as they sort of arrived on on the ground and pain. This is sort of classic tribalism in terms of our empathy and generosity. But what I love about this study is that the psychologist ran a second version of it. And here, instead of asking [(Time 0:46:47)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c0f1a67f205624b6ee6b1f) - notes:: We empathize with those like us and our “in-group” so if your in group is “humans” then you expand the circle of empathy you have available - is me. Search right. At least in psychology, people tend to gravitate towards ideas that have made an impact on their life. And I think for me empathizing with my parents was a survival skill that I needed just to sort of keep my family together at some level. But it also taught me at a much broader level that people can be fundamentally different from each other for fundamentally similar reasons. Right. My parents had totally different values, not because one of them was wrong or because one of them was a bad person, but because of the lives that they had lived in, the experiences that they had had and the things that had hurt them and [(Time 0:49:19)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c0f2747f205624b6ee8035) - notes:: Overcoming tribalism with common ground and generalist thinking - I'm Guy Raz and on NPR's How I Built This. How a simple splash of color accidentally launched Sandy Chill, a witch into a 40 year career as a designer entrepreneur and creator of the now famous chili, which placemat subscriber. Listen now [(Time 0:52:06)](https://www.airr.io/quote/63c19d257f205624b6027ef8)