So here are the kinds of empathy that I think are relevant
for Roots of Empathy to know about: One, which is what Tanya singer had studied and
she's in Germany and it's just maybe an English translation, I don't know, but she
studied the first thing we're talk about which is called emotional resonance.
Emotional resonance or empathic resonance, if you want to keep on using
the word empathy, is where this boy if.. let's say the baby is feeling excited..
..the receiver having an empathic communication will start feeling excited.
Let's say the boy is feeling scared. The receiver will feel scared. It's the
essence of feeling felt, right? It's empathic resonance...and I'll go through
the circuitry of that with you through the brain a little later on, but just
let's name it. Empathic resonance is where you feel the feelings of another
person. Empathy form number two is perspective taken. You know, so if you're
gonna be empathic with me, it would be as if you were saying, "Let me put my self in
Dan's skin. Let me put myself in Dan's glasses". You know, seeing the world as I
would see the world. So its perspective- taking, and you can study these things.
These are all studyable things, but they're different. Empathic resonance and
perspective-taking, they're just different, but they're both what we call
empathy. Well which one's bad? You know. So perspective-taking is where the
teacher says, "What do you think he's seeing? What's his experience?"
Well he's seeing that toy is too far away or it was too upsetting for him
because there was too much noise. So they're taking his perspective and we
saw that yesterday. It's beautiful, perspective-taking. Imagine a world where,
even if we just did perspective- taking, what a different world that
would be. So, perspective-taking. The next one is called cognitive empathy.
It's where you elaborate a little more and the teachers did this beautifully
yesterday in both classrooms, where you say, "Okay, if you're a little, you know,
nine month old old and you're a little tired cuz your
nap didn't go so well and now you're in the classroom even though you know the
kids and your little clinging on to mom and then a loud noise happens...what do
you think that means for little Jude? So now they're going well, "I think it means
he's probably remembering that last time he was in the classroom there was
another loud noise and then a really scary thing happened. So, maybe he's
remembering how frightened he was...and so now he's getting even more frightened".
So, it's more than just his perspective of what his perception is at this moment,
it's realizing that memory influences him and that memory and emotion and, you
know, these judgments we make all influenced our present moment experience.
That's called cognitive empathy. Really important. You could call it empathic
understanding, if you want to use that word, but it's sometimes called
cognitive empathy. So, what do we have here? Let's name them: Emotional resonance,
we've got perspective-taking, we have cognitive empathy. Then you have
something called empathic concern, which is basically synonym for compassion.
Empathic concern is basically this: I feel your pain and I want to do
something to reduce your suffering, and now I'm going to think about what I might
do and carry it out. So I was just in England with Paul Gilbert and Paul is
one of the world's experts on compassion... and basically that whole field and
compassion is a form of empathic concern. They're synonyms. So, we have a word
compassion but it's actually the same as empathic concern. The key thing about
compassion or empathic concern is that you're feeling the suffering of another,
step one. So, you have to receive it. When people shut themselves off from
that, they're shutting off empathic concern. Then they have to take the
suffering and then say, "Wow, there's a lot of suffering in you, I feel really bad
with that". That's step two. Then you go into empathic imagination. That's
not one of the categories but we could just name it.
Empathic imagination. I go, "Wow, what what could I do now to make you
feel better? Okay, you know, I could just be with you or I
could bring you some water because you're really so thirsty or I could get
you a band-aid if you've fallen down or whatever". So now, I carry out, I imagine
how I would carry out an action to be of service to you and then depending on the
circumstances I actually do something. Sometimes you can't but that's okay.
Sometimes just being with a person is fine. So, compassion or empathic concern,
synonyms, is an action-oriented form of empathy. That's number four. Then
number five is something we hardly ever talk about, which is called empathic joy...
...and you saw, every one of these these were seen in the classroom yesterday.
It was so beautiful, right? Empathic joy is, "I get so excited about
your success. I am so happy". In this case, you know, these kids are seeing this
little Jude develop over the time and they're so thrilled about his
accomplishments. Now he can sit up. Wow! Now he can crawl. Whoa! We're putting the
ball over there, and he's going after his mom. You know, she went on the other side. It
was awesome to see the empathic joy. It's one of the most underemphasized empathic
skills that we have.