A curious case for Mindful Empathy

Hanging out with a glass of wine, and pen(read keyboard), is not a bad Sunday evening idea. The cohesion of wine makes it easy for an uninhibited thought flow, it’s aroma adds to the fragrance of the expressions, and it’s colour imparts a unique depth to the hue of the canvas which you are about to paint with words, okay, enough of romanticising :)

A disclaimer before I begin, there are multiple concepts being discussed, and I am no expert in any of those, they are a mere regurgitation of what I have read in last few weeks combined with things happening around, and another random waves of thoughts passing by. Go to your kitchen, get a pinch of salt, and then begin reading. Go ahead. I will wait. :) Also, ignore typos, suggest edits, if any.

Until last week, my mother was with me, I kind of had gotten used to her presence, that additional emotional sheathing, that extra care, that pampering, which comes by the mere presence of a loved one. Solitude offers amazing opportunities for uninterrupted flow of thoughts, and the concept of behaviourism surfaced up. Father of behaviourism John Watson was sceptical of the concept of maternal love, he believed society required more structuring than nurture — more transactions than connections — more contracts than relations.

Watson attempted to prove his philosophy by experimenting on a little boy named Albert, he was able to condition “Little Albert” to whimper every time he saw a rabbit by banging loud steel objects together and produce a horrible noise whenever the boy was handed a rabbit. He regarded this experiment as a triumph of behaviourism over human nature.

Attempts to put these ideas into practice were disastrous, orphaned kids were tried to be raised along the lines of behaviourism and instead of being happy and thriving, they were near death’s door. His own grand-daughter actress Mariette Hartley, suffered from psychological issues and she attributed them to her being raised with her grandfather’s theories.

It is a biological imperative that we need nurturing, human connection and empathy for our survival. Not only parents, when partners show love to each other “baby talks” and feeding forms one of the integral component. Companionship is good for happiness, and research has proved that the most reliable way to increase life-expectancy is to get and stay married.

Empathy clearly trumps behaviourism in the context of personal family lives, once we try to increase the diameter of our scope, from family to organisations — the most empathetic organisations are seen to profit, grow, and surpass the competition. While society tends to emphasize our proclivity towards negative behaviour as by the concepts of Social Darwinism(humanity is inherently self-centered), empathy, living harmoniously, helping one another, and caring for fellow beings are inherent traits.

It is what we chose to focus on in ourselves and in others becomes the reality, for reality, is a mere subjective interpretation of sensory data by the brain.

Swedish psychologist Ulf Dimberg was researching on involuntary empathy in the 1900s, people were shown images of faces so briefly that there was no time to subconsciously register them, the subjects smiled on the sight of happy faces and frowned on sad faces. Other than psychopaths, who by definition are incapable of feeling empathy, no one is emotionally immune to the plight of another’s situation.

Empathy refers to the ability to understand another person’s emotional state and feelings. There are two types of empathy, cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. The con artists, psychopaths, and bullies leverage cognitive empathy to understand a victim’s state of mind and deploy strategies to exploit it, emotional empathy is feeling the other person’s pain.

We have all had times in our life when narrating a difficult situation in our lives, had the other person bring to tears, that is emotional empathy, and we all have come across shrewd individuals who wish to leverage this inherent goodness with a cliche “emotional blackmail”, which technically is cognitive empathy.

In his book Fear Factor, author Abigail Marsh talks about the correlation of altruism(applied empathy) and fear. Shaped like almond the amygdala detects threats in your surroundings and brings out the fear response. An active amygdala is strongly related to the ability to recognise when others are experiencing fear.

When the amygdala is impaired, the fear response is absent, psychopaths have a dysfunctional amygdala which prevents them from understanding the moral implications and emotional consequences of their acts on their victims.

Robert Hare, a well known criminal psychologist interviewed a psychopath who had committed sexual assaults asking why he lacked empathy for his victims, he knew that his victims were uneasy, but he did not understand the concept of fear. Fear to him was never an unpleasant feeling.

Altruists reacted more strongly to expressions of fear, showing a keen awareness of the emotions in others. Fearfulness and bravery are two different aspects. Psychopaths are typically fearless and brave, while altruists are susceptible to fear, with an exception being they override their fearfulness when others need their help.

Another major biological component responsible for empathy is oxytocin — a peptide hormone that is linked to nurturing behaviour, it stimulates the inclination to protect a child. High oxytocin level prevents an individual from running away and to protect instead.

Another common habit with strong co-relation to empathy is the act of reading. While entertainment consumption forms like Movies and Soaps focus on external and superficial characteristics like attire, skin colour, accent, and stereotypical behaviour, books never have these interactive substitutes, it allows the reader to enter into the mind of individuals in a way that is very similar to how empathy works.

In his book Wired to Care, Dev Patnaik and Peter Mortensen showcase the growth of open empathy organisations, which focus solely on building connections with their customers. The example of Nike is used where they provide basketball courts, soccer pitches, and running tracks so that the staff has the opportunity to experience what their customers would face. Netflix provides a free subscription of it’s service to each of the employees. Harley Davidson headquarters is a haven for bike lovers. Between 1986 to 2006 the company experienced a double-digit growth while the rest US motor industry languished.

On the contrary, in the book Age of Empathy author Frans de Waal cites the example of Enron. The company devised a brutal system called Rank and Yank, where managers ranked employees on a five-point scale and fired everyone with 5, which led to 20% of the workforce being fired. The company as its strategy further went on to cause artificial blackout and shortages to increase the price. This cold-hearted strategy backfired and the company collapsed in 2001.

Said all above, the rant won’t be complete if the contrarian perspective is not put on the table. If you take a look at trends, there is a continual increase in the interest the word has got over a period of time. It appears to be a one-stop solution to all the pressing global problems.

Birds of a feather flock together, a citizen with left-political views would empathise with communists, and someone with right-views would align with his choice. It is extremely easy to exhibit one-sided empathy, and narrow-mindedness makes it further worse. We tend to feel very strong empathy for a small minority that we identify with, and arrive at decisions to harm the vast majority. Our empathy does not extend to the faceless statistic, this imbalance can lead to dangerous results.

A famous Chinese proverb by philosopher Mencius, poses a question: “If you were walking by a river and saw a child drowning, what would prompt you to rescue her?” The cliche empathy might be the first word, but the person, need not imagine the plight of the family after her death, they rescue her because it is the right thing to do. Logic, morality, spiritual faith, a religious upbringing or any other rationale can serve as a cause while doing the right thing.

Zell Kravinsky gave away $45 million to charities and donated one of his kidneys to a stranger. The odds of Kravinsky dying from a transplant surgery was 1 in 4000, and the recipient would die for sure, if he did not receive the kidney, the risk-reward analysis made it obvious to donate, and empathy was not quoted as a reason.

When in tears parents usually solace their child with the desired, but they know, it can not be done every time or else the child will be spoiled rotten. This serves as an example of how our empathy is concerned with the present and ignores future implications.

Let us consider how major charitable institutions are trying to solve global problems, by and large, the fixes are temporary and by doing that they make the other countries dependent on foreign aid, hindering the long-term development. Similar to giving a fish, and not teaching how to fish to meet hunger needs.

A current case is fixing the Ganga river water in India, while waterman of India Shri Rajendra Singh and Late Prof. G. D. Aggarwal demanded the government to create policies to rectify the flow of the river, the govt. instead chose to make it cleaner, and a majority of the population has empathised with the policy. As Shri Rajendra Singh describes, doing the latter is going to a dentist when you have a heart problem.

When it comes to making the right decisions, empathy comes in the way. Disgust is an enemy to empathy. Apathy is an enemy to love. Art lies in weighing them on the scale of rationality, before arriving at a decision and exercising the capacity of empathy within ourselves.