Overcoming the empathy gap overcoming a societal lack of empathy

i want you to think about the last time

you had a conversation with someone that

felt like talking to a brick wall

if you actually can’t think of any

recent conversation like this

honestly i’m so happy for you but from

what i’ve seen and the 20 short years

i’ve been on this earth

most of us have had at least one

absurdly frustrating conversation

whether it was working retail doing a

school group project

or trying to convince a little kid that

you’re babysitting that

no you absolutely cannot put a metal

fork in an outlet

sure some of these stories are great

icebreakers

but dealing with someone that refuses to

hear what you’re saying takes a toll on

you

if you try to talk to someone who’s

decided hmm

actually i will make no attempt to

relate to you once

during this conversation you might get a

lot of back and forth

but very little comprehension or

learning

that’s not a real conversation but

that’s what happens with a lack of

empathy

which is precisely what i want to focus

on today

you see we live in a culture that kind

of encourages us to be terrible people

that is to say it’s really really easy

and

almost natural for us to downplay the

feelings of the people we surround

ourselves with

this explains how sometimes we do things

like tell our friends after they finally

open up to us

that their problems aren’t that bad or

ostracize a new kid at school

if they seem a little bit weird and then

make fun of the new kid for crying in

the bathroom every day at lunch

and on a completely unrelated note i was

not one of the people who enjoyed high

school

i guess you could say that was part of

the reason i grew to be really

interested

in what drives us to be terrible people

because one thing i kept observing over

and over almost like clockwork

is that all of our classrooms have these

cute inspirational posters on the walls

that say things like treat others the

way you want to be treated

and then it’s in these same classrooms

that you’ll hear kids

using every violent and historically

oppressive slur

under the sun and that does not check

out

like okay we were 14 and our prefrontal

cortexes weren’t fully developed

that could explain away the fights we

got into with our parents for no reason

sure but how do you explain an active

interest

in harming minorities like your average

angsty teenager

i turned to literature for clarity and

lo and behold

i found the answer apparently our

natural inclinations

towards being really mean people have a

biological basis

research shows evidence of an empathy

gap between members of an in-group

who are people that share the same

genetic cultural or ideological traits

and members of an app group

who don’t have these traits there’s an

actual difference in brain activity

and the amount of mirror neurons that

start firing

when we’re in a position to empathize

with someone who’s either part of an

in-group or an out group

and here’s the thing about the empathy

gap and in groups and

out groups our ability to a

understand the emotional states of

individuals in our lives

and b understand the conditions of

marginalized groups

they overlap much more than you might

think

the people in our lives are so so

diverse

they’re so different in terms of their

cultures family backgrounds and dynamics

their genders orientations and then all

the things that motivate them

and the stuff their dreams are made of

and all the baggage that they carry

and the obstacles they overcome every

day these traits are also unique

so i guess the reason that i find the

empathy gap being hardwired into our

biology such a

terrifying concept is because the way we

communicate with others

when we lack empathy is a tool we can

use to uphold

systems of oppression it sure explains a

lot of the ways that i’ve seen people

hurt each other and not care about it

when we lack empathy the fundamental

humanity of someone in and out group

isn’t a given it’s not immediately

obvious

it explains how every time my friends in

middle school made a joke about my skin

being darker than theirs they couldn’t

comprehend why i lashed out the way i

did

and told me to calm down and why i just

started to go along with it and join in

the self-deprecation

it’s because they never understand

my mom a new immigrant and also one of

the only immigrants in small town

newfoundland in 2007

took my sister to the playground when a

little girl came up to her and asked

are you an alien and my mom

still coping with the anxiety that comes

with hypervisibility

laughed because yeah this girl was only

like four and her parents

wouldn’t understand why they should

teach their daughter better than to ask

questions like that

because they just wouldn’t get it i

think of the friends that have come out

to me as we stayed up all night at

summer camp

and they’ve told me that they have to

hide this important piece of themselves

from their homophobic parents

for the rest of their lives and just

accept the fact that their parents are

going to miss 1 000 of their important

firsts and that they have to lie when

they get asked questions like

what happened at school today because

they won’t get it i think of every

single story from a woman that i care

about

where they tell me how they suffered

from a serious incident of gendered

violence

and i am sure i have now heard a million

of these stories

and it kills me each and every time when

they just have to come to terms with the

fact

that a lot of men in their lives will

seriously hurt them

and they just have to deal with it

through gritted teeth because

they won’t get it and that’s not an

inclusive list

it barely scratches the surface

these negative experiences were all

caused by a lack of empathy

which led to a breakdown in the way that

people interacted with members of out

groups

after all empathy facilitates social

understanding and shapes our

interactions

and it is through our interactions with

others that we design

the blueprints of our identities and my

identity is built of all my hopes

and ambitions and all my experiences and

memories

and also all of my damage whether it’s

sudden changes i faced or

self-esteem issues or personal losses

that have shaped me into who i am

but then there’s another type of damage

i don’t tend to acknowledge

which occurs when i accept that they

won’t get it

it keeps coloring all of my interactions

and i’d be lying if i said it didn’t do

a number on my mental health

they don’t understand my fundamental

humanity

i have to prove it constantly as a

student employee

artist friend whatever everything i

build myself up to be means so little

when i realize

nobody is going to give me that

fundamental humanity

yeah i can get the awesome position i’ve

been dreaming of

after spending forever preparing for the

interview and then yeah

that same night people can joke about

how i’m just a diversity hire

the work i put in means nothing to them

but hey

why should i complain i’ve known those

were the rules of the game since i was

born

the empathy gap dictates to us that if

you’re a member of an out group that

faces systemic

widespread forms of stigma then the

traits the

genetic cultural or ideological traits

that are so essential to your identity

these are the parts of you that are

wrong i talked about the bigotry of

middle school kids and homophobic

parents

because their bigotry didn’t just cause

some hurt feelings and

don’t get me wrong those hurt feelings

do matter

so much but their bigotry is also one of

the many channels

that society as a whole uses to

reinforce the way we think

feel and most importantly act in

response to people different than us

racism xenophobia patriarchy

all these different systems of

oppression flourish

when we decide people aren’t even worth

trying to relate to

and then we put these unfair

expectations on members of our groups to

just

persevere in the face of opposition sure

some of us will be able to accept

ourselves despite everyone telling us

how wrong we are

but frankly not everyone has the

resilience to thrive in an environment

where even their family and friends

reject them the people who are supposed

to understand them

is it hard to conceptualize take the

girl who found out she just has to work

with a bunch of people that spent their

night making fun of her for being

the diversity hire she has a couple of

options in front of her

she could bring it up to her superiors

or confront her colleagues directly

but at what cost she’s the only person

of color in that whole group so she

thinks to herself

yeah they probably wouldn’t even get why

that’s such a slap in the face to me

they won’t know how to deal with it and

i’ll look like a crybaby

worse all look like the aggressor and be

swiftly removed from the team

so she instead chooses to swallow her

hurt feelings pretend nothing ever

happened

and keep working with the people that

only see her as

the diversity hire i did all of that a

little while ago and honestly it’s one

of the stupidest things i’ve ever done

i shouldn’t have had to do that so i

sincerely hope at this point you agree

with me when i say that the concept of

the empathy gap sucks

like maybe as a 14 year old nihilist i

happily accept the thought of this

cognitive bias

wreaking havoc on the interpersonal

relationships of anyone who belongs to

an outgroup

but that had a lot more to do with the

fact that i was so desperate for some

type of answer

as to why such a thing even happened

as a slightly more well-read 20 year old

i now realize that systems of oppression

are complex and don’t just stem from the

formation of in groups and out groups

as a slightly more impatient 20 year old

i’m also tired of making excuses for

people that

choose not to relate to me because of

things i will never be able to control

offering empathy to someone else even in

the face of difference

that’s the bare minimum this traditional

notion that we are born

either being really good at empathy or

really bad empathy is one i’m sick

of we are not static beings and we as a

collective

can change our approach to empathy by

viewing it as a decision

we make every time we’re in an

empathetically challenging situation

we can either choose to disengage from

putting in relational effort

or we can choose to engage with our

emotional state and

actively invest our energy into being

empathetic

if we’re the victims of a natural maybe

evolutionary instinct to ostracize

others

that means we need to put in the work to

understand others

because empathy is not as automatic as

we make it out to be

but it starts with willingness you’ve

got to be willing to spend time talking

to someone who might otherwise be

excluded

and you’ve got to be willing to talk to

them in a genuine and positive way

so that you might start to understand

the full range of their complexity

what unique perspective do they offer

what’s their history

what’s their sense of humor like you

can’t ask more questions

you can be a better listener there are

so many ways in which we can make

legitimate attempts to be more

empathetic

and override what we consider an

automatic lack of empathy

making this effort is crucial because

it’s the way we can reduce stigma

reduce conflict and produce more

positive social outcomes

accepting and being yourself becomes so

much easier

when you finally feel like someone’s

listening to you

when one of my classmates finally stood

up to my friends and told them to stop

making racist jokes

and you know didn’t even shy away from

using the word racist

i felt like i got my voice back when the

people in small town newfoundland

saw that my mom felt shy about speaking

english because she wasn’t fluent yet

they would constantly go out of their

way to talk and make conversation with

her

get to know her as a person and make her

feel comfortable and these days she

actually won’t stop talking

we owe it to everyone else in this world

to fully be able to empathize with them

i want so badly to be recognized as a

complex human being

and i know i’m not the only one who

feels this way so strongly and so

desperately

the relationship between our personal

interactions and social hierarchies is

complicated

but if we stop allowing implicit biases

to influence the way we

interact with the people in our lives we

render this one tool of oppression

powerless and when we give people their

fundamental humanity

we’re able to develop the resiliency

that allows us

as a diverse and wildly different set of

people

to survive in the face of conflict and

sometimes it’s just as easy as having

a real conversation with someone that’s

why i’m a firm advocate for overcoming

the empathy gap