Parenting | Why reshaping our empathy matters

If we want to impart a healthy sense of justice to our children that is unadulterated by notions of groupism, perhaps expanding our own empathy is key

I had written a couple of weeks ago about how empathy, far from being a virtue, is a rather primal, tribalistic emotion that makes us prefer people we perceive as belonging to the same group as us, at the cost of others. So do we just shrug our shoulders and say "I'm sorry, but my biology causes me to like you less simply because you belong to a different group than I do"? Perhaps not. Isn't a defining feature of humankind that we can attempt to overcome those "animal" instincts that we feel are detrimental to us? This has important implications for how we bring up our kids.

Studies have shown that simply redefining which group we belong to, and thus widening our circles, has the capacity to reshape our empathy. Scientists found that when football fans were made to write about their love of football rather than their love of a particular team, they were far more likely to help a person wearing an opposing team's jersey. At least in this case, by just being reminded of their common love for soccer, the ‘soccer fan’ identity superseded the narrower ‘Team X fan’ identity in terms of in-group empathy.

Enlarging our circles

The greater we make our imagined circles, the more diverse the set of people we can empathise with. All it possibly takes for us to become less parochial in our empathy is to see ourselves less as belonging to a narrow group (be it religious, or nationalistic, or racial), and more as belonging to the human tribe.

Let’s see how this plays into the current situation around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed flaws in the preparedness and medical systems of a few countries in the West, but in India it seems poised to expose some of our most deep-seated biases. Everyone in India by now has seen heart-wrenching images of migrant workers across the country attempting to reach their hometowns on foot, following the lockdown orders that left thousands without access to public transport.

A number of ‘educated’ Indians took to Twitter to register their outrage against the migrant workers for being irresponsible enough to crowd bus stations. That the workers were out of jobs, had no savings to speak of and probably more likely to survive this phase in their hometowns, didn't even seem to cross the Twitteratis' minds. Why would anyone undertake a 500-km journey on foot if not in desperation?

Researchers at Stanford University developed a virtual reality simulation of what it must feel like to be homeless. People going through the simulation encounter a variety of circumstances that a homeless person might encounter during their lives – being evicted from their homes, or being forced to spend the night in a car or in public transport. People who had undergone the virtual reality simulation developed longer-lasting compassion for homeless people than control subjects, and were far less likely to dehumanise the homeless.

Exercising our ‘empathy muscles’

For those of us who do not have the access to virtual reality simulations, though, scientists have identified a few ways in which we can perhaps exercise our ‘empathy muscles’. There's a good deal of evidence to show that reading narrative fiction, which helps us see the world through the eyes of a person different from us, can enhance empathy. So can theatre and other performing arts that require a person to pretend to be someone else for a short period of time.

Of course, for all the literature and theatre to be successful at reshaping our empathy, we'd probably have to read/watch widely. Maybe the next time you have a chance, pick up a book or watch a Netflix series about an individual as different from yourself as possible. Reading about lives that have nothing in common to our own has the capability to transform the way we think about the world and the people in it.

It's a little hard, however, to believe that in a country like India, we'd have to read about other people's lives in order to empathise with them. India offers us the opportunity to widen our circles of empathy every single day – how can we believe that only our reality is the truth when we come across hundreds of people less fortunate every day? Isn't one conversation with our house maids all it takes to empathise with those facing different circumstances than us?

Children learn from their parents

In a strange way, our reluctance to see people less fortunate than us as human beings with feelings could be a defensive mechanism. In an interview, Jamil Zaki, a psychologist at Stanford University, gives the example of people crossing the street to avoid an encounter with a homeless person because they'd rather not come face-to-face with their suffering and feel bad. Interestingly, he goes on to say, what happens at the level of individuals also shows itself at the level of groups or even nations.

This defensive dehumanisation happens especially if a person feels that the group they belong to is responsible for the suffering of others. When I’m in my car and I see a beggar asking for money, it’s easier for me to tell myself that they’re probably part of a big scam, or that they’re lazy, rather than admit to myself that the accident of birth has simply made one of us more fortunate than the other. Instead of letting my empathy turn into a sort of self-loathing or guilt, I protect myself by dehumanising the beggar.

Psychologists in the 1950s conducted a study in which they asked a group of people to repeatedly give a small electric shock to another set of people. The ones administering the shock, the study found, were likely to say that they did not like the people they were inflicting pain upon. It's almost as if they were convincing themselves that since the shock-receiving group were bad people, they deserved it.

For parents, all this is a delicate balance. We’d want our children to grow up and have empathy that is not defined by the narrow groups they belong to, while at the same time, wanting to protect them from feeling other people’s pain too much. And ideally of course, we’d like them to not have to resort to dehumanising people in a twisted attempt to make themselves feel better. In order for us parents to impart a healthy sense of justice to our children that is unadulterated by notions of groupism, perhaps expanding our own empathy is key.

If the realisation that children are not born within-group vs out-group notions is comforting for us parents, it is also humbling to realise that we have a responsibility to shape their empathy in a positive, humanistic manner.

(Perspectives on parenting from a neuroscientist mom who has discovered that her two-year-old is the ideal study subject)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.