How we can cultivate empathy

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Rachel Brougham | Community Columnist

If you follow news headlines, use social media or just live in the world, you may have noticed a worrisome trend over the last few years. It seems as if America has a lack of empathy.

The idea of empathy seems pretty basic. By definition, it’s the ability of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another. Of course it doesn’t mean that you must agree with everyone and everything to be empathetic, but you must be willing to listen and open to someone else’s feelings and experiences.

A study from 2010 found Americans were less empathetic than their counterparts just 30 years earlier. And if you look at empathy in 2024, whooooo boy we have some work to do.

Take the feelings of teenagers for example.

Sixty percent of female students in America said they experienced “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” according to a study released in 2021 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 70 percent of LGBTQ students said they experienced the same feelings. In 2021, 42 percent of high school students felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities.

Yet there seems to be a trend of people expressing their feelings and being told — in very impolite terms I can’t say here — that nobody cares. It seems as if we’ve become a society marked by division and no desire to be tolerant toward one another.

Our polarized politics don’t make matters any better. Those on the left and those on the right can’t have even the most basic of conversations anymore, let alone find any common ground on a particular topic.

So how did we get here? It could be for a number of reasons: More people live alone, we’re working harder and longer to make ends meet, social media gives us a skewed view of the world and has a tendency to objectify and isolate people. Don’t even get me started on the negativity we see in the news each day. We live in what is very much an us versus them world.

So what do we do? Can we make America empathetic again? The American Psychological Association has a few suggestions on how to cultivate empathy.

◦ First, be willing to grow by asking questions and listening, especially in situations where you feel different from others.

◦ Expose yourself to differences. Read articles from sources you wouldn’t normally follow. Be present when in situations where you particulate in someone else’s culture.

◦ Identify common ground. Research shows that when we are placed in a group or on a team with other who differ from ourselves, it can trigger positive feelings for those who you once perceived as different.

◦ And don’t forget to ask questions. If you find yourself struggling with empathy, it may not be because you don’t care, but rather that you don’t understand the other perspective.

As we as a nation talk about how we can come together for the greater good, it seems clear we all need to do a bit better. And it starts with empathy.

Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.

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