Empathy is a choice

So many choices.
[Landscape painting in water-colours via wikimedia]

Another followup to my post The Case Against Empathy, where I examined Paul Bloom's argument that empathy was less useful than simple respect.

The NY Times disagrees:

"While we concede that the exercise of empathy is, in practice, often far too limited in scope, we dispute the idea that this shortcoming is inherent, a permanent flaw in the emotion itself. Inspired by a competing body of recent research, we believe that empathy is a choice that we make whether to extend ourselves to others. The 'limits' to our empathy are merely apparent, and can change, sometimes drastically, depending on what we want to feel."

Of particular note for those of us who work in scenarios:

"Karina Schumann, Jamil Zaki and Carol S. Dweck found that when people learned that empathy was a skill that could be improved — as opposed to a fixed personality trait — they engaged in more effort to experience empathy for racial groups other than their own. Empathy for people unlike us can be expanded, it seems, just by modifying our views about empathy."

And once empathy can be a choice rather than a character trait, empathy can be practiced. Even if a learner already exhibits empathy, it is as important to reinforce good habits as it is to instill new ones. As I wrote in The Value of SPs, empathy remains a choice by rewarding the use of it.