Empathy: unfinished business or pending coursework? (EN)

(Lee aquí el post original en español)

Once again I was asked to translate a post, so here it is. I confess I did use Google translator this time. I was feeling a bit lazy to write it all over again. So, if you see any mistakes, please, let me know.

There is this ongoing debate about whether humans are capable of being genuinely altruistic or not. We can clearly distinguish two sides in this quarrel:

• Those who believe that all human motivation is basically selfish. Thus an individual who helps another does so because otherwise he would feel bad or guilty. The motivation to help is to reduce the negative emotional state (guilt) when not helping. However, if the person would find another way to reduce his/her discomfort (e.g. thinking that helping is not his/her responsibility), he/she will not help.
• Those who believe that the motivation to help others is based on empathy.

There are various definitions of empathy, but the following two are generally accepted by all experts:

• Cognitive empathy: is taking the perspective of another person (intellectually speaking). To put yourself in the shoes of the other.
• Emotional empathy: is to try to experience the same emotions that the other person is feeling, or to react emotionally to the same experiences that other person is living.

Numerous investigations have shown that having an empathic concern produces altruistic behavior. However, the most important discovery in this field is that empathy can be trained.

Through role-playing exercises empathy can be trained. Take the following experiment as an example. People were called into two groups. One group was told "try to take the place of another person," "try to feel what the other was feeling at a certain time", they were even asked to visualize it or write it down. Then they compared their behavior with another group of subjects who have not been trained. The results show that the people who were instructed to empathize with others helped them most of the times, in comparison to the other group who almost did not show any altruistic behavior. This type of experiments has been repeated in different contexts with the same results. People trained in empathy help and care more for others and they feel better about it.

Do you want to test your empathy? Have a look at the following test .

The Kitty Genovese Murder and Bystander Apathy (EN)

Kitty Genovese had driven home from her job working as a bar manager early in the morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m., she was approached by a 29-year-old African-American business machine operator who ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" He proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying, he raped her. He stole about $49 from her and left her in the hallway.

Her cry was heard by several neighbors but no one did anything to help during the 35 minutes of the attack.

Academic psychologists took a keen interest in the murder and launched a series of classic experiments investigating what it was later called the "bystander effect".