Evidence shows that shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change minds.
by PAUL SUTTER 

I encounter pseudoscience everywhere I go. And I have to admit, it can be frustrating. But in all my years of working with the public, I’ve found a potential strategy. And that strategy doesn’t involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method.

A seminal study from 2011 led by Professor Sara Konrath, Ph.D., a social psychologist specializing in empathy and altruism at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, found that empathy among Americans had taken a nosedive, with U.S. college students in 2009 scoring 40% lower than students in the late-1970s.

These early findings led to media headlines proclaiming “the end of empathy.”  The original study posited multiple theories – including changes in media and technology, changing parenting and family practices, and increasing expectations of success – as possible explanations for what appeared to be a general decline in American compassion and kindness.

LEADING WITH EMPATHY IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
 by Marie Benz MD 

In the fast-paced world of healthcare, where clinical skills and knowledge are paramount, the power of empathy in leadership can sometimes be overlooked. However, leading with empathy in the healthcare sector is not just a nice-to-have quality; it’s a pivotal trait that can shape patient outcomes, staff satisfaction, and the overall healthcare environment. This article delves into why empathy is crucial in healthcare leadership, supported by real-world insights and strategies to foster a culture of empathy.

by Jessica A. Stern
Joseph P. Allen
Our new research shows that parents who express empathy toward their teenagers may give teens a head start in developing the skill themselves. In addition, adolescents who show empathy and support toward their friends are more likely to become supportive parents, which may foster empathy in their own offspring.

How we did our work
The KLIFF/VIDA study at the University of Virginia has tracked 184 adolescents for more than 25 years: from age 13 well into their 30s.

Starting in 1998, teens came to the university every year with their parents and closest friend, and a team of researchers recorded videos of their conversations. Researchers observed how much empathy the mother showed to her 13-year-old when her teen needed help with a problem. We measured empathy by rating how present and engaged mothers were in the conversation, whether they had an accurate understanding of their teen’s problem, and how much help and emotional support they offered.

Empathy has long been seen as an important attribute for leaders, one that came even more to the fore during the pandemic. A September 2021 article by Tracy Bower for Forbes named this the ‘most important leadership skill’, citing research by Catalyst, which found empathy contributed to improvements in innovation, engagement, retention, inclusivity and work-life. It also said, according to another study by Qualtrics, that ‘when leaders were perceived as more empathetic, people reported greater levels of mental health’.

As the former editor-in-chief of Reuters, David Schlesinger said he found it harder to establish empathetic connections in large newsrooms or bureaus:

Also, why did the writers assume that the lack of empathy on the part of the robot makes it more efficient? Why not believe that having no emotions would lead to more mistakes? The writers made this very point themselves earlier in the film. When the machines used in the army were first introduced, one of the larger robots, the ED-209, shot an innocent boy with a butcher knife because it was unable to tell the difference between the terrorists and a teenager who couldn’t hurt it. So, while the writers make clear that emotions are one of Murphy’s greatest assets, we are still asked to assume that a machine would be faster because of its lack of feelings, not because of its physical construction.

BY LIDIA PERSKA
The Empathetic Potential of Artificial Intelligence
In a fast-paced world where emotional support may be scarce, a significant discovery has been made by researchers at the USC Marshall School of Business. They have unveiled that artificial intelligence (AI) could be more adept at providing the feeling of support and empathy to individuals than human-written communication.

Revolutionizing Emotional Support with AI

AI technology, particularly AI that is designed to parse language and identify emotional cues, has demonstrated an unexpected edge over humans when it comes to providing emotional support and understanding. AI’s capacity to listen without bias or distraction endows it with an almost surgical precision in detecting and responding to human feelings.

Listening To Understand
Patient engagement centers on the idea that patients and researchers must work together to create studies and programs that achieve the best outcomes. There are many different ways to engage patients in research, such as patient advisory committees, co-creating patient-facing materials, and involving patients when setting strategy, but I will not explore all of these now. However, the one thing they all have in common is they all start with listening to the patient.

Active listening is the first step in building trust because it indicates to the other person that you value their experience and that their effort is worth your time and attention. A quick internet search will show several different listening styles, and each style has pros and cons

We loved today’s discussion with Empathy Activist Rob Volpe, on how to channel our empathy for better customer service. It’s easy to get frustrated at customer service when things don’t go your way, but using a little empathy can help reach a positive outcome.

A study in 2021 found that 97% of customers said empathy is the most important element in customer engagement. It can be really difficult in those moments, because we can be more emotional than we might be otherwise. That’s why it’s important to use our empathy to get to a positive place.

An international network which is driving forward empathic healthcare across the world has staged its first ever meeting in Leicester.

The International Network for Empathy in Healthcare is made up of key empathic healthcare organisations and leaders from across the globe who are working together to encourage countries to put empathy at the heart of healthcare.

Enabling machines to communicate like humans is a long-term goal of open-domain dialogue generation. To achieve this goal, more and more studies on dialogue generation focus on the key factor, emotion. The empathetic dialogue system aims to recognize user's emotion and situation, then generates responses accordingly.

Such empathetic dialogue system can improve user’s experience and establish long-term human-machine interaction. However, the existing empathetic dialogue generation models ignore the continuity of parties' emotional expression in adjacent dialogue turns, resulting in inadequate emotional perception. Besides, the emotions involved in empathetic response are flexible, it is difficult to set the specific empathetic policy.

The Journey from Pragmatic to Empathetic AI

Originally focused on performing tasks efficiently and effectively (pragmatic AI), the field is now advancing towards creating machines that can understand and respond to human emotions (empathetic AI). This shift marks a significant evolution in AI technology, aiming to make machines more relatable and supportive in human interactions.

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a DM clip of his talk with cohost James Lindsay about Gad Saad telling Joe Rogan how America’s extreme empathy i

Researchers from Cornell University, Olin College, and Stanford University tested this theory by prompting CAs to display empathy while conversing with or about 65 distinct human identities.

Value Judgments and Harmful Ideologies
The team found that CAs make value judgments about certain identities – such as gay and Muslim – and can be encouraging of identities related to harmful ideologies, including Nazism.

“I think automated empathy could have tremendous impact and huge potential for positive things – for example, in education or the health care sector,” said lead author Andrea Cuadra, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.

But empathy is different, or so it seems. LLMs may give linguistic responses that appear empathic (such as, ‘I feel sorry’), but they are not equipped with complex, machine versions of the biology and psychology of empathy, which, in humans, involves the integration of internal regulatory mechanisms such as homeostatic processes and the control of neural pathways5. Unlike many instances of cognitive abilities, empathy often involves autonomic signals. Put facetiously, no LLM has shown changes in heart rate or the galvanic skin response when making empathic claims. Yet, although LLMs cannot feel empathy, they can use the language of empathy, and may induce real feelings and emotions within their human users.

The group also sent kindness-to-animals educational materials, including “Empathy Now,” a guide to preventing violence by young people, and its “Share the World” curriculum kit, which includes lessons that aim to foster empathy for animals and are appropriate for even the youngest learners. TeachKind is sending “Challenging Assumptions,” which helps examine discrimination and other social justice issues, for the district’s secondary students, along with a set of anti-bullying posters, too.

"by Hannah Storm

Empathy does not divest us of efficiency. Instead, it’s more likely to encourage it," writes Hannah Storm in this excerpt from her new book

I think that at the heart of any solid leadership lies empathy and the ability of leaders to engage with their employees in an empathetic way. And then organisational empathy, that allows people to take the time they need, provides the resources people need, doesn’t stigmatise things.

by Rhett Powe
When you empathize with customers, you develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with them. Empathy allows you to move raw past data points and start to see your buyers as real people. This doesn’t make your data any less important, of course. It simply allows you to see the “why” behind percentages and numbers.

You might think of empathy as a way to “read between the lines” when it comes to personalizing your consumer communications. When your emotional quotient (EQ) is high, you can better anticipate how to engage with customers. For instance, you might use empathy to know when to send reminders or recommendations at just the right moment. Or you might lean into your team’s EQ to identify which special offers and discounts would be levers to increase a customer’s purchasing habits — and simultaneously improve their lifetime value.

Businessolver's ninth annual State of Workplace Empathy report reveals 50% of employees have experienced a mental health issue in the past year, with Gen Z most concerning at 65%. CEOs report even higher mental health issues than the average employee at 55%, a 24-point jump over 2023 and a level not seen since the pandemic. Data likewise points to significant peer tension: a 23-point empathy gap between how employees and CEOs view each other and a 19-point gap between HR and CEOs.  

Despite these gaps, data overwhelmingly shows that all parties value empathetic behaviors in the workplace, however barriers persist to putting the empathy everyone values into tangible action. What will it take for today's organizations to walk the empathy talk? 

by Aimee Mckinnon

It’s the practice of being fully present and attuned to another’s experience, with the intent to understand and empathize rather than to respond or solve a problem immediately. This form of listening requires patience, openness, and a genuine desire to see the world through another’s eyes — to create a safe space where the other person feels seen, heard, and valued.

From my professional experience as a psychologist, I have observed that when people feel genuinely listened to, it creates a profound sense of trust and safety. Such environments are important for authentic communication and can lead to deeper, more meaningful relationships.

BY ADAM KROENER

Companies today face incredible challenges, and balancing factors like talent shortages, political debates, and increasing inflation coupled with the demand for better benefits is hard. Having empathy for an employee and providing an empathetic workplace — one that supports employee needs in such a divisive environment — is critical. Leadership is more than just being decisive, tough, confident or strong. A word many wouldn't instantly apply to leadership is "empathy," and yet, it is one of the most critical defining factors between successful leaders and those just making the grade.