Empathy: Why Does it Matter?

Empathy and Why it is Important

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace of joy or freedom for me…In the long run, there can be no joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all.” – Frederick Buechner

Sounds similar to words spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The word Empathy comes from the Greek word “pathos”, meaning feeling.

Empathy means “in”, so empathy is holding “in feeling” with someone else.

The world is also connected to one of Aristotle’s three forms of persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Pathos is using an argument that has emotional appeal, and it is one of the three foundations for building an argument. (Logos is utilizing facts and logic, and ethos is establishing credibility.)

Researchers have formulated a number of measures and scales exist to measure empathy: Likert, Hogan, Jefferson scale of empathy, Epsteins questionnaire, and the Toronto empathy questionnaire.

We can also look at actions and results, which are a direct result of “empathy”.

Listening, caring, actions, directives, and policies that reflect a concern for fellow human beings are born from seeds of empathy. The fruit of empathy are hands that hold, hearts that care, and ears that listen, resulting in policies and guidelines that reflect the feelings of empathy.

What is the importance of empathy?

In the workplace, empathy is considered essential. [1]

Empathy can be a tool for equity [2]
Empathy softens teachers’ biases.[3]

Empathetic listening is important in racial conversations.[4]

Empathy diminishes prejudice.[5]

Empathy can be taught; it can be practiced.[6] Of course, to say that empathy is the single solution is simplistic because it takes more than empathy (a feeling) to eradicate racism. But one way to help foster a sense of empathy is through storytelling. It’s been documented that those who read more fiction are more empathetic. Stories can reach places that facts cannot; they help us to feel and to understand others’ experiences who are different from us. Stories are powerful. Stories give us a variety of perspectives and deepen our insights.

Furthermore, we’re missing something another element of empathy in our current age: embodied interaction, active, embodied listening, and in-person dialogue. It’s harder to hate our neighbors when they are sitting right next to us when we are looking each other in the eyes, when we have a chance to ask questions, listen to each other’s stories, and seek to understand a different perspective. After dealing with a pandemic, years of deep polarization that didn’t get better with isolation, and lives in the U.S. that are increasingly solitary and less socially connected, we are suffering from a lack of empathy.

Often a tragedy brings us closer; we draw together when we see horrific injustice streamed on digital media. But we shouldn’t have to witness more vicarious trauma to bring us to that point. Being human ought to be enough.

Our lives are interwoven whether we agree or not, whether we can see it or not. Empathy is agreeing that if someone else is in pain, then we are also. Empathy agrees that if one of us doesn’t have freedom or peace, then we don’t either. It’s much harder to hate when we are working and living near those who are different from us. We can more clearly see that our lives are interwoven like fabric, and if one piece is torn, the entire piece is at risk.