I NEVER PLANNED to study empathy. When I trained to be a social worker more than thirty-five years ago, I quickly discovered my passion was in what we call the macro side of practice—understanding communities and public policy. Empathy was for the clinicians and micro practitioners, which I was not. I was fascinated by the how and why behind government social programs. I had a million questions. Why do one in five children grow up in poverty in the richest country in the world? Why did it take one hundred years after the Civil War to pass civil rights legislation? Why are the indigenous people of this country, the first to live here, the poorest group among us? Why do we spend more per person on health care but have levels of health that are far below countries that spend much less? I loved going to my social welfare policy course to try and answer these questions. It was a passion that shaped my professional career. I went on to study political science, public policy, and urban sociology. I even spent a year working in Washington, DC. All these efforts were to help me better understand social public policies.
I became pretty proficient in that effort. I even wrote a textbook on social welfare policies and programs, now in its fourth edition. With all that knowledge, I still hit a snag when teaching about social public policies. I have been teaching for more than thirty years, and the course I have taught most frequently is about social welfare policies and programs. I have taught that course at all levels, from introductory students taking their first college class to graduate students studying to get their doctorate. My primary goals in that course are to help students understand why public policies look the way they do and to answer all those questions that had prompted me to pursue this line of study.
What makes this course special is that we ask what role we each take in the development of these public policies and in the programs that evolve from these policies. Our role as social workers includes a professional commitment to advance human rights. We are mandated to advocate for social, economic, and environmental justice. To do so requires stepping into the shoes of others, not just individually, but also into different social groups and communities to understand their unique experiences.
As much as I taught about being an active member of our community and the importance of seeing the world as others see it, I found some students who “got it” and other students who did not. Some students embraced seeing the world as others do, including the historical experiences of different groups and where they fit in our larger society. Others could not go there. They were comfortable trying to see an individual’s perspective, but they could not consider an entire group’s experiences. Both types of students were kind and caring people, most of whom were interested in or already committed to a career as a social worker. Why did some of my students feel strongly about the well-being of the larger society, interested in the needs of people who they did not even know, while others stayed away from that? Something was different. That question led me to study empathy and develop the concept of social empathy.
My first public professional mention of social empathy was in 2003 as part of a panel on poverty. I was fortunate to have two colleagues on that panel, Drs. Madelaine Adelman and Keith Kilty, who provided my first professional feedback on the concept. Keith was instrumental in helping me to get the idea published in the Journal of Poverty that we coedited at the time. Madelaine was and continues to be a wonderful sounding board and collaborator on developing what social empathy means and how to measure it among students. I am most grateful to Madelaine and Keith for their early critiques and encouragement.
I started a research sabbatical in 2008 with the goal of writing all about social empathy. I had begun to develop more fully the idea of social empathy with several published professional articles exploring the concept, but I didn’t know much about interpersonal empathy. When I dove into the literature on empathy, I discovered it was almost entirely focused on individuals, and I became overwhelmed. I was not proficient in psychology or behavioral biology, so the literature was thick and obtuse to me. Luckily, I had a friend and colleague, Dr. Karen Gerdes, who was also on a research sabbatical. We had a plan to meet once a week for breakfast to check in and help each other stay on track with our research projects. Over one of our early breakfasts I shared with Karen my distress over the volume of literature on empathy and that most of it required a better understanding of psychology than I felt I had. Karen was much more proficient in that area, so I asked her if she would be kind enough to do a little reading and help me develop a plan to tackle all that was out there. Karen is one of the most generous and kind people I have ever met, so I knew that asking her would mean a yes. I also did not want to take her off course of her own studies, but I felt at a loss and really needed her guidance. I hoped taking a week away from her studies would not be too much of a burden. Karen agreed to see what was out there and promised to report back at our breakfast the next week. Only a few days had passed when Karen called me to tell me how excited she was from her foray into empathy. She had found a whole new area of research on empathy that was coming from neuroscientists, experts at decoding the intricacies of how our brains work. It was research on empathy and brain imaging in its earliest stages. Karen had already been focused on how we learn and was intrigued by brain science, so this new research was fascinating and inviting to her. Over our next breakfast we talked all about what Karen had found, and over pancakes we both altered our research plans. We decided to forge ahead together to better understand all the aspects of empathy, from psychology, biology, and neuroscience, integrating our perspectives as social workers who study how human beings behave in the larger social environment. We had no idea where it would take us but were both excited to head off in this new direction.
My partnership with Karen grew into a research team and resulted in the most amazing collaborative work I have ever been involved in throughout my career. We were joined by Dr. Cynthia Lietz, an expert on family resilience who connected family well-being to empathy, and two doctoral students who are now professors in their own right, Dr. Alex Wagaman, who is an expert in community practice and helped shape the concepts behind social empathy, and Dr. Jen Geiger, who brought her psychology background and expertise on children and families. Our work led to the development of scales to measure empathy. That collective work is presented in our book Assessing Empathy, which provides the scholarship behind our development of scales to measure interpersonal and social empathy. This book on social empathy is built on that work, although I take full responsibility for the content. If there are mistakes or omissions, they are all my doing. But I am deeply indebted to my colleagues for the wisdom, work, and guidance that helped me get to the place of being able to write this book on social empathy.
Social empathy blends the individual ability to read and understand the feelings and actions of others with an understanding of history, the context within which human behavior happens, and the experiences of different societal groups. This book is designed to answer seven questions and closes with ways that social empathy can be a guide for understanding others to make the world a better place:
• What is empathy?
• Why do we need empathy?
• If it’s so important, why is empathy so hard?
• Are power and politics barriers to empathy?
• What if stress, depression, and other physical health factors block empathy?
• Where is religion in empathy?
• Can we have empathy with technology?
• Social empathy—Making the world a better place.
I have tried to explain the concept of social empathy and all the related ideas and research that have guided me in my thinking over the years. The process has been a true labor of love and has given me profound insight into the world. I am deeply indebted to all those who helped me along the way. In addition to my wonderful colleagues, I would like to thank my students and friends, with whom I have shared ideas and tried out early theories. I am thankful for my family, especially my sister, who listened to my theories and helped me develop the ideas in ways that are relevant to current events. I owe my deep interest into understanding others to my parents, who laid the foundation for my thinking on social empathy. I do hope I have captured the content and spirit of all those discussions and influences.
It is my hope that you find the journey through this book as helpful and as inspiring as I found writing it. Thank you for your willingness to explore with me the concept of social empathy.