What Helps Us Understand One Another?

Empathy has been represented in our societies and communities as the ability to understandand respond to another person’s experiences, yet it is a much more multifaceted skill.Empathy involves a number of processes, including attention, perspective-taking, emotionalregulation and responsiveness, as well as motivation. This paper examines and distinguishesthe conditions that foster or inhibit these processes and consider how empathy can becultivated across interpersonal and social contexts. As research suggests, attention, curiosity,perspective-taking, and motivation are some of the enabling factors that support empatheticexchanges. On the other hand, judgement, in-group and out-group bias, and emotionalexhaustion can make understanding others much more difficult. Most importantly, the paperdistinguishes false beliefs about empathy requiring emotional connection, agreement, or theabandonment of one’s own beliefs. Instead, viewing empathy as a capacity that is shapedboth by individual and environmental factors allows for people to create the conditions thatmake understanding easier, and therefore, foster empathy. This perspective has implicationsfor how empathy can be developed and encouraged within relationships, workforces,communities, and societies.