Empathy is inexpensive and brings surprising benefits. It takes a little bit of practice and intent. Mainly, it involves stating the obvious assumption about the other person’s experience and desires. Offer things you think they’d want and that you’d be willing to give. Let them agree or correct you. This creates a good context in which high-value trades can occur, without needing an conscious, overriding, selfish goal to guide you from the start.
I think whether it’s inexpensive isn’t that obvious. I think it’s a skill/habit, and it depends a lot on whether you’ve cultivated the habit, and on your mental architecture.
Active listening at a low level is fairly mechanical, and can still acrue quite a few benefits. Its not as dependent on mental architecture as something like empathic listening. It does require some mindfulness to create the habit, but for most people I’d put it on only a slightly higher level of difficulty to acquire than e.g. brushing your teeth.
Empathy isn’t like brushing your teeth. It’s more like berry picking. Evolution built you to do it, you get better with practice, and it gives immediate positive feedback. Nevertheless, due to a variety of factors, it is a sorely neglected practice, even when the bushes are growing in the alley behind your house.
I don’t think what I’m calling empathy, either in common parlance or in actual practice, decomposes neatly. For me, these terms comprise a model of intuition that obscures with too much artificial light.
In that case, I don’t agree that the thing you’re claiming has low costs. As Raemon says in another comment this type of intuition only comes easily to certain people. If you’re trying to lump together the many skills I just pointed to, some are easy for others and some harder.
If however, the thing you’re talking about is the skill of checking in to see if you understand another person, then I would refer to that as active listening.
Of course, you’re right. This is more a reminder to myself and others who experience empathy as inexpensive.
Though empathy is cheap, there is a small barrier, a trivial inconvenience, a non-zero cost to activating it. I too often neglect it out of sheer laziness or forgetfulness. It’s so cheap and makes things so much better that I’d prefer to remember and use it in all conversations, if possible.
Empathy is inexpensive and brings surprising benefits. It takes a little bit of practice and intent. Mainly, it involves stating the obvious assumption about the other person’s experience and desires. Offer things you think they’d want and that you’d be willing to give. Let them agree or correct you. This creates a good context in which high-value trades can occur, without needing an conscious, overriding, selfish goal to guide you from the start.
FWIW, I like to be careful about my terms here.
Empathy is feeling what the other person is feeling.
Understanding is understanding what the other person is feeling.
Active Listening is stating your understanding and letting the other person correct you.
Empathic listening is expressing how you feel what the other person is feeling.
In this case, you stated Empathy, but you’re really talking about Active Listening. I agree it’s inexpensive and brings surprising benefits.
I think whether it’s inexpensive isn’t that obvious. I think it’s a skill/habit, and it depends a lot on whether you’ve cultivated the habit, and on your mental architecture.
Active listening at a low level is fairly mechanical, and can still acrue quite a few benefits. Its not as dependent on mental architecture as something like empathic listening. It does require some mindfulness to create the habit, but for most people I’d put it on only a slightly higher level of difficulty to acquire than e.g. brushing your teeth.
Fair, but I think gaining a new habit like brushing your teeth is actually pretty expensive.
Empathy isn’t like brushing your teeth. It’s more like berry picking. Evolution built you to do it, you get better with practice, and it gives immediate positive feedback. Nevertheless, due to a variety of factors, it is a sorely neglected practice, even when the bushes are growing in the alley behind your house.
I don’t think what I’m calling empathy, either in common parlance or in actual practice, decomposes neatly. For me, these terms comprise a model of intuition that obscures with too much artificial light.
In that case, I don’t agree that the thing you’re claiming has low costs. As Raemon says in another comment this type of intuition only comes easily to certain people. If you’re trying to lump together the many skills I just pointed to, some are easy for others and some harder.
If however, the thing you’re talking about is the skill of checking in to see if you understand another person, then I would refer to that as active listening.
Of course, you’re right. This is more a reminder to myself and others who experience empathy as inexpensive.
Though empathy is cheap, there is a small barrier, a trivial inconvenience, a non-zero cost to activating it. I too often neglect it out of sheer laziness or forgetfulness. It’s so cheap and makes things so much better that I’d prefer to remember and use it in all conversations, if possible.