How the Discipline of Psychology Has Contributed to Our Understanding of Empathy - Coursework Example

Psychology and Empathy Development of the discipline of psychology has contributed a lot into human understandingof multiple concepts and universal principles of behaviour. One of crucial concepts that have been analyzed by multiple psychologists is the concept of empathy. Psychology has revealed a few different definitions of empathy, which might be considered through opposite aspects of human feelings and behavioural patters. Thus the discipline of psychology not only developed people’s understanding of empathy, but also taught how to apply the knowledge of empathy in multiple aspects of human life. The phenomenon of empathy has always made philosophers and psychologists of all times to be curious about reasons why people tend to understand each other’s feelings and why some of them are capable of doing it better than others. However, discussion around the matter has led to division of opinions concerning the definition of empathy. Some scientists claim that empathy is person’s ability to put oneself on somebody else’s place and feel the same way another person feels, so in fact this means feeling of another person. Regarding the definition the most familiar feelings that people tend to experience are sympathy and compassion; having these feelings towards another person means co-experiencing one’s situation and current emotional condition (Show, 2000). Nevertheless it doesn’t always mean that being able to experience the feelings of another would define a person who is capable of empathy. The point is that sometimes the feeling of compassion requires a precise understanding of the essence of the problem that another person is involved in (Darwall, 1998).Thus it means that a person feels compassion not because of matching oneself with another person’s feelings, but because of being in the same trouble before. In such definition of empathy experience plays crucial role and empathy has nothing to do with some special mental ability to experience the same feelings as somebody else does. Another problem here is that empathy is often being confused with such feelings as sympathy and compassion, which are different in their essences. The second major definition of empathy, presented by another group of psychologists, asserts that empathy is a specific ability of human mind that allows a person who has it to be sensitive to others’ emotions and feelings by discerning their nonverbal signs (intuitively or by learning them) (Macarov, 1978). The definition was presented by cognitive psychologists that claimed that empathy can be learned as a skill (Goldman, 1992). The definition points on the fact that understanding of emotions of other people (distinction of emotional nonverbal signs) triggers the same emotions in the observer. This realization of another person’s emotions becomes a stimulus for brain to turn on similar body language actions so that this person starts emotionally feel the same emotions as well. Human ability to feel for somebody works because of identification of oneself with another person and transferring one’s personality into other person’s circumstances (Snow, 2000). This definition causes certain contradictions, because it is acknowledged that human emotions are centered in mind and they are consequences of beliefs and specific perception of the world; although imitation of other people’s emotions means certain depersonalization, because in fact a person needs to look at the world with somebody else’s eyes. However, if to state that empathy is the result of human imitative capacity, it turns out that emotions might be produced by simple imitation like a kind of role playing, which more looks like emotional contagion than empathy; because such emotions are artificial, when emphatic feelings are natural and a person experiences them for real. All the definitions are the results of consistent psychological researches on the matter that have revealed certain behavioural patterns and common factors in appearance of such phenomenon as empathy. However, the point is in the ways in which people apply all the kinds of empathy mentioned above within multiple aspects of discipline psychology and how the understanding of empathy, developed by psychologists, works in real life situations. Each and every branch of psychology applies all the kinds of empathy in their strategies for explanation of multiple behavioral patterns. In the field of individual psychology the concept of empathy has caused a major discussion concerning the roots and origins of it. Thus some psychologists state that empathy has altruistic motives and a person who feels for someone is directed by desire to be helpful and make other people’s lives better. Others argue that empathy results from the fact that a person always acts for self-centered purposes and strives to get personal profit from everything (May, 2011). Psychological egoism as a motive for people’s actions is opposite to psychological altruism; it terms of empathy both egoism and altruism might be explanations of the phenomenon of empathy. Batson (1991) conducted a series of psychological experiments on the matter of motives for empathy and revealed that empathy has altruistic roots. He called his theory the empathy-altruism hypothesis and it claimed that people ultimately want to increase others’ well-being, so empathy evokes the inner feelings that make a person want to help another person in order to make one’s life better (by reducing one’s suffering) (May, 2011). Notwithstanding later Batson discovered that empathy doesn’t obligatory mean psychological altruism. The point is that there is a specific kind of human relationships that can be described as empathy-helping. It means that perceiving another being in need makes a person help the one who needs either feeling sorry for the person or feeling nothing. Thus such behavioural pattern doesn’t explain any psychological motives that are at the back of such actions (May, 2011). Explanation of empathy with egoistic motives also has certain difficulties as there are not enough of consistent experimental proofs that it is egoism which makes people feel for somebody and help others. However, psychologists claim that most of human motives are absolutely unconscious, that’s why it is difficult to extract the real stimuli that control human conduct (May, 2011). For instance, researches conducted by Cialdini et al. (1997) show that there is no proof that actions that seem to be consequences of human altruistic nature really are altruistic in their essence. However, it doesn’t also mean that these actions are based on egoistic stimuli, they just might be non-altruistic. One way or another the matter concerns whether human nature is good or bad, which is a huge discussion. It is possible to take a look at this discussion from another perspective, which concerns relation between empathic capability and morality. Some developmental psychological researches on children tried to explain how empathy is related to children’s learning of moral principles (Goldman, 1992). It is obvious that in order to be moral it is important to understand the universal ethical principle “do as you would be done by”, which in fact is based on both empathy and egoism. Researchers found out that in the age of four children start discerning human emotions and feelings by learning human mentalistic language that includes facial expressions and body language of the people from their environment. Thus they can discern when adults are not satisfied with their actions and change their conduct in accordance with social requirements. This means that morality is a result of cognitive perception and when children do something good for others it doesn’t mean they do it because of empathy or realization of morality as rational necessity but because they’ve learned that helping others is a good thing (Goldman, 1992, pag. 19). In terms of developmental psychology empathy could be taught, so matching oneself with others is a consequent method of realization but not feeling the same way as another person feels. However, such explanation destroys any theory of human motives that result from intrinsic human nature which now is not either good or bad, but is the result of learning (Macarov, 1978). Another perspective from which empathy is considered in psychology is process of psychological counseling. The phenomenon of counseling itself is based on emphatic understanding of somebody else’s feelings and helping with managing those using different psychological measures. Different counseling methods are mostly based on emphatic exercises and activities that first help a counselor to extract a patient’s emotions and concerns and then get rid of negative feelings, replacing them with positive perceptions of the world. Excellent example of empathic-based counseling is pastoral counseling. The article “Interventions that Apply Scripture in Psychotherapy” written by Fernando Garzon (2005) reveals the advantages of scriptures’ usage in counseling and proposes some emphatic methods of overcoming negative mental conditions using empathy. The point of the therapy is that a patient should first realize his harmful beliefs, which are to be changed in the behavioral stage of the therapy. Then he is supposed to identify oneself with a Biblical hero (a righteous one) and reconsider one’s own feelings and beliefs through biblical characters’ stories (Garzon, 2005). For instance, if a patient suffers from loss of a beloved person, a counselor suggests the one to imagine oneself a God, who also has lost his beloved son Jesus, but he did that because it was needed for important purposes. Despite being angry and upset, God let his child die for others’ sake and this saved the entire mankind. Thus putting oneself on God’s place and imagining His feelings makes person match his personality with someone else’s personality and by following the biblical pattern of getting rid of such feelings the patient gets relief. In terms of counseling emphatic capability helps people to realize that there are many people with the same problems and if those people could overcome them, they are also able to do this. In fact, this proves that empathy has egoistic motives and can actually save human mentality from commotion. In terms of social psychology empathy should be considered in two aspects which are interpersonal and social empathy. Interpersonal empathy is the core of human relationships, because in order for them to be valid people should understand each other and be able to read others’ moods. When one person realizes the internal state of another, the one becomes able to respond to the other’s inherent condition with an appropriate action (Segal et.al., 2013). If wasn’t empathy involved in the process of interpersonal relations, people wouldn’t be able to construct their behavioral patterns and wouldn’t guess what another person is thinking about. This would have made human communication impossible. Neurological researches showed that human brain has neurological pathways that are able to simulate psychological experiences of others (Segal et.al., 2013). The affective response doesn’t obligatory work in direct interpersonal communication as empathy to real people; it may also appear when a person watches movies, reads books or even observes works of art. The ability to co-experience the same feelings as the movie characters are stimulated by the same emphatic impulses, even though rationally the person realizes that the heroes are unreal. This proves that empathy’s origins lie in human unconscious. Another way how empathy might appear while interpersonal communication is during imagining by the person a story retold by another person about events and feeling these events have caused in somebody. The process is called affective mentalizing and it is very helpful in interpersonal communication, because it allows human beings to realize and develop perceptions of other people (Segal et.al., 2013, pag. 132). In fact while making decision about how to act in each situation concerning interaction with another person, one always uses this ability in order to predict the person’s response to their actions. Also, such thing as perspective-taking, which means walking in another’s shoes, help people to understand feelings of others in regards to some situation and make their conclusions about whether they would act this or that way if the same happened to them. From this perspective empathy plays role of a supportive tool for human wisdom learning. The concept of social empathy concerns people’s living in societies and is one of the core things that political and social lives are based on. Social empathy requires from people to apply their emphatic insights in terms of large social groups and relations between them and their members (Segal et.al., 2013, pag. 131). The empathy is a basis for social contract that provides people with certain unwritten code of conduct that they need to follow within society. As far as empathy is also one of the roots of ethical behavior, living in society demands emphatic abilities, otherwise people wouldn’t understand what ethical and social norms are for. Psychological researches on social empathy show that empathy is the reason why people have started fighting with discrimination and different kinds of prejudice towards others’ differences (Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005). In fact there are many realms engaged with social psychology that exist because of the phenomenon of empathy. For instance, such thing as political strategy (in particular that realm of it that concerns tools for political manipulations) is basically premised on evoking of empathy in people when it is needed for political purposes. Psychological researches revealed that empathy plays a great role in people’s choice during presidential elections (Shogan, 2009). People are more likely to vote for the candidates that either base their pre-election campaigns on emotionally touching measures like helping poor people or donating to charity organizations, or those who have previously experienced some difficulties and managed to overcome them to serve other people. It turns out that empathy makes people identify themselves with political candidates in order to chose which one of them would be better for running a country; furthermore, they start considering the candidates’ personal qualities as main factors which are supposed to reveal humanistic nature of candidates. Humanistic nature here is also estimated by empathic ability. Another huge realm of social psychology that analyzes empathy is mass psychology. The sociological contagion theory claims that crowd has a special hypnotic influence on its members, so the same moods are rapidly spread within a crowd (Levy & Nail 1993). One of the reasons why it happens might be explained by the phenomenon of emotion contagion which basis lies in human empathy. However, emotion contagion is not empathy itself. The difference between them is in human ability of emotion regulation, which helps people not get overwhelmed by somebody else’s emphatically adopted emotions (Segal et.al., 2013). In terms of politics empathy frequently becomes a trigger for either huge conflicts or mass organizational tendencies (Moses, 1985). When people find out that something terrible has happened to other people, like massive catastrophe or even simple discrimination, they may feel different emotions concerning the events and feel for the people in trouble. This might make people organize mass movements, strikes, or even make them go to war to rescue others. Thus empathy is a core for social responsibility and organization and is involved in every aspect of social life. Empathy is a concept of multiple meanings and it might be applied regarding different aspects of human existence. Psychology as a discipline contributed a lot to our understanding of this phenomenon and not only explained its meaning concerning both individual and social aspects of human life but also found out multiple ways of using empathy for different purposes. References Batson, C. D. (1991). The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Levy, D.A., and Nail, P.R. (1993) “Contagion: A theoretical and empirical review and reconceptualization”. Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs .119, 235-183. Segal, E.A., Cimino, A.N.,Gerdes, K.E.,Harmon, J.K., and Wagaman, M.A. (2013). "A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Interpersonal and Social Empathy Index". Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 4(3), 131-153. Snow, N.E. (2000). "Empathy". American Philosophical Quarterly, 37(1), 65-78. May, J. (2011). "Egoism, Empathy, and Self-Other Merging". Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49, 25-39. Goldman, A.I. (1992). "Empathy, Mind, and Morals". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 66(3), 17-41. Macarov, D. (1978). "Empathy: The Charismatic Chimera". Journal of Education for Social Work, 14(3), 86-92. Darwall, S. (1998). "Empathy, Sympathy, Care". Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 89(2/3), 261-282. Shogan, C.J. (2009). "The Contemporary Presidency: The Political Utility of Empathy in Presidential Leadership". Presidential Studies Quarterly, 39(4), 859-877. Galinsky, A. D., Ku, G., & Wang, C. S. (2005). Perspective taking and self-other overlap: Fostering social bonds and facilitating social coordination. Group Process and Intergroup Relations, 8(2), 109-124. Moses, R. (1985). "Empathy and Dis-Empathy in Political Conflict". Political Psychology, 6(1), 135-139. Garzon, F. (2005). "Interventions that Apply Scripture in Psychotherapy". Journal of Psychology and Theology, 33(2), 113-121. Read More