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How’s Your Empathy Holding Up?
My company, Public Words, has been running an empathy quiz for the past 2 years, and we now have 2,000 responses. So it’s time to check in with the numbers and see what kind of empathy scores we’ve been getting as a human race, or at least the part of it that responds to questionnaires.
And, naturally enough, the answers may surprise you.
First, the good news. We’re at our most empathetic when we are worrying about how someone else in our social circle is doing. We notice when we’re intruding, we notice when someone else in the group is feeling awkward or uncomfortable, and most of all, we pay close attention to whether or not we are boring someone else and can easily tell when we’re not going over well.
We care almost as much about friendships and relationships overall, and — perhaps best news of all — we pretty easily can appreciate someone else’s point of view, even if we don’t agree. Maybe all that tribal talk is a bit overdone? Maybe we’re more understanding than the news media seems to think? Or perhaps the truth is a bit more nuanced: there are more areas where we are a bit flexible in our opinions than recent political campaigns would have you believe.
Whatever the reality of the political landscape, it is important to remember that there are large areas of belief where we can be more flexible. Seventy…
