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Decline in Empathy

Empathy understands an individual’s subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an observant stance. Empathy refers to stepping into someone else’s shoes or seeing the situation through someone else’s eyes. However, there is a much deeper understanding of this concept apart from this surface-level comprehension.

Empathy is a crucial communication capacity during Listening. To be empathetic, we need to be attentive and listen to others. Most of the time, people do not listen but wait for their chance to speak and communicate their views and experiences. Empathy also refers to recognising the feelings of others, the causes behind those feelings, and being able to participate in the emotional experience of others without becoming a part of it. 

On October 23, 2017, a woman got raped in daylight in Vishakhapatnam. The viral video showed people walking past during the rape incident though nobody stopped to help her. An auto-driver was at the spot and shot the whole incident instead of helping her out. Another incident occurred on August 11, 2022; a 25-year-old boy got stabbed. The CCTV footage displays a group of men chasing and stabbing the deceased. The point highlighted here is that none of the onlookers came forward and tried to intervene during that time. These two real-life incidents have shed light on how Empathy is diminishing in people. 

Signs of Lack of Empathy:

Empathy is an ability to develop. However, every individual’s capacity to be empathic is different. Some may end up having higher Empathy, whereas others have low Empathy. The following signs indicate an individual’s lack of Empathy:

• Being Critical and Judgmental – Critical and judgmental individuals try to criticise or blame the other person and their decision-making responsible for experiencing backlash or -ve events.

• Thinking Something would not Happen to Them – People with low empathy struggle to understand others’ emotions and circumstances. Due to this, we cannot connect with the other person’s distress. They believe in never encountering such a situation or will be able to handle it better.

 • Referring to Others as ‘Too Emotional’ or ‘Too Sensitive’ – Since some individuals are not able to understand the other person’s perspective, they cannot identify what the situation was or why the person responded in a particular way; they dismiss their feelings and find them invalid. They end up blaming the person for being in such a situation in the first place and calling them sensitive or emotional for expressing them freely.

• Responding in Inappropriate Ways – People with low Empathy cannot actively listen to others and understand their situation. Instead, they ignore whatever they communicate, change the topic, crack a joke, and become chirpy. It hurts the others who took the courage to share their heart. 

• Struggling to Maintain Interpersonal Relationships – Low Empathy makes it difficult for the person to connect to others, understand them, and act in inappropriate ways. It leads them to have frequent fights and disagreements with others. Thus, they end up with few or no meaningful bonds. 

We often use the terms Sympathy and Empathy interchangeably. However, they hold different meanings. Sympathy refers to feeling sorrow or pity for the hardships or traumatic experiences someone encounters. On the other hand, Empathy refers to getting closer to the other person’s reality, i.e., feeling what they are feeling and understanding why they are feeling that way. 

Causes of Lack of Empathy:

Empathy A few barriers to building Empathy may include the following:

• Personality and Developmental Disorders – People diagnosed with disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Autism, and Alexithymia are in a position where it is difficult for them to understand others, their emotions, or even if they are empathetic, they are unable to express it. However, they can develop this ability with therapeutic and behavioural intervention.

• Cognitive Biases – A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking when people process and interpret information. These biases make it difficult for the person to see other factors in a particular situation or event. For instance, they attribute other people’s failures to internal characteristics while blaming their shortcomings on external ones. Thus, such cognitive biases hinder the process of developing Empathy.

• Low Emotional Intelligence – Emotional intelligence is an essential component of Empathy. Social skills require the individual to be empathetic to understand and identify the emotions of others and further manage social relationships. It includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social management. 

• Burnout, Stress – Experiencing prolonged stress and being in a state of burnout does make people less tolerant of others’ behaviours and emotional reactions. 

• Rise in Technology and Social Media – Empathy is declining in modern times along the lines of perspective-taking and empathic concerns. Social media has led to increased narcissism, isolation, and self-obsession. Users use editing tools to correct their self-image where they are imperfect. 

Since people have no time and lack the social skills to form authentic relationships, they mostly spend a reasonable amount of time online and experience isolation. Social media then rewards the isolating behaviour with ‘likes’ and other forms of attention as a temporary cover for the user’s loneliness. This self-perpetuating cycle of isolation and self-obsession is maintained. 

As mentioned above, Empathy is an ability that needs to be improved. Understanding others’ emotions and thoughts requires listening to them, paying attention to their body language, asking them questions to learn more about them, imagining yourself in the place of another person and then trying to understand their situation. Such practices will help us to develop and strengthen our Empathy. By paying more attention to your own emotions, behaviours, and thoughts, you can enhance your self-awareness, and in turn, self-management becomes easy.

Dr Nisha Khanna is a qualified, experienced, and trained Psychologist with 20+ years of experience and is a Senior Counselling Psychologist at Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi and proffers online, telephonically, and face-to-face Counselling Services. If you are in Delhi, India or any other part of the World, you can approach us through any of these mediums. For details, visit Bye Tense or call us at +91–9818211474