My son just whacked his sister while he was supposed to be setting the table. Again.
“If you do good things, good things will happen to you,” I tell my son.
“Why? It’s not going to make me rich or anything,” he replies. To an 11-year-old, the best imaginable adult outcome is to be rich. I suspect the best outcome that parents can think of is a successful, happy, independent life (and yes, perhaps to be rich.) Though we lecture our children repeatedly on the merits of being nice, do we really value it? Does biology value it?
When viewed from a human evolutionary perspective, being nice doesn’t make that much sense. Even Charles Darwin struggled to explain the altruistic behavior of bees killing themselves while attacking intruders (Darwin, 1871). In fact, he considered this a hole in his theory—how can this suicidal behavior be explained by natural selection?
At first glance, it’s unclear how Nature could possibly see compassion as a better way of passing on genetic information. For bees, it turns out that hive mates share an uncommon amount of the same DNA, so even if the guard bees die, their genes live on (Oldroyd and Fewell, 2007). For humans, it remains more complicated.
It’s unlikely to see empathy as an adaptation that nature will select for in humans. In fact, we tend to think of empathy as a weakness, as a skill set specific to the more sensitive types.
In The New Yorker, Paul Bloom argued that emotional empathy is a disadvantage. And he’s probably right. If you feel helplessly crippled inside when you see disaster in the people around you, you will not be happier, and you won't be able to help them. You may not even be able to respond at all. Emotional empathy is not teachable- it’s a gut response mediated by the limbic system.
But intellectual empathy, on the other hand, is one of the few real superpowers I can think of. Intellectual empathy is the ability to understand what is in another person’s head: mind reading. Intellectually empathetic people know what cues to pay attention to, and can use those cues to predict the future. It’s cortical control over the limbic system.
Let’s imagine a scenario in a high school deserted hallway after school. Mean Steve is towering in a menacing way over spindly Tyler, who is backed up against the lockers. As a parent, which one would you want your child to be? Neither are ideal, but given a choice, I think most of us would choose to have our child be the bully. It’s not a pretty picture, but our society still values overt acts of power.
It’s true, empathy in humans doesn’t often mean the difference between life and death. If our daily experiences routinely included death encounters, then of course, we’d consider physical power to confer the fittest evolutionary advantage. But this after-school drama probably won’t end with mean Steve killing his opponent. We now live in a more intellectual world, where power (at least past the doors of high school) is dictated more by savvy, good decision-making and the ability to perceive opportunity where others may not.
Most people would say it’s the bully who needs to be taught empathy in that high school hallway. It won’t help the situation if Tyler can feel the emotions of Steve here. But if we shift our focus, and realize that empathy is simply a skill that allows you to predict behavior, then perhaps intellectual empathy would be most useful to the bullied.
Research shows that empathetic people will be more successful at navigating social situations in the long-term. Intellectual empathy allows them to understand a bully better, and gives them sense of control over the situation. They have better interpersonal relationships, and they stay married (Davis, 1987; Paleari et al 2004). They end up being better bosses, more effective leaders (Kellett, 2006; Long, 1973), and they make better life decisions because the future doesn’t blow their minds. They may even be richer. Even if they got beat up in the hallway.
Lucky for us, intellectual empathy is a simple, rational thought process. And unlike emotional empathy, it’s a deductive power that can be taught (Iannotti, 1978). As parents, we have to start by teaching our children the basics: What does this person think? How does this person feel? What is this person likely to do? We can start by valuing simply not “being nasty” (Ewart et al 1990). Then we can make the leap to cultivating active compassion in our kids.
Morality values being nice. But biology values a thinking person, not just a feeling person. When parents cultivate intellectual empathy, we create not only better reproductive candidates, but more successful, socially competent people. And happier little sisters, too.
Citations
- Bloom, P. (2013). The Baby in the Well. The New Yorker. May 20.
- Darwin, C. R. 1871. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Volume 1. 1st edition.
- Davis, M. H., & Oathout, H. A. (1987). Maintenance of satisfaction in romantic relationships: empathy and relational competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(2), 397.
- Ewart, C. K., Kraemer, H. C., Taylor, C. B., and Agras, W. S. (1990). High blood pressure and marital discord: not being nasty matters more than being nice. Health Psychology, 10(3), 155–163.
- Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Business School Press, Boston).
- Iannotti R.J. (1978). Effect of role-taking experiences on role taking, empathy, altruism, and aggression. Developmental Psychology, 14(2), 119-124.
- Kellett, J. B., Humphrey, R. H., & Sleeth, R. G. (2006). Empathy and the emergence of task and relations leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(2), 146-162.
- Long, T. J., & Schultz, E. W. (1973). Empathy: A quality of an effective group leader. Psychological Reports, 32(3), 699-705.
- Oldroyd B.P. and Fewell J.H. (2007). Genetic diversity promotes homeostasis in insect colonies. Trends Ecol Evol, 22:408-413.
- Paleari, F.G., Regalia, C., and Fincham F. (2005). Marital quality, forgiveness, empathy, and rumination: A longitudinal analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(3), 368-378.
