Empathy: Sharing the Feelings of Others

Our world is becoming more polarised. There is a growing need to understand how we can better empathise with one another. Some researchers suggest our ability to empathise is enabled by our genes, while others stress the importance of social types of learning. I will discuss our recent studies that required people to learn about fictitious creatures (such as aliens), which we know nothing about and could not possibly have evolved to understand. I’ll discuss why language is an important social learning tool, and how we could use language to improve the way we feel about others.

We struggle to understand the minds of others who are different from ourselves. Is it because it’s genuinely difficult to understand the thoughts of someone who is different or are we less motivated to try to understand people we perceive to be unlike us? I’ll explain why previous studies haven’t really given us a clear answer to this question; and I’ll show that even when people do try to understand dissimilar others, they still do better at predicting the thoughts of similar others. I’ll also discuss how we aim to build on this work to improve people’s understanding of diverse others.