By: Julia Hartman
In a world that can feel increasingly isolated, empathy allows genuine human connection to form. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person is needed in personal, educational, and professional settings. Practicing empathy involves more than just the emotional side of stepping into another’s shoes, however. Intellectual empathy is being able to understand how and why someone reached the conclusion that they did, despite personal disagreement. Concerns over declines in empathy, whether emotional or intellectual, have risen along with the increase in social media usage and political polarization.
Numerous studies have been conducted to find out if there is truly an empathy crisis plaguing the younger generation. One prominent study in 2011 found a sharp decline in empathy in American college students with those “in 2009 scoring 40% lower than students in the late-1970s.” Empathetic concern as well as perspective taking, which is similar to intellectual empathy, were the two areas that had decreased the most. The authors proposed changes in media and technology as potential reasons for this drastic decrease in empathy levels.
Another study examined the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on college students and found increased depression and anxiety as well as a decrease in cognitive or intellectual empathy, “as expressed through perspective taking and empathic concern.” Despite the concerning trends of declining empathy, there has also been research that sheds a more hopeful light on this proposed empathy crisis. The same author that examined college students from the late 1970s to 2009 decided to conduct another study in 2023 to update her results. Astonishly, she found that “empathy is increasing among young Americans since 2008, almost rising to levels similar to the highs of the 1970s.” Empathy and different subsections, like intellectual and emotional, are a challenging topic to study given the difficulty to measure and precisely define the concept. This potentially explains why some studies show declines while others show the complete opposite. Regardless of the accuracy of these research projects, intellectual empathy remains an important skill to develop, especially for college students who are constantly working in collaboration with others who hold different ideas and perspectives.
In an interview with Dr. Christian Turner, a UGA law school professor, he expressed why he is a huge proponent of the value of intellectual empathy for students and why he repeatedly emphasizes its importance during his class lectures. Dr. Turner describes “doing” intellectual empathy as working to fully understand others’ arguments. With contentious policy issues, especially in the legal field, people often have an immediate feeling about what the “right” answer is to a problem. He suggests that instead of being overwhelmed by defensiveness, try and think about why someone is making their argument and to inhabit their point of view. In order to make a successful argument, one must first consider the other argument from its “best light” instead of its “worst light.”
Although this can be a challenging skill to develop, Dr. Turner stressed its utmost importance. He explained that everyone comes from a different set of experiences that shape their outlooks and perspectives. Recognizing this makes it clear that each person has their own, potentially very different, experiences that influence their views. Law students must grasp this concept in order to make strong legal arguments, but even being a good partner or friend requires acknowledging the limitations to one’s viewpoint.
When discussing the potential rises and falls of intellectual empathy among the younger generation due to echo chambers online, Dr. Turner expressed concern that young people are under pressure to assume an identity and to cultivate well-liked personas, especially on social media. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, becoming overly attached to one particular identity “can take up space for being open to other ways of being.” Among his own students, however, Dr. Turner has not observed a decline in their ability to read and understand different ideas and arguments. His law students continue to come to classes curious and open-minded. Dr. Turner’s observations, though not an actual research study, provide an optimistic future outlook on the levels of intellectual empathy in students.
At the close of the interview, Dr. Turner shared ideas on how to develop intellectual empathy. On a personal level, he suggested practices that help people understand their own mind better, such as meditation. Self-awareness is a prerequisite to embracing openness with others. Further, talking with new classmates, volunteering in the community, and being politically active can all expand the mind. Dr. Turner also proposed reading fiction books as a way to practice and develop intellectual empathy. He explained that instead of social media where there is immense pressure to identify with a group, fiction novels allow one to fully submerge into the psyche of another while seeing the world through a different set of eyes. Dr. Turner described the world as a “magical and huge [and] also terrible and problematic” place with so much to discover if one is open to it. Intellectual empathy makes it possible to experience the “diversity of thought and diversity of experience…that makes life rich.”
