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Dear Readers, This week, I discuss intellectual empathy. This week’s Trio-of Thoughts: Aphorism or quote: In just a few short words, we are triggered to think deeply and philosophically about our lives. This week’s lesson. Activities for the week to improve your critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and free thinking power.
THOUGHT 1 AN APHORISM ABOUT THIS WEEK’S LESSON “Until people feel better about themselves, they will look for someone else to step on in order to negatively gain what they cannot positively achieve.”
— Daryl Davies (via Twitter).
THOUGHT 2 INTELLECTUAL EMPATHY While scientific thought has brought us many critical answers, in an age where everyone thinks they are a scientist (but without the training), we have lost the ability for genuine compassion. Now, we demand scientific proof of everything, even feelings. Our insistence on empirical evidence forces people to justify their own suffering. This is impossible because so many of life’s human problems require time to solve. During that time, we need something else: compassion, grace, empathy. Compassion is more about the observer than the phenomenon being observed. So, how do we develop it? After four decades of observing people and their psycho-social problems, I know intellectual empathy is fundamental. People who understand others well enjoy higher-quality relationships. They can navigate their many diverse social worlds with greater emotional intelligence (EQ) than those who have not yet refined this natural human skill. Intellectual empathy is a part of EQ. It is also important when we are critical thinking (CT) about social things, as this will increase social intelligence. As a side note, I think EQ is CT, but for people and society. Additionally, it cannot be developed without interacting with a community and with people whose ideas and thoughts you have reason to care about. Reason must be moulded by experience. After working on the frontline as a social worker, completing a PhD, learning scientific thought, and teaching for years, plus all the life experiences I have had, it was my life experiences that were the richest data from which I have been able to assess truth for MY life. What is empathy? Empathy, in its simplest form, is the ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes. That is, to understand someone else’s mental state. This is not easy, because depending on the topic, who the person is, and our own level of self-awareness, biases and insecurities are ready to make the stories and perspectives of others our natural enemies. In the modern world, we need to be more civilised. To arrive at viable solutions, it is important to adopt the stance of a curious enquirer, attempting to figure out why other people feel the way they do. We need to do this so we can collect all the available information in order to make judgements about others. The quality of our judgments will always be to the degree we think we need to change or not to change. Empathy can be an intellectual advantage, as argued by many academics who have spent time thinking about the practice of understanding human experience. But for it to be intellectual, it requires activation of the rational, second-order, system-thinking mind (Daniel Kahneman teaches about Systems Thinking in his book Thinking Fast and Slow). Essentially, to understand others, you need to use CT about human emotions, and this takes effort. It is quite difficult to set our biases aside and avoid making assumptions and guesses about what people really think, feel, and mean. Empathy alone is the ability to place yourself in another person’s emotional experience and to recognise and share in another person’s feelings, perceiving their perspective and thus being able to then respond appropriately. You can gauge how strong your empathy skills are by observing how people often react to your responses. Behaviours of someone who has high empathy or will develop strong empathy skills over time: You consistently understand the experiences of others and know this, as you don’t often aggravate the situation during conversations. You are someone who frequently asks questions to try to understand more about another person’s experience before making judgements and conclusions about understanding. You are a good listener: you wait patiently for someone to finish their whole idea before interjecting or throwing in your thoughts. You reflect and think often about the experiences of other people naturally. You are more likely to be attracted to dramas about human experience or movies and books that trigger emotion.
Behaviours of someone who is not strong in empathy skills and will find it hard to develop them well over time: You do not ask many questions when others are sharing their thoughts. You frequently misunderstand others’ experiences, and there is evidence of this based on what others say. You feel compelled to share your idea in the middle of someone else’s incomplete thought. You do not often sit and reflect on others’ stories or how they must feel. You may prefer to think about things rather than people. You are less likely to feel like watching a dramatic or emotionally moving movie.
Okay, so what is intellectual empathy? Intellectual empathy goes further than empathy, as it is a skill of intelligence. For example, those who are empathic can be seen as kind, caring, and nurturing, but this disposition can have serious implications, as taking on the emotional burden of others is risky. All people can learn intellectual empathy. Those who practise it well will develop higher levels of social intelligence and better social and psychological health over time. This is because you can understand the behaviours and actions of others as their own and not a reflection of you or your life. You can separate the behaviours and feelings of others from your own and therefore are less likely to take on the burden of others’ cognitive and emotional experiences. To develop intellectual thinking skills, you need to first be intellectually responsible for your thinking. That means holding one value above all: knowledge and truth. This is hard to do if you are currently vulnerable and in a place where you have many of your own emotions or trauma to deal with. It is hard to understand others if you have yet to understand yourself. Without the guiding values of desiring knowledge and truth above all else, you won’t be ready to practice intellectual virtues or the rational intellectual empathy required to understand humans. There are some cognitive behaviours you need to learn to increase your chances of intellectual empathy. In critical‐thinking training, we focus on three practices: Intellectual courage Intellectual tenacity Open‐mindedness
For example, open‐mindedness means treating what others say as “potentially plausible.” Even if an idea seems implausible at first, you seek to understand why someone thinks that way. Because it is entirely plausible that others think differently from you. It is up to you to decide whether to continue the conversation, but especially with the most controversial ideas—it’s always intellectually valuable to explore another person’s motivations. This open-minded, curious, inquiry‐based approach will, by default, advance your intellectual empathy skills. Intellectual courage is a willingness to question your own beliefs and confront uncomfortable ideas in the pursuit of understanding human beings. For example, I teach CT for social intelligence. The social skills you will use in one setting may differ a lot from another. But in any setting, to be socially intelligent, you need to understand how human thinking impacts social facts. You must learn as many types of human thinking mechanisms to achieve a higher chance of understanding the social setting you are in. Intellectual tenacity is the determination to pursue understanding and truth through sustained effort. For example, you might want to increase your intellectual empathy but rarely engage in deep conversations or ask curious questions. This means you have low intellectual tenacity, and truth will come to you more slowly. The more you understand the flaws of the human mind, the better your awareness of how humans operate. For some time, I became particularly interested in why people believe in conspiratorial thinking—ideas so far removed from rational thought that most dismiss them as pointless. I disagree. If you value intellectual virtue, you should seize the opportunity to talk with a conspiracist. You’ll learn how a mind unlike yours works and what conditions led them to those beliefs. You’ll also practice your intellectual thinking skills. Funnily enough, as you practise intellectual empathy with a conspiracist, you may even change their mind. By asking non-judgmental questions about their logic, you demonstrate genuine interest in their thought process. As they explain their reasoning—often for the first time—they will spot flaws themselves. This approach is simple… show authentic curiosity rather than criticism. When people sense you’re not a threat, the dialogue shifts from tit-for-tat to mutual trust and respect. In therapeutic settings, we rely on these skills to build a trusting alliance with clients so there is connection and rapport. As therapists, we achieve this by using a skill called unconditional positive regard. It means we accept the person unconditionally. We don’t judge prematurely, we accept the client’s version of truth and life, which by default validates feelings. That trust lets them explore difficult ideas safely and begin to reframe their beliefs over time. This is the only way to rehabilitate the mind. While most of us can feel empathy, intellectual empathy goes much further: it examines how events in life have come together to shape a person’s entire life experience. It allows us to assess biology, psychology, sociology, spirituality, and how all of these interact. It traces how childhood circumstances, politics, environmental factors, biological factors, character, and personality might influence adult choices and thought patterns. It relies on human emotional reasoning to connect the dots of a person’s life, viewing them as a series of interrelated events. While this might sound dry, it suddenly makes you very tolerant and compassionate towards fellow humans. THOUGHT 3: ACTIVITIES Learning Intellectual Empathy: Practice trying to understand the series of events that may have impacted your own life to bring you to being the person you are today. You will never understand others well enough if you haven’t solved you’re own “problem” yet. Teaching Intellectual Empathy to Children To teach intellectual empathy to children, use their everyday experiences to unpack the behaviours of others. When they come to you with problems, personality clashes, or social dilemmas, you have an opportunity to discuss all the interrelated elements that connect to the issue at hand. Applying Intellectual Empathy at Work At work, intellectual empathy comes into play when you seek to understand the different approaches people use to think about tasks and activities. This enables you to identify employees’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses and allocate tasks and goals that align with each person’s style.
Further Reading Read up on Darryl Davies this week—he’s a true master of intellectual empathy. I won’t spell out exactly what he does; I’d rather you discover for yourself how this high-EQ, high-critical-thinking individual is spending his time on this earth. This is what a person can achieve if they can truly exercise intellectual empathy. You do not have to be a Daryl Davies, but if you aim for the sky, if you fall short, at least you might land close. Check out his book…it’s clandestine! ;-) Click here for: Daryl Davies References Kotsonis, A., & Dunne, G. (2022). Why empathy is an intellectual virtue. Philosophical Psychology, 37(4), 741–758. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2022.2100753 Morrison, K. F., & JSTOR. (2014). I Am You : the Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology and Art. Princeton University Press.
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