A good feeling: How do you learn empathy?
The other day in the theatre, at a production of Astrid Lindgren's «Ronja the Robber's Daughter». Robber chief Mattis is standing on stage and shouting. He is tearing his hair. He sobs. Baldy Peer, his fatherly friend, is dead! «He was always there,» cries the tree-sized man. «And now he's gone.» There is a loud gasp from the seat next to me. Shortly afterwards, my son's small, sweaty hand reaches for me.
Later, in the foyer, I look into the six-year-old's heated face. Carl's cheeks are glowing, his voice is literally booming. What fear Carl had when Ronja was scared in the fog! Even though he knew that nothing would happen to her. And how happy he was to hear her cry of spring. «As if it was happening to me. For real,» says Carl.
«It's cool, the empathy thing,» adds his older sister. «Without empathy, stories wouldn't work at all.» The twelve-year-old then begins to explain to her younger brother what empathy actually is - in her tone of voice, the all-knowing older one. «Do you remember when you said to mum that she had such a nice flabby tummy?» asks Fanny.
I wince slightly. What is she getting at? Her brother nods vigorously. «I immediately got scared because I sensed how mum must feel about such a statement. So that was very empathetic of me and not so empathetic of you.» Carl frowns and pushes his lower lip forward. I refrain from explaining to my big girl that her explanation wasn't a feat of empathy either.
Empathy is anchored in the genes
But is it even possible to make a six-year-old understand what empathy is? Why do we know what another person is feeling before they say it? What does the human brain do at this point? After all, this is often a mystery even for adults. I remind Carl of a scene in which there was an argument between Ronja and her father.
«That made my stomach tighten,» he says. «Mine too,» I reply. «And if we were both in a machine that could see into our heads, the same dots would light up in our brains. You could see that we're feeling the grief that Ronja is feeling right now.»
Since neurologists discovered in the mid-1990s that certain cells in the brain, the so-called «mirror cells», reflect the experiences and emotions of others, this human ability has been researched by doctors, biologists, psychologists and educationalists. How does this intuitive connection between individuals work?
Of course, there are relatively obvious emotions such as anger or great joy. But why can we also feel less obvious emotions such as embarrassment or despondency in people we don't even know? And above all, why do we need this at all? Neuropsychologists assume that we are born with the prerequisite for empathy, that it is part of our basic genetic make-up. This suggests that this evolutionary equipment was and is important.
Empathy is fundamental to our survival.
Nora Raschle, neuropsychologist
«Humans are social beings. From an evolutionary biology perspective, empathy is fundamental to ensuring that we can live together and thus survive,» says neuropsychologist Nora Raschle. The professor investigates brain development in children and adolescents at the University of Zurich and also conducts studies on social behaviour disorders.
«People's ability to empathise with others is seen as the basis for understanding the feelings of others and acting accordingly.» In her opinion, empathy is the basis for prosocial behaviour. In psychology, this refers to behaviour that is undertaken on behalf of others or is oriented towards their well-being.
The difference between empathy and compassion
In common parlance, empathy and compassion are often used synonymously. However, experts differentiate between the two. «Empathy is not a feeling, it's an inner process,» explains Raschle. It is the ability to empathise with any kind of emotion, be it negative or positive.
Compassion, on the other hand, is a consequence of empathy, but goes beyond that. «It's about recognising the negative feelings of another person and caring.» Both empathy and compassion are often a prerequisite for prosocial behaviour such as sharing, comforting or helping.
When an infant cries and everyone else joins in, there is no compassion behind it.
David Lätsch, professor of psychology at the Institute for Childhood, Youth and Family at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, also believes it is important to distinguish between two different forms of empathy: affective and cognitive empathy. With affective empathy, you sympathise with what the other person is feeling. This should not be confused with what is known as emotional contagion, which is more common in toddler groups: An infant cries and everyone else joins in. There is no empathy or sympathy behind this, as babies at this age do not yet realise that it is about the other person.
This is only possible when children develop an awareness of their own self and also begin to understand that other people may think differently from themselves. Developmental psychologists have been studying for decades when this ability, the so-called «theory of mind», is formed.
One way of doing this is the «false belief test»: it checks whether a child recognises whether others believe something that they themselves know to be false. In the «chocolate test», a three to six-year-old child is shown how the chocolate bars in a packet are replaced by pencils. They are then asked what another child would think is in the packet. Most three to four-year-old children answer: pencils. They do not yet realise that another child cannot know that the contents of the packet have been replaced.
This realisation usually begins with four to six-year-old children, who are then also able to feel affective empathy. «For example, they understand that another child is sad, but are aware that they are not in the same situation themselves,» says David Lätsch.
The ability to draw the right conclusions
Cognitive empathy is the ability to decipher what the other person is thinking or planning at that moment. You also need it to be able to draw the right conclusions for your own behaviour.
Compassion does not necessarily follow from one form of empathy or the other. «There are many situations in which we are affectively and cognitively empathetic but do not feel compassion. When we watch the opposing team lose at a football match, we can empathise with how their fans feel. But we don't feel empathy, on the contrary, we are happy.»
Children have to experiment. Sometimes even with the feelings of others.
Most parents know that scenes from everyday family life are enough to make them realise this : the son laughs out loud when his sister pours tomato sauce over his favourite shirt. She is almost crying, he can see that too. But at last he's not the one spilling. The twelve-year-old plays the piece on the piano that the six-year-old has been practising in vain for hours and days. Even though she can see how angry it makes him. «That's part of it,» says her father, "and that I have to allow them such lapses. Children have to experiment, sometimes with the feelings of others.
Should I therefore accept it if my son excludes another child when playing? Should I let my daughter decide for herself if she doesn't invite one classmate to her birthday party and everyone else does? For me, situations like this are always a borderline situation. I want my children to know what the consequences of their behaviour are.
So I get involved and talk to them about it. «How do you feel when something is very important to you and I deliberately show you that I can do it better?» I ask the older one. «How did you feel the other day when you were the only one who wasn't allowed to play?» I ask my son. The effect is often that my children are initially angry with me because they feel bad «because of me». But that doesn't last long. They almost always change their behaviour immediately after such an «empathic eye-opener» and take the other person's perspective into account.
Lifelong training
Compassion and pro-social behaviour can be trained. And you should. «Socio-emotional skills are important for making friends, developing relationships and being a parent. They are also crucial for how well we network later in our careers and how likely we are to keep a job,» says neuropsychologist Nora Raschle. In other words, empathy also helps us to be successful.
In Denmark, empathy has been taught as a school subject since 2019. These lessons were initiated by author Peter Høeg, among others. Together with the late educator Jesper Juul, Høeg founded an initiative that also focuses on developing empathy for one another in a group. «Children and adults alike need support in strengthening their ability to be at peace with themselves. And this can be practised,» write the authors in their book «Miteinander. How empathy makes children strong».
Rules work when they are perceived as fair by everyone. This requires empathy.
The «Roots of Empathy» project by the Canadian organisation takes a similar approach . David Lätsch led a study on this in Switzerland in 2018. The aim was to teach primary school pupils more empathy through encounters with babies. «We were interested in how social behaviour can be strengthened and shaped in the medium to long term by promoting empathy.»
According to Lätsch, a classroom climate can hardly be improved by a mere catalogue of prohibitions. Rules work if they are perceived as fair by everyone. But to achieve this, you first need to be able to empathise with what a rule means from my perspective and from the perspective of another person. «Empathic imagination also allows you to recognise why it is worth sticking to a rule.»
Indispensable: access to your own inner life
The «Roots of Empathy» experiment was successful: even one year after the training was completed, the children's empathy had noticeably improved. They helped and shared more and were less aggressive when living together.
The conclusion is that empathy is innate, but needs to be nurtured. This «training» begins shortly after birth, when babies learn about their parents' emotional world through their facial expressions and language. Mum always smiles when she picks me up. Dad says «Shh» when he puts me to bed. They both ask: How are you? Are you tired? Are you hungry? «Children learn from their parents how emotions are labelled and how they are dealt with,» says Nora Raschle. «Understanding your own feelings is the basic prerequisite for being able to recognise the feelings of others.» In other words, if you don't have access to your own inner life, you won't be able to understand that of the other person either.
«I always try to make it clear to parents that their children can only deal with all their feelings if they are allowed to get to know the whole range,» says Caroline Märki. The parent and adult educator has been running the Swiss headquarters of the Familylab family counselling centre for over ten years. Families who have problems with their children's social behaviour come to her. Parents often no longer know what rules and prohibitions they should use to bring their children to heel. «It often turns out that certain feelings such as envy or anger are considered forbidden.»
However, those who do not deal with these supposedly negative emotions do not learn how to deal with them. «Children, adolescents and adults with antisocial behavioural traits often find it difficult to assess their own feelings or those of others,» says psychology professor Nora Raschle.
Boys receive less input on how men deal with emotions
Parents are the first empathic role models that a child gets to know. There is always a connection between parental and child empathy, says empathy researcher David Lätsch. Setting an example of empathy is a central aspect of this, emotional reinforcement of the child is another.
70 to 80 per cent of 6 to 11-year-old children and 12 to 16-year-old adolescents find values such as empathy, solidarity, respect and helpfulness important, according to a study commissioned by the Bepanthen Children's Foundation in Germany.
If you didn't learn empathy in early childhood, you can still learn it as an adult.
In this study, the girls presented themselves as more compassionate and helpful than their male peers. «This is also because boys receive much less input on how their fathers and men in general deal with emotions. Boys also don't receive as much help on how to show feelings such as anger,» says Caroline Märki.
They often lacked the words for this and instead reacted with aggression. «Children need to be helped to pinpoint their frustration and express it in a less destructive way.» According to Märki, awareness of this has increased: Many young fathers are now working to establish a different, more empathetic image of men.
When compassion increases, the stress level decreases
Anyone who was unable to learn empathy in early childhood and notices deficits in themselves as an adult - perhaps triggered by their role as a parent - does not have to live with this shortcoming. A study by the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig shows that the human brain is capable of changing and adapting to new circumstances throughout life.
The study investigated the effects of compassion training on adults. This mental training included specially developed meditation and mindfulness exercises. The result was that the ability to empathise increased measurably and the study participants' stress levels and inflammation levels in the body also fell.
«Empathy has a lot to do with the way we communicate with each other and the attitude we have towards each other,» says Andrea Spring. The speech therapist has been working as a trainer for non-violent communication for a number of years. The principle was developed by the American psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg. It is about communicating sincerely and listening to each other with empathy.
Attention is focussed on feelings and needs, both one's own and those of the other person. One of Marshall's guiding principles is: A request that we make triggers something different in other people than a demand. Behind the request is also the need of the speaker, which an empathic listener can recognise.
It's not about winning
Another guiding principle is that words can be windows through which people open up to each other. And they can build walls, can hurt or divide. Andrea Spring formulates the goal as follows: «We can find a connection and a suitable solution if there is a willingness to listen to the needs of both sides, so that there are no winners and losers.»
Admittedly, this model seems very idealistic, perhaps even unattainable, especially when dealing with children. But we have time to work on it. «The fact that our development is a very long-term process is inherent to human beings,» says Nora Raschle.
Book tips
The authors discuss why strengthening empathy is a prerequisite for a peaceful world of togetherness and explain how this can be achieved. With lots of practical exercises.
Using key aspects such as arguing, friendship, language and empathy, the author sheds light on the background to social and emotional skills. With lots of practical suggestions for creative support.
Lots of recommendations for children's books that focus on empathy and perspective-taking. A wonderful treasure trove for many children's situations and needs.
Following the selected story texts on topics such as cooperation, anger or empathy, there are suitable role-playing games and impulse questions for a discussion with children from kindergarten age.
Using 39 pairs of cards, children can use this memory game to explore feelings and needs and familiarise themselves with the individual terms in a playful way. The accompanying booklet explains different variations of the game, which not only sensitise children to their feelings, but also show them ways in which they can use the skills learnt in the game in different everyday situations.
Neuroscientists believe that the human brain only reaches maturity at around the age of 25. How empathetic we are then and how prosocial we then behave is a result of genetic influences, our environment and our experiences as well as the interaction of everything.
And while parents provide care and support for their children for many years and, as primary caregivers, shape the development of socio-emotional skills, this influence fades at some point with the onset of puberty. «Then the peer group becomes more and more decisive, the friends, the school, the first relationship,» says David Lätsch.
My older daughter recently said that the empathy thing sometimes gets on her nerves. Always having to empathise, even though she was tired. All those friends who wrote and complained on WhatsApp. Such stress. I was a bit surprised, but then I agreed with her.
I lay down on the sofa and did nothing for ten minutes. No cocoa, no snack plate, no reading aloud, no homework help. Then the children thought I'd had enough of my empathy break. But they sounded very empathetic.
