Empathy: A Qualitative Study

Now, taking into account the SQ/EQ, we can determine how individuals would respond to regular situations. The response to stimuli is heavily weighted on self and our own experiences - as we are a product of our environment. However, fifty percent of one’s own personality is determined genetically, within one’s very own alleles. This is why people act so much like their parents. Mothers can actually pass down a gene to their sons that makes them dangerously unempathetic. This exact gene is what causes more men than women to become serial killers. In addition to the basis of human structure, men also have a higher tendency to be aggressive, rendering most empathetic responses null, and barely thought about. Since males are more likely to be systemizers, their

Second, the daily activities of women report that they have more intense experience of emotions than men, more intense expression and comfort to seek out emotional experiences. Women also have greater emotional response, overall warmth, emotional expressiveness and concern for others, than men. Researchers also report that anger is found more in men than women (Costandi, 2013). Women have more intense style of emotional response than men, which would be expected to emerge in both positive and negative domains. In fact, emotional experience stems from the roles men and women fill in our society. Women are considered emotionally expressive and are more sensitive to others’ needs while men are less emotionally responsive (Costandi, 2013). Women and men’s personal history of enacting social roles effect skills and attitudes. Prior experiences build different emotional skills and attitudes, in both and women equally.

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

Sam Richard’s TED talk, “A Radical Experiment in Empathy,” asks the audience to step out of their comfort zone and pretend to be in the mindset of someone else. He specifically justifies the perspective of Iraq Muslims on the American military. Richards uses an imaginary story of Chinese aggression against America to widen his listeners’ awareness of their biases. The sociological symbolic interactionism provides a frame work for his argument by highlighting shared meanings of symbols in different groups, how those meanings can change with time and interaction, and the challenges these different meanings cause in interactions.

Empathy is defined as the ability to communicate an understanding of a client’s feelings, and is a crucial component of the helping relationship (Boggs. 2011, p.106). Empathy is an essential concept to nursing practice as it allows the nurse to gain perspective in order to provide appropriate actions and interventions significant to that patient’s individual experience. In Tilda Shalof’s “A Nurses’ Story”, the author, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit (ICU), struggles with a particularly difficult patient case and must reflect upon her own values and subsequent judgments in order to provide adequate nursing care.

Many people with complex identities exist in society. There are also other people, who, if had a rough history with a “complex” person, can heal their relationship through empathy. In the short story, “Thank you, Ma’am, by Langston Hughes, Mrs. Luella Bates Jones creates a healthy relationship with Rogers, a poor boy who does not have any discernment over what is right or wrong. In the movie, Inside Out, Joy, the personification of actual happiness, mends her relationship with Sadness(also the personification of the emotion), and through that, heals Riley’s relationship with her parents. Benedick, from the play, Much Ado About Nothing by none other than William Shakespeare, heals a couple of relationships such as one with Claudio and another with Don Pedro. In healing broken relationships, Joy, Benedick, and Mrs. Jones use empathy and understanding to better relate to others.

Regarding gender disagreements over the Big Five Personality trait, women are more sensitive than men, and men are slightly more emotionally stable than women (Gender differences in personality are larger than previously thought, n.d.). "Explicit personality assessments consistently document that women report higher levels of extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness on the Big Five personality dimensions ((Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001; Feingold, 1994; McCrae, 2002; McCrae, Terracciano, & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005)( as cited in Vianello, M., Schnabel, K., Sriram, N., & Nosek, B., 2013)). And men have levels of implicit Extraversion and Openness than women (Vianello, M., Schnabel, K., Sriram, N., & Nosek, B., 2013).

The result of this case show that girl tend to increase its superior ability to the 3D image but show a reduction in the male, which this is to point out that normal male will have more of this ability than normal female because these hormones are availed in male. Even so, Virginia argued that this may be true but does not proved that it’s the case to the rest of male population. Wolpet use the perspective from the development psychologist Uta Frith, which supporting the argument that both gender do not have same neural mechanism. The agreement that “… neural and hormonal sex differences can interact to eliminate or create behavioral differences.” (Valian, 2014) The author argued that Wolpert, did not included the implications of social and political factors inherent in transnational difference, like China that have much higher percentage of women in engineering than the United States. Wolept claiming that empathy mark the difference between genders and so as a reason male’s dominance in

Survey designed for use in a larger related investigation containing a face valid scale of 86 items.

From the results of the experiments in this article, I would assume that males and females have been conditioned to express different emotional responses under stress. Women expressed activity in their left amygdala whereas men expressed activity in their right amygdala. In addition activity in women was observed in the central amygdala and the case of the male subjects, activity was observed in the basolateral areas of the amygdala. The central areas of the amygdala is involved in a more visceral processing of emotional stimuli and the basolateral in a cognitive processing of emotional stimuli. This gender-related lateralization of the amygdala is maybe the result of males and females being shaped differently by our society. Society and

The capacity for empathy allows us to better understand others and to be easier to 'read' their energy. However, this is a feature that can be harmful, so it is important to know how not to be subject to other people's emotions and energies.

The emotional differences of men and women vary in temperaments of emotion which indicates a disconnection in communication, moral motivation, stereotypes, and chemical reactions in the brain.

Conditions of worth enable the client in experiencing self and reinforce limited self to parts acceptable to others. However when person experiences empathy and unconditional positive regard the problem gradually resolves which eventually expands the self concept and accepting the diverse experiences.

Social Justice is defined as “the equal distribution of opportunities, rights, and responsibility despite differences in physical traits and/or beliefs and behavior. It is an international and multifaceted issue that fights for better treatment and equality of people.” (“Pachamama Alliance,” 2017). According to this definition, my understanding of social justice is that it is a way to advocate for other individuals in order to assist their needs in society. For example, I would want to advocate for Hispanic mothers and children who have been through abuse. My empathy towards this group started because of my personal history with an abusive father who suffered from alcoholism. “Empathy involves thinking about a person and the challenges he or she is facing and coming to understand what it is like for that person to have that experience.” (Cameron & Keenan, 2013, p. 72).

For a number of years empathy was difficult to measure, as there was limited basis of empirical data. This changed with the progression of technology, as the biological approach could then using brain imaging techniques to visually represent the activity going on in the brain and biological psychologists could then research links between the activity and behavioural traits like empathy. One way in which biological psychology has helped us understand empathy as a complex trait is through exploration of mirror neurons.