Empathy By Paul Bloom

Empathy is a central theme that runs through the entire book. Dr. Bromfield highlights the importance and significance of empathy, understanding adolescents while balancing the need to challenge and push them. Empathy is an emotion, I value highly as a future humanistic counselor as I believe it can be a very potent tool in therapy. “ As to this day I am awed at empathic understanding’s near miraculous power to soften children’s and adults’ defensive resolve” (p48), he describes the miraculous power of empathy and how it can allow persons in therapy to uncover those other emotions that they may have suppressed quite well.

Carl Rogers describes empathy as the ability to sense the client’s world as if it were your own. Sanders (1999)

The textbook definition of compassion is, the sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. (google) However, the word compassion can be described in a variety of different ways. Many authors thread the concept of compassion throughout their stories. It builds the story line and develops characters.

A having seen many so many different situations through many different eyes is a very understanding person. When ever he is put into a new body he doesn’t judge the things they do or have done he only tries to help. A has empathy, or an understanding of another’s feelings, for people. Ultimately empathy is the ability to walk in someone else's shoes, A does this already. Everybody has egocentric bias**, which is when you do not feel empathy for a person. If you do not go through what happened to that person you may not understand why they feel a way they do. The more you understand what someone has been through the more empathy you have toward them. A having seen all of these things through others eyes and just how it affects them is able to understand them more and help them in the way they need to be helped. If everyday average people were put in someone else’s body, even if it were just for a few days, they would most likely be a more understanding person. Empathy does have a genetic side as well, therefore not everyone would have the same reaction to it. There is a part of the brain that causes us to block out that egocentric bias called the right supramarginal gyrus**. Some people are more sensitive to this part of the brain than others. A study, conducted by Dr Aron, a research professor at Stony Brook, showed that people who are highly sensitive are more highly attuned to what is around them***. When a person puts themselves in someone else’s shoes most of the time they have a sense of what they are feeling because they have felt it

“And yet, it may be that these are the conditions that finally give birth to empathy, the mother of compression. We cannot deny the existence of the helpless as their presence grows. It is impossible to insulate ourselves against what is at our very doorstep. I don’t believe that one is born compassionate. Compassion is

In The Book Thief, we saw how Liesel felt through the words that were written. The book told us in detail how Liesel felt about both Max Vandenburg and Rudy. When I watched “The Book Thief” as a movie I saw in even more detail Liesel’s empathy for Max. Liesel we could tell was a very brave girl. Liesel had also gone through a lot of hardships throughout her life and we got to learn about them form both the book and the movie.

Poet, Walt Whitman, once said, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” Whether you're trying to understand a wounded person or the next president, learning to become the person for a moment; applying empathy lets us for just a moment, see through their eyes, feel through their skin, and fight their battles. Likewise in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the author exclaims to the characters the effects of empathy. The novel takes place in Alabama, in a small boring town of Maycomb. Scout Finch, a young girl, has an older brother, and a father with distinctive yet wise morals.

“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself” (Mohsin Hamid). Many people, including Barack Obama, believe that the cure for all the world’s evil is empathy. Paul Bloom, in his article, “The Baby in the Well,” writes about the role of empathy and reason in improving society, published on May 20th, 2013 by The New Yorker. Bloom used ethos in almost every paragraph and backs it up with logos. He used credible sources and people.

Paul Bloom argued in his work, Against Empathy, that one should put a minimal amount of effort into solving the problems of the other. The reason why he sites this as wisdom is because he believes that it will not only solve the problem of the other, but

As we have all come to learn empathy is a broad and even controversial topic; having empathy may not always mean making good decisions. That is what each of the three pieces: “The Dark Side of Empathy” by Paul Bloom, “What Makes Us Moral” by Jeffrey Klugger, and “Why Mental Pictures Can Sway Your Moral Judgement” by Shankar Vedantam examine (2015, 2007, 2012). All three sources are effective in conveying their message about morals and empathy, however varying rhetoric methods are employed by each piece.

People in our society from all around the world have a wonderful gift of being able to understand each other’s feelings at a personal level. Empathy can be described in many different ways, but is hard to put into words what it all entails. Understanding how a person feels is just the surface of empathy. Empathy varies from person to person, and each person may describe it differently. Without a doubt, empathy is a vital part of society and it is important for people to be educated and truly understand and practice acting in empathetic ways. It takes personal experiences, research studies, and spiritual beliefs for empathy to be properly described.

Empathy, the word with many ideas and meanings. It is a word that has been tossed back and forth in what it truly means to us. Paul Bloom defines empathy as this, "Many believe that empathy — the capacity to experience the feelings of others, and particularly others’ suffering — is essential to all of these roles". A major confusion is the thought that empathy is the same as the word compassion. In my defense from reading Bloom's definition, I believe that Empathy is being able to relate with the person of suffering, as if you have been through what they have gone through. Although many people lump together the meaning of compassion and empathy. I understand that they are both ultimately different words with different meaning all together. Throughout what I learned about the two words I have concluded that indeed one of the words is better than the other, even to say that one is good and the other is bad. Both of these seemingly complex words as it appears all have to do with human emotion and

Empathy has played in a key role in the way society runs for many years. Some people are empathetic towards everyone while others show little to no empathy at all. Many people are making a case on whether or not there should be a greater emphasis put on empathy throughout society. Some say that without empathy society lacks the ability to feel what others are feeling, while others say that feeling for others doesn’t always call them to action. Instead of a greater emphasis on empathy throughout society, there should be a greater emphasis on moral codes throughout the community.

Empathy is a feeling that everyone has experienced at least once in their life, like when you see that a house in your neighborhood burned down and you feel bad. However, studies have shown that if feeling empathy can if it costed you time or money. Like if the family from that burned down house was asking for donations to help re-furnish their house, you would be less likely to feel empathy. Studies from Daniel Bastion suggested that “if people expected their empathy to

Let it be clear that there is no suggestion that observing someone’s hardship can alone result in a complete understanding of them. Through seeing the life others live and witnessing the specific struggles they encounter, one cannot claim familiarity. What is being proposed, is that if our acquired knowledge of the brain has illuminated something about empathy, then it would be reckless as citizens and as scientists to not use this information to try harder. We never be able to fully understand any one besides ourselves, but despite this limitation our brains are already, without conscious direction/ on its own accord working to understand. Without any effort on the part of the individual, there is a physiological trace of the experiences