Exploring The Science of Empathy in Every Day Practice

Empathy seems to be everywhere these days. 

Executives are asked to be empathetic leaders, companies list empathy as a core value, and innovation processes claim empathy as a key ingredient of sourcing new opportunities. It’s become the standard prescription for social division and damaging rifts in political and personal perspectives as well. 

Safe to say, the word is officially trending. But do we know what it means?

We asked Dr. Christopher Adkins, Executive Director of the Notre Dame Deloitte Center of Ethical Leadership to join us at the Stanford d.school in early November to deepen our understanding around empathy; both in teaching and in applied practices. Dr. Adkins has spent years researching neuroscience, cognitive behavior and adult learning science related to empathy, and teaches evidence-based practices to a wide audience of leaders, from undergrads through executive teams. 

As a learning community with our own history of empathy-based practices in the classroom, we came into the workshop with many questions. Can we sharpen our understanding of what empathy is...and isn’t? Can empathy be learned? How do we know if we’re actually being empathetic? And perhaps the most critical of all: How can empathy help us to connect more deeply with others, especially when the ‘others’ are very different from ourselves?  

Defining Empathy

Recent advances in neuroscience and behavioral science reveal empathy may not be one thing, but in fact have three distinct elements. While the elements are interconnected, some research studies suggest that they are mapped differently in the brain:

Cognitive empathy. The ability to understand what someone is thinking. 

Affective empathy. The ability to understand how someone is feeling.

Motivational empathy. The ability to understand someone’s motivations. 

Chris defines empathy as “thinking and feeling as another.” According to Chris, the preposition is the important word in the definition. “As another” suggests that you’re so steeped in the other person’s world that you can actually imagine and feel what they might be experiencing. Thinking and feeling “for” another, is sympathy. Thinking and feeling “with” another, is compassion.  

Empathy requires we put our attention towards another. Chris reminded us that the word “attention” comes from the Latin word “attendare”, which means to “stretch towards” another. 

So, when we empathize with someone, we attend to another. We stretch towards them.  

In practice, it means that we are fully present. We listen actively. Our body posture is tuned to engage—sending signals of interest and care. We seek to understand another’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations. As one participant wisely remarked, “Attention might be the purest form of generosity.” 

Practicing Empathy

 Are some of us born with it? Can we get better at it? While the research isn’t definitive, studies suggest empathy is a practice and set of behaviors that can be developed with time and intention. 

At its core, empathy is a social skill - a way to develop deeper understanding at the human level. When individuals and teams practice using empathy to attend to one another’s needs, it can lead to more connection, compassion and care.

Chris often starts his empathy classes by asking students to recall an autobiographical story in which they felt understood, or “stood under” another. A moment when they gave or received attention that deepened connection to another person through thoughts, feelings, and motivations.

Recalling a specific moment through vivid story prompts experiential memory, which connects learning at a more emotional level. Through autobiographical stories, we can isolate the specific behaviors and conditions that help us feel seen and understood. 

Through the exercise above, we can develop a deliberate practice of paying close attention to the details; recalling the who, what, how and where. This practice is known as episodic recall.

Personal storytelling is a different learning experience than semantic memory—where we consider a concept through facts and theory, in a disassociated way. Hypotheticals are harder to translate into an intentional, personal practice.

In other words, learning empathy is much more powerful when it’s a felt experience, not a theoretical one.

Empathetic Accuracy

We can all practice empathy, but we must allow that—even with the best intentions— our efforts can be inaccurate. Just because we feel like we’re understanding, does not mean someone else feels understood. Because practices of observation, listening, and attention inevitably go through our own personal filters, it’s nearly impossible to get away from the interpretative aspect of empathy. 

After years of teaching empathy, Chris is still uncomfortable when someone says, “I understand exactly how you feel.” That statement overlooks that every person’s experience is uniquely their own. True empathic practice requires dynamic reflection—not reaction. When we reflect on action, we’re accessing the past. When we reflect in action, we’re assessing the moment. 

Empathy requires we reflect “in action, on action.”  

In a moment of empathy, we’re essentially shining a “spotlight” on another’s experience.  Empathy requires that we attend to what the other is sharing—while also paying attention to what else is happening in the moment—such as our reaction to what’s being shared. 

This is where it’s important to acknowledge our brain’s biological desire to stretch towards the path of least resistance; the known and familiar. As human beings, it’s only natural that we take in what we see and hear as signals, and then interpret them through our own experience. 

As we learn the skills of empathy—we learn to appraise these signals through different lenses (other than our own) and reappraise the possibilities. What else might be contributing to the signals we receive, particularly as they relate to social cues and relationships? 

Empathy in our Every Day 

 After our time with Chris, I left feeling decidedly more optimistic about the benefits of teaching and learning empathy. At its core, empathy is deeply personal and innately human, which makes me optimistic that we all are capable of being empathic and helping others do the same. As educators, it modeling and fostering empathy to help others feel more fully seen, understood, and connected may be our most important role.

I also left humbled about the deliberate intention, practice, and commitment to self-awareness and reflective learning that it requires. And how hard it is to find the discipline to commit to those foundational elements in a world that seems to demand more speed, more efficiency, and more technology every day. 

But, if we want to shape a future that’s by humans for humans, the power and practice of empathy is something that we can never outsource or disintermediate to algorithms.

The more we understand, practice, and sharpen our empathy skills, the more likely we are to amplify it as part of our human OS. And, what’s more scalable than that?