Unlocking Empathy: The Neuroscience Behind Understanding Others

Welcome back to Season 13 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity, and results using what I saw as the missing link, since we weren't taught this when we were growing up in school.

The application of practical neuroscience. I'm Andrea Samadhi, an author and an educator with a passion for learning, and launched this podcast six years ago with the goal of bringing all the leading experts together in one place to help us to apply this research in our daily lives. Music.

On today's episode number 353 we continue with the second last chapter of our 18-week self-leadership series based on grant bosnick's tailored approaches to self-leadership that we first dove into with our interview on episode 321, the end of January 2024. The goal was that each week we focused on learning something new from Grant's book, tied to the most current neuroscience research that builds off the prior week to take us to greater heights this year.

It honestly shocked me that the series took the entire year. Our final topic will be the neuroscience of presence, and then stay tuned for a review of the entire series to help us to move forward in 2025 with a new lens. Now, we've not yet covered empathy as an entire topic on this podcast yet, but we did mention it on episode 340 with mediation expert John Ford on navigating workplace conflicts with his Empathy Set card program.

I also included the topic of empathy within the character education program that I created for schools, so I know why Grant would think this topic is important enough to include on his roadmap for success. When I look back to what I had written over 15 years ago on empathy, I found an image that said, Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another, which is right in line with how Grant Bosnick opens up Chapter 18 of his book.

Grant reminds us that empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from their frame of reference. Capacity to place ourself in another person's position, to put ourselves in their shoes and see it from their eyes, their perspective, their way of thinking and feeling. Now, if you've taken the leadership self-assessment, look to see if empathy in Pathway 6, our final pathway in this book study, along with biases.

Relationships, authenticity, and trust, is of a low, medium, or high priority for you to focus on this year. I was not surprised to see this pathway is a high area of focus for me. I often think I wonder what that person is thinking and feeling and try to see a situation from their viewpoint. Do you do this? Do you think and feel from another person's point of view. That's the first step at putting empathy into action in our daily life. Now let's take this deeper with Grant's book.

In chapter 18 of Bosnick's tailored approaches to self-leadership, he asks us to remember a time we felt conflict or tension with another person, and he asks us to look at the problem from the other person's perspective. And I remember Dr. Myesha Claiborne from episode 289 talking about the three positions of listening where she informs us that we can either look at the conflict through our own eyes first and then step out of our shoes and into someone else's.

She calls this position two to see what they see, hear what they hear, and feel the feelings they might be feeling. And finally, the third position, step out of position two and into the third position, which she says is the most valuable. It's the observer position where you go above and look down at the conflict outside of each person involved to see the entire dynamic or bigger picture.

Grant talks about the importance of stepping into another person's shoes the minute we sense tension or frustration coming up with another person. Feeling empathy for others is an important leadership tool. Grant reminds us that it will help us to build trust, develop relationships, and achieve better outcomes. But he cautions us against making assumptions that can influence our decisions and actions.

Grant asked us to reflect on when we might have been wrong about the thoughts or motivations of another person, and what behavior did you take, intentionally or unintentionally. I always go back to an example that I would share in the classrooms working with teens on this topic, as this happens to all of us in some capacity. Now, I'm going back now to when I was in high school.

It was Don Mills Collegiate in Toronto, Canada. and I was walking along a pathway outside of my school and I saw my good friend Yolanda. This is her real name. I waved at Yolanda and I looked forward to catching up with her on our way to classes. But Yolanda didn't wave back to me. I went straight in my head to thinking, hmm, I wonder why Yolanda is angry with me. And I went another route so we would miss each other and we didn't end up walking together.

I had made the assumption that Yolanda was angry with me, and the action I took was that I avoided her. And I can think of countless other times in my life where I've made assumptions like this and missed opportunities with friends. At a later date, Yolanda asked me why I was avoiding her, and I was surprised she noticed. And I told her about how I had waved and that she hadn't waved back. And it was then that she told me that she wasn't wearing her glasses that day, and she never saw me wave.

In fact, she didn't see anything at all that day. She didn't see the chalkboards in the classrooms. And I was disappointed that I had made this assumption. And it was a valuable lesson to see through Yolanda's eyes how incorrect I was when I made this assumption. So how does empathy work in our brain? Grant reminds us of the activation of mirror neurons in our brain, which help to explain this process of empathy.

In our brain, empathy is a spontaneous sharing of a person's feelings or thoughts by witnessing and being affected by their emotional state, and that we mirror or mimic the emotional response that we would expect to feel ourselves if we were in the same context. And I always think of those emotional Hallmark commercials that get me every time, or movies where I relate to the character and wipe away tears, reminding myself it's just a movie.

The movie Ghost with Whoopi Goldberg comes to mind here with a memory I'll never forget from many years ago. As the movie ended, one of my friends wasn't ready to leave the movie theater, and I remember him not wanting to talk about it as he wiped tears away from his eyes, hoping that none of us would notice. The movie had triggered his mirror neurons, and like Grant Bosnick mentioned in his book, movies can do this to us.

Grant gives us the origin of these mirror neurons by sharing that they evolved in the human brain to facilitate and understand the actions we need to take in response to others, as, at least in human history, he says, our survival would depend on it. My friend didn't want to feel what Patrick Swayze was feeling in the movie Ghost, but his mirror neurons wouldn't give him much choice.

I remember reading in National Geographic about the origin of our mirror neurons and learned that humans communicate through facial gestures. Control of these expressions lies in the brainstem and the amygdala beyond consciousness. This makes sense to me since when you try to control it or not feel these emotions, like my friend in the movie theater, it's very difficult and almost impossible. Do you relate to mirror neurons and feeling empathy for others in this way?

Now Bosnick goes on to share that there are three kinds of empathy. There's cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathetic concern. Cognitive empathy is taking another person's perspective and understanding the situation as they see it, like we learn from Myasha Claiborne with the three positions of listening. Through their words and body language, we process it logically, taking their perspective, without actually experiencing it. The mirror neurons do not fire here.

Next, there's emotional empathy that's feeling someone's pain or emotion by seeing it in them and simulating or sensing it in ourselves. In this case, mirror neurons fire as we experience the situation like it were our own, like my friend in the movie theater. And Grant points out that different parts of the brain are activated during emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. As a result, we process it differently within our brain.

It was also shown, like we mentioned from the quote from National Geographic, that we can control cognitive empathy much more than emotional empathy because it uses logical parts of our brain rather than the emotional center. And Grant does urge us to work on using both at the same time to understand the other person's perspective and experience their emotions to come at the most accurate conclusion to how they were thinking and feeling.

Grant pointed out that in the workplace, he usually defaults to using more cognitive empathy, and just by adding more emotional empathy, he's able to truly understand those he works with and empathize with them on a deeper level. Then finally, there's empathetic concern, and it's the feeling that if I can do something that can help you, I will when I see you're in trouble and I want to help you out. It's being genuinely concerned with others and experiencing other-oriented emotions to help them.

This is when we express care, tenderness, compassion about another person, supporting them, showing trust, and allowing them space. Bosnick says empathetic concern takes emotional empathy to a deeper level.

Have you ever experienced empathetic concern? Think of one personal and one business example where you genuinely felt concerned for another person and wanted to help them. Reflect on how empathetic concern deepen the levels of trust, help to develop a better relationship with improved outcomes. Bosnick warns us that although empathy is a natural biological process within our brains, it is not automatic. And he shares that feeling empathy is a choice that we make.

His book does dive deeper into situations where people may consciously or unconsciously choose not to be empathetic with tips on how to develop habits for effective empathy that include listening to others, standing up for others, reading more books, and even how to raise more empathetic children. You can dive deeper into this topic of empathy in chapter 18 of Grant Bosnick's book.

So to review and conclude this week's episode 353 on the neuroscience of empathy, we covered a review of previous episodes where we covered empathy with John Ford's episode and also with Dr. Myesha Claiborne. And these are excellent episodes to review. We looked at the neuroscience of empathy with our mirror neurons with a warning to watch making assumptions in this process. We looked at three kinds of empathy, cognitive, emotional, and empathetic concern.

Then finally, we looked at tips for becoming more empathetic in our daily life and practicing empathetic concern when we can to deepen our relationships and improve our outcomes personally and professionally. I hope this episode has provided you with a deeper understanding of ways to practice being more empathetic in your personal and work life. I know that the world can be a better place if we can all learn to think and feel from another person's point of view.

And finally, if we have solutions that can genuinely help others to lean in and offer some ideas to support those who are close to you. It can only work to bring you closer.

And with that thought, we'll close out this episode and we'll see you next time with our final chapter, The Neuroscience of Presence, before reviewing the entire book series. Have a great week. If you're enjoying the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll stay up to date with our new episodes. While you're there, please feel free to give us a review or a five-star rating as it helps others find us.

For more information on our programs, books and tools for schools and the workplace, visit us at www.achieveit360.com.