LOVE/HATE
Can Compassion Be Taught?
Researchers are developing programs that promise to teach people how to be better
By now, the news cycle is familiar: The United States is using tear gas on asylum seekers. Hundreds of migrant children remain separated from their families. A professor’s office is vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.
It’s easy to feel like we’re living in a social climate increasingly unconcerned with the suffering of others. A frequently cited 2009 study suggests that people may be getting less empathetic over time, and as politics, current affairs, and rhetoric fuel anger and polarization, it can certainly seem like we’re becoming a less compassionate society.
Can that change?
There are a lot of factors, including wealth, religion, and whether you experienced childhood trauma, that contribute to how we feel about others and our desire to help them. A 2018 study even suggested that genes may play a role in empathy, arguing that genetics accounts for 10 percent of individual differences in empathy.
Empathy, compassion, and altruism are often lumped together. And while they’re linked, they have different meanings. Empathy describes an emotion you feel when you observe it in another person. For instance, you might be able…
