What roles do empathy and compassion play in our ability to have healthy relationships? And what does it look like to apply those concepts to oneself?

On this episode of School’s In, hosts Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope welcome Stanford Psychology Professor Jamil Zaki to discuss compassion, empathy, and what our perceptions of the world say about us. Zaki touches on several related matters, including:

• The science of self compassion and its effect on mental health
• How schools and communities can develop empathy in young people and encourage them to practice it
• Tools for cooperation and collaboration in the midst of division
• How cynicism reflects bias, rather than wisdom, and why it helps to be hopeful

Professor Jamil Zaki’s research examines the neuroscience behind decision making, self regulation, social cognition, and perception, among other social and behavioral functions. He is also the principal investigator for the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory, which studies the cognitive bases of social behaviors. To learn more about his research, visit his faculty profile.

If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, the National Institute of Mental Health lists resources on their webpage.

School’s In is your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights and enlightening conversations in education. 

Presented by Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), School’s In is hosted by GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope. 

They invite you to join them as they navigate the complexities of post-pandemic education and discuss the latest research in teaching and learning.

Stanford GSE is a leader in education research and teaching, known for its commitment to pursuing equitable, accessible, and effective learning for all. 

To keep up with our research, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads.

If you want somebody else to listen to you, one of the best things that you can do is listen to them first.

Today, we're continuing our conversation around mental health that we've been having over the last few episodes. We know this is a big subject, and there's so much to unpack in this space for both students and educators.

That's right. We'll be focusing on empathy and how it can play such a large role in our ability to have healthy relationships with others and also, kind of interestingly, the role of empathy with ourselves.

Denise, I have this feeling that I may be the kind of student that our expert likes to teach because I think I'm something of a cynic.

Dan Schwartz, what? You a cynic? Please. Come on. Yeah Dan, I think that's right. Let's get into the episode and find out.

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of the Stanford GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning.

It's my pleasure to introduce Jamil Zaki. He's a researcher, author, teacher, professor, working to understand how people connect with each other and how we can learn to connect better. I've been learning the wrong direction, I think. And his research focuses on how empathy works, how it helps people in situations that make empathy harder. People like me. He is the author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, and he has a new book called Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. I got it. That's why I'm a cynic. I've been waiting my whole life to hear the truth of this.

Hope for Cynics is ... It has Dan Schwartz written all over it. I'm excited to talk. Good. Good. Welcome, Jamil.

Thanks for having me.

Just as a starter, empathy, sympathy ... Can I be empathetic for myself? What..? Help.

Big questions. Empathy is the word that we probably associate the most with the science on this subject. Researchers think of empathy as an umbrella term that describes at least three ways that we connect with each other's emotions.

One, Dan, is that sense of feeling what other people feel. Taking on their emotions. The thing that would make a mind reader go absolutely haywire if they were around a lot of people hearing their voices and feeling their emotions.

A second type of empathy, which we all often call cognitive empathy, is our ability to travel into the perspectives of others and understand how their version of the world might be different from ours.

And then a third piece of empathy, empathic concern or compassion, is our desire to help other people thrive. And it's the piece of empathy most connected with things like volunteering and donating to charity.

You asked about sympathy. Sympathy is a word with a much muddier scientific status. Back in the day, philosophers like Adam Smith used sympathy to describe what we would now call emotional empathy. But since the early 20th century, that idea was sort of market corrected by the rise of empathy as a notion. And so, we don't really use sympathy that much in the science anymore.

Your last question, can you have empathy for yourself? Absolutely. And there's this whole science of self-compassion, and oftentimes we think of being empathic towards ourselves as selfish or self-indulgent or lazy, but it actually turns out that being compassionate for ourselves helps us be resilient, bounce back from failures, and to be there for other people more effectively.

I'm having a little trouble with that. It feels very recursive. I'm empathetic for me. I'm empathetic for the me who's being empathetic for me. Does this stop? Do I reach some higher level of empathetic consciousness?

Compassion is a response to suffering, and every living being suffers, and that includes ourselves. The idea that we have to only feel compassion for others actually is not recursive, but it's strange in that it almost treats you as an exception to the human race. And I think a lot of times we try to do that. People in leadership. People in healthcare. Teachers. We often think that we're supposed to be kind to others, but we act as though we are not human beings who ourselves require kindness. And I think that, actually, being compassionate towards ourselves is less recursive than it is human. It's an acknowledgement that we are human beings too.

I love that. I love that. And I also know that it plays a role really in terms of mental health. In our work with teens, there's a lot of self-berating, beating themselves up, "Why didn't I do this better? Oh, my gosh. I'm stupid. I'm an idiot," and they start to internalize what they think other people are thinking about them. And I think your notion of self-compassion, then, and being empathetic to yourself goes a long way.

And it's really hard, especially in high-achieving settings. I teach a class on empathy and kindness here at Stanford, and I ask students to practice different things. Reach out to somebody you disagree with and listen better. Try to help somebody in need, and students love to do all this stuff.

But then when I say, "Try to be there for yourselves," they hesitate. They think that the way that they've achieved so much is by being really hard on themselves and beating themselves up.

In fact, we find at Stanford that when students are not self-compassionate, they have a harder time, for instance, bouncing back if they get a bad grade. Not only is it hard to be self-compassionate. We have a backwards notion in our culture of what self-compassion even means. We think it's a form of weakness, and actually it's more like a strength.

I'm kind of a procedural guy. Give me some tips about how to have self-compassion. Generally, I say, "Dan, you screwed that one up. We'll go get it next time." That's sort of as far as I get.

Well, that's not terrible. I mean, that's actually a good start.

You're okay, Dan. You're okay.

Thank you Denise.

I think the first thing is to, I guess, reflect on what we're talking about here. In our research, we find that when we teach people that self-compassion is adaptive, can help them do a better job in the future, they're more willing to try it out. The first is to kind of lay the groundwork by changing people's beliefs about self-compassion.

The way that Kristin Neff, who's the, I guess, the scientific guru of self-compassion in my field ... The way that she suggests practicing this is through three steps. The first is mindful awareness. Simply saying, "Wow, this is hard. I'm suffering." Sort of, Dan, like what you just said. "I screwed this up." Just naming the problem and naming that it's actually causing us some suffering.

The second step, which I've been alluding to already, is called common humanity, and that's the understanding that our suffering and our failures don't make us different or worse than other people. That, in fact, one of the only things that every single person does is to suffer. The fact that we are hurting just makes us like other people.

And the third is what we could call goodwill. It's, in essence, extending the same grace and kindness to ourselves as we would to somebody else we care about. One thing that I often tell people to do is try to reverse the golden rule. The golden rule. Treat others as you'd like to be treated, but lots of us actually treat other people really well and treat ourselves really poorly. I often ask folks, "Hey, if you're suffering, try to think about what you would say to a really close friend or family member who is suffering in the same way, who had failed in the same way that you just have." And oftentimes, people can generate really kind, understanding, and open-minded things that they would say to somebody else, but they've never even thought about being that kind to themselves. That's one trick, one procedure, that you can try to practice self-compassion.

What do you think, Denise?

Well, I like it. I know we use that with teens. I mean, one thing that we talk about often is, who do you talk the most to in your life? And it's really yourself, right? People don't realize that, but your inner voice. And so, we do that same flip, which, Jamil, is, how would you talk to yourself like you would talk to your friend? And I love that. I love that. We talked about how to teach self-compassion.

How would you teach what you're calling cognitive empathy? What are some lessons?

Cognitive empathy - the ability to understand others. There are two big routes that we take to it. The most famous is perspective taking. This is the idea of walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that phrase. And it's a well-intentioned notion that by imagining how I would feel in your position, I can better understand you.

The problem is that perspective taking often fails. If I understand or try to understand how I would feel in your position, I often end up understanding how I would feel in your position, not how you actually feel in your position.

In fact, I think walking a mile in somebody else's shoes is a perfect analogy for perspective taking. If I wanted to know, Dan, how comfortable your shoes are, the last thing I would ever imagine doing is taking them from you and putting them on myself. First of all, it's kind of gross. And second, your shoes probably don't fit me and neither does your experience.

And so, a better alternative, and the way that I try to train cognitive empathy, is through what I call perspective getting. That is directly inquiring in a careful way with other people about their experiences and practicing active listening as they answer. And I know that sounds almost trivial in its simplicity. If you want to know how people feel, just ask them. But asking good questions and listening well, I think, are more complex than people realize.

Can you give just two or three quick examples of some really good questions?

I mean, I think that it's not so much the initial question. It's how we follow up. One of the techniques from psychology and actually that people like journalists and detectives and good physicians also use is called looping to understand. You ask someone a question. For instance, tell me about your best moments over the long Memorial Day weekend. And they tell you. And instead of just saying, "Okay, I've understood your answer. We are perfectly aligned now," you follow up. You say, "Okay, what I heard is," and then you paraphrase to the best of your ability what the gist of what they've shared is. And then you ask. You say, "What am I missing? What else is there?" Right? And you iterate until both people agree on one person's experience, right? Until you and I both agree about what you've been through, what your experience is like. That technique of iterating and paraphrasing can get us much closer to true cognitive empathy than just assuming that somebody else would experience something the same way that we would.

When you go to a movie that has a sad moment, do you cry? Like Steel Magnolias. I don't know if people remember that movie. It's basically designed to make you cry the whole time.

First of all, you're dating yourself, Dan, but I have seen Steel Magnolias. This is what you should know about me. And people probably already do. Listeners probably do. I cry at everything. I cry at commercials that are sappy. I cry at sad books. I cry when I ... I just cried, we were saying goodbye to a board member at Challenge Success, and I broke down. I am a sap. True sap.

Do you go to movies where you get to cry? Do you seek it out?

Well, I mean, it's kind of... There's a nice release. I will purposely read Holocaust fiction because I know it's going to be sad and intense. And I'll be on a beach reading Holocaust fiction, and my family thinks that's the weirdest thing, right? But I like to get it out sometimes, a really good cry, very cathartic, but I just also can't help myself. I mean, literally, I can't help myself.

Do you think this is something you learned? Your parents somehow trained you to be teary-eyed and empathetic?

I think I come from a long line of criers. My grandfather. I feel like there's might be a genetic component, but I don't know. How about you? Are you a crier?

No. No, not really. I was born so empathetic, Denise. I was just so empathetic that I learned to actively suppress it.

Wait, Dan, first of all-

No, I'm serious.

You're being serious?

If I didn't suppress my empathy, I'd be like that vision of the poor mind reader walking down the street, hearing the voices of everybody on the street, and going crazy.

Oh, my God.

If I freed up my empathy, I'd be overwhelmed. Just looking at you, I'm feeling a little teary-eyed. I've got to suppress-

Flaclench. Flip flaclench is the word. Oh, my gosh. Well, Dan, I ...

Put it another way. I could never give people bad news if I didn't suppress my empathy because I don't want to feel their pain.

You seriously have done some thinking about this and trained yourself not to empathize in order to give someone bad news?

Or to get a little abstract about my empathy. To switch over to sympathy.

We're throwing around some words here.

We have so many questions.

Yes. Yes.

Is it possible that I didn't learn to be empathetic? I learned to shut it down. I just made up this theory.

We got to get to the cynic book because-

Can you tell already, Jamil, that we need to get to the cynic book?

I imagine this conversation where ... I've had this conversation. How did that make you feel? And then I sort of say, "Oh, it was sort of like this." I'm trying to make the bid to hone in on it. The answer is, "No, you just don't understand me." Then they say something else, and I go, "Oh, it's kind of like this." "Gosh-

Dan, what you're basically saying-

... you just don't understand me."

... is you need to take Jamil's class. You need extra practice.

No, I'm thinking I need eight-hours-a-day therapy for four months.

Four months is a pretty fast track, actually.

Is that right?

I mean, I would say, Dan, that you're right. A perspective getting ... Trying to understand people is an art. It's really hard work as well. And I think that your experience is really common. It can be really frustrating when you're trying your absolute best, and you still aren't getting through. This is why I think that oftentimes we can ask people to help us.

Empathy often seems like it's supposed to mean having the right answers, but it can actually mean having better questions. Instead of saying, "Oh, so you felt this," which sort of sounds like you're suggesting that you already know the answer, you say, "It sounds like you are feeling this. Can you help me, though? What am I missing here? How could I understand this a little bit better?" Collaborating with people to understand them can be a powerful technique.

You could see that tone is really different from what you said, Dan-

No, it's good. It's good.

That's good.

okay so it's six months. No, that was good. That was good.

You mentioned that it was really around perspective getting and perspective taking. In your class, you work with students to reach out to someone who they disagree with, and I can only imagine, given the state of the world right now, just how important this concept is. Talk to us. What's your take on why this is such a crucial time for empathy?

Well, let me first say that I think every time is a crucial time for empathy. Empathy is simply one of our fundamental human skills. And if you think about our species, the special thing about us is not what a single human being can do. It's what we do together. And empathy is one of the psychological foundations that allows us to collaborate, cooperate, to treat each other kindly. It's related to all sorts of metrics of personal and social wellbeing. Everything from mental health, happiness, strong relationships, to strong communities.

I think, right now and in a polarized and divided time, empathy is perhaps even more crucial than ever. I'm often laughed at when I say that empathy can be a powerful tool in a polarized setting because it seems like, gosh, division is so toxic. Empathy is bringing cotton candy to a gunfight or something, but it turns out that actually being empathic is an immensely powerful tool in the face of difference and division.

In our lab, we find that when people believe that empathy is a strength, they communicate with people they disagree with much more effectively. They don't pretend they don't have opinions. They represent their own view just as strongly, but they appeal to common values, and they communicate compassionately in a way that makes the other person, the person who disagrees with them, feel more understood, more connected, and, get this, more convinced.

Actually, if you want somebody else to listen to you, one of the best things that you can do is listen to them first. That's a scarce resource in our current moment, but I think a precious one.

Can we send you to the Senate? Can we send you to different places? All the red and blue states all over the place. Just more empathy, people. We need it. We need it.

I can also see how this would play a role in schools right now. I mean, we're hearing division in schools and teachers and kids not seeing eye to eye, parents and teachers not seeing eye to eye, but also just in general how to get along well. Talk to us. I know that you've worked with schools.

I think that there are lots of ways to encourage empathy among communities. One that we found that's especially powerful in schools and among adolescents, in particular, is using social norms. What do 12 and 13-year-olds care about more than anything on Earth?

Themselves. Being popular. Being popular?

Yes. Yes. Thank you, Denise. Other 12 and 13-year-olds. What other kids think.

And so, we worked with a few middle schools in the Bay Area a couple of years ago, and we asked students, "How do you feel about empathy? Why do you value it?" And students, first of all, when answering in private, love empathy. They talk all about how useful it is and how powerful it is and how much they want to have an empathic community, but they might not say that in public if they don't know that's what other people feel.

What we then did is we showed students' responses to each other. There are no lies here. We're presenting students with each other's actual opinions and beliefs. The social norm in these schools was invisible but powerful. People wanted empathy. And when students learned those social norms compared to students who didn't, they were more motivated to empathize. And then when we came back to these classrooms a month later, those students who learned about the popularity of empathy were also more likely to be acting kindly towards their fellow seventh graders, in this case.

We find that social norms are really a powerful lever that we can pull if we want to encourage empathy, especially among young people.

It's a teachable skill is what you're saying? I mean, even just hearing that, I think, gives me hope. I know we're moving into Hope for Cynics, the name of your book, but the fact that it's a teachable skill ... I think some people think, "Oh, she's a really empathetic person, and he's not," or whatever. It's a born thing. It's a trait.

Well, it is absolutely both. People are born more or less empathic. Empathy is heritable, meaning that it passes down from generation to generation, but it's also extraordinarily malleable. People can change and do change over the course of their lives. Specific events in our lives can cause our empathy to go up or down, but also the right practices and habits can help us cultivate empathy on purpose. Yes, it is a skill.

And my sense from the last 20 years of research that I've done in this space is that it's a skill that we can build, but one of the hardest things is not helping people practice it. It's getting people to want to practice it, right? Basketball is a skill as well, but I'm never going to make it to the NBA. I've tried, and it's just not in the cards for me. I don't practice my jump shot because there's nothing in it for me. One of the important things to do is not just teach people how to empathize but teach people why to empathize. Give them motives to understand how this can be a powerful tool in their lives, and then they're more likely to practice it and to learn it.

Back to me. Tell me about-

Someone who needs practice.

Well, no, tell me about Hope for the Cynic.

Well, I've studied empathy forever. And more recently, I've become interested in a big massive social trend around the world, which is that people have lost faith in each other and in virtually every institution you can imagine. People around the world believe less in science, education, the media, government, industry, everything than they did before. I've become really curious as to why that's happening, what it's doing to us, and what, if anything, we can do about it.

And one of the big messages that I discovered in going through decades of evidence on this is that cynicism often feels a lot smarter than it is. We have this stereotype that if you are hopeful and optimistic, you're a gullible rube. And if you think people are awful, then you're probably real wise. It turns out that that's almost exactly the opposite of the truth. Cynics perform less well on cognitive tests than hopeful people. They tend to be worse at understanding who's a liar and who's telling the truth. And it turns out that cynicism, in many cases, reflects not wisdom but bias. A bias to see the worst in others.

That's bad news, but the good news is that if we pay closer attention to the data around us, and I don't just mean scientific data but the everyday data of how people really act, there are pleasant surprises everywhere. People tend to be a lot better than we think they are.

What is the test that you give to see how cynical people are? I need to start studying.

I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. Dan does not like to do poorly on tests. On any test. He's already worried. He's already worried, Jamil.

There's something ... The original cynicism test was developed by educators, actually, to measure whether teachers would get along with their students. Cook and Medley, these two psychologists in the 1950s, developed this test. And it has questions in it like, "People are only honest because they're worried about getting caught," for instance. And so, there's 50 statements, and the extent that you agree with them reflects how cynical you are. And again, Cook and Medley designed this for teachers, but it turned out that this cynical hostility, which is what it's now called, predicted all sorts of outcomes for all sorts of people. If you're high in this, you're not just a great time at parties. You also tend to, for instance, be more prone to loneliness, depression, divorce, alcoholism, and even heart disease.

You're imputing negative intent is sort of the-

Yes. That's right. That's right.

And it's bad for your health. I mean, this is ... I love that point. I could see that. I can see how a cynic just is more and more blah, right?

I mean, one of the best things that protects our health and well-being is our connection to other people. And cynics, by imputing, Dan, as you're saying, ill intent from folks all around them, including their friends and family, deprive themselves of the benefits of connection. They live this sort of ... There's this internal split between themselves and the rest of the world, and that turns out to harm them in basically every way you can measure.

That sounds lousy. Be walking around suspicious of everybody. It's kind of a cynicism meets paranoia. Denise, I'm not a cynic. I'm an ironist.

Care to define?

I enjoy the contradictions in existence.

Dan, can I offer something?

Yeah.

Yes.

I think you might be neither a cynic nor an ironist, although I've never heard that term, so I can't say conclusively. I think you might be a skeptic. And oftentimes people confuse cynicism and skepticism, but they're really quite different.

Cynicism is basically having this bias against people and, often, assuming that you're right in the absence of any evidence. Skepticism is thinking like a scientist, not willing to rest on your assumptions but looking for evidence, even pugilisticly demanding evidence from people for their own claims.

What I argue in the book that we should aim for is not to replace mud-colored glasses with rose-colored glasses, to replace cynicism with blind or naive gullibility and trust, but rather to replace it with what I call hopeful skepticism. That is taking a data-driven view on our lives and relationships and people and also understanding, this is the hopeful part, that our assumptions are often worse than reality. Understanding that people are probably better than we think. Using that as a starting point and then thinking like a scientist.

I'm buying 50 copies. I'm doing it now.

I know. First of all, look at that. Right? You just made Dan so happy. Tips. Tips. You say there's hopes for the cynics, and I love the distinction here. I think it's really important.

What are some quick tips for folks to try out?

A bunch come to mind. The first is to be skeptical of your own cynicism. Remember, when you start to draw sweeping conclusions about people, that you might be biased against them. That this is the way that our minds work. We pay so much attention to negative versus positive information.

A second tip would be to collect more data. If you feel, for instance, that people at your job are all lousy and selfish, ask a few folks for a favor. If nobody helps, then maybe you're right. But if anybody helps, which they probably will, maybe it's time to start questioning your assumptions.

And the third, I guess, would be to remember that we have much more influence on others than we realize. When we treat people like they are awful and selfish, they actually often end up becoming more awful and selfish around us, making us decide that we were right all along. When we instead trust people, they often step up to meet our expectations. This is something that economists call earned trust. One thing you can do, if you want to treat your life like an experiment in small ways, is to take leaps of faith on people to purposefully put your faith in them as a sort of, again, as a little study of your own and see what comes back. And notice the positive effect that your trust and faith have on others.

I mean, can you imagine teachers and parents take that leap of faith, put the trust in it, right? Approach with curiosity, approach with good feelings, like this is going to work. And how different schools would be. How different the parenting is when you're doing that as opposed to rules, rules, rules, rules. If you break them, that's it. Boom. Right? It's a real different feel. I love it. I love it.

Jamil, thank you so much for joining us. We have learned a lot. Dan Schwartz has now learned that he is neither a cynic nor an ironist, but ... Right, Dan? You're happy.

I am a scientific skeptic about my own emotions.

Oh, my gosh, Dan. That is perfect. Jamil, well done. We figured it out. Yay.

Thank you, Jamil, for sharing everything with us today. It was great. I learned a lot. I think I learned a lot about myself, which makes it even better. Thank you.

Denise, I think it's your turn. What did we take away from this?

Well, I think the biggest takeaway is really just the importance of why we need to empathize with others. That we cannot make it through this world alone, right? We're much stronger as a community when we show up with empathy.

I agree, and I like the point that it's not just about the questions you ask, but also about how you respond to those answers. Be curious. Ask, why is that important? How did that happen? Follow up if you need more information about how someone is feeling, and it's okay to keep asking people and be truly interested and gain a deeper understanding. Just that shift alone can have a huge impact.

I agree. And what was also really interesting to me was this idea of how to do this internally. Hold experiments in your own day-to-day life. Who does that? That could be really helpful, right? Challenge your cynicism with some hope, Dan Schwartz, right? Really treat yourself how you would treat others. I think that's really hard for people to do, and not enough people do it.

And then for school settings, this idea of social norms, I think, is so important. To show kids, "Hey, most of you really do want to show up with empathy." And if you show kids that this is what most people want, then it kind of draws them in, right? It's the cool thing to do.

Well said.

Jamil, thank you. Look what you've done for Dan alone. And thank you, really, for being here and informing us today. And thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In.

Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

And I am Daniel Lewis Schwartz.

Is Lewis your middle name?

Yes, it is.

My God. I don't think I knew that.