Why Empathy Is Needed More Than Ever In A Pandemic
Empathy is needed more than ever during a pandemic. It should not be missing in any setting, public or private. It should be present in every person, in every mind that aims to take care of others, to run a country or just to be at home protecting others and oneself to stop contamination. Never has this psychological dimension been so essential to awaken.
However, we psychologists are well aware that this value of our human condition is not always applied effectively. Let’s think about this.
It is not the same to feel the pain or needs of others as it is to understand them and decide to be helpful. Between feeling and action, there is a big gap that not everyone dares to bridge. To mobilize energies and resources in the service of the common good.
After all, this is the real purpose of empathy: to promote the survival and well-being of the group by connecting to each other’s emotions and generating behavior that can promote the good of others. So simple, and yet so difficult at times.
As Daniel Goleman rightly points out, no matter how smart you are, without helpful and active empathy, no one will get very far.
Why empathy is needed more than ever in a pandemic
In times of crisis and difficulty, empathy can act as a catalyst. It is a way to foster harmony between groups, the identification of needs and this active collaboration where you are part of the group and not the architect of the conflict.
We want people who add up and don’t divide, we need oriented hearts and minds to generate solutions and not stay in a passive position where we just see what others are doing wrong.
Let’s take a closer look at why empathy is needed more than ever in a pandemic.
Understand the needs of those around us
In the current health crisis, there is something more decisive than just avoiding getting infected. There will be those who will limit themselves exclusively to taking care of their own health and that of their families. But in the current situation, we must be able to go beyond.
We need neighborhood support networks, those that identify, for example, the old man in the fifth who lives alone, the old couple in the third who needs someone to do their shopping for them.
Emotional empathy helps. It allows us to feel the reality of the other. But what we also need to work on is cognitive empathy that includes real needs. It goes beyond emotion and takes the step to act, to generate solutions.
Our frontline professionals also need empathy
It is clear to us that our healthcare professionals are essentially defined by this sense of genuine empathy for their patients. It’s undeniable. However, if empathy is needed more than ever in times of a pandemic, it is because in recent days we are seeing clearly sanctionable actions towards this group and others.
There are people who paint threatening messages on the cars of our doctors. Neighbors who leave notes on the door of these doctors, nurses or supermarket workers, demanding that they find alternative accommodation during the pandemic. It is not appropriate. These behaviors create fear, unease and distress in those people who give their all for us.
We need leaders with compassionate empathy
Daniel Goleman explained in his book Focus that there is a third type of empathy that is essential in leadership, both business and political, and that is compassionate empathy. In this case, it mobilizes an emotional, cognitive and behavioral exercise in which a real concern for others is demonstrated.
Selfishness, interests and lies fall to activate a compassion that values the human being above all else. This translates into actions, through real and effective commitments based on this genuine closeness to people.
An opportunity for global growth
Empathy is needed more than ever during a pandemic. We have a real opportunity to exercise it, to take into account what multiple studies such as the one conducted at the University of Manchester, UK, by Dr Karen Tristen reveal.
According to this work, active empathy, the one we provide through social support, creates stronger and happier bonds. It translates into life expectancy.
Rarely have we needed this dimension so much. Maybe now is a great time for our kids to learn it. So that it germinates in the communities of neighbors, in small towns, in big cities. And of course, at the international level. We need help and compassion both near and far from home.
What can be offered to us by a friend, a brother, a doctor and also, this researcher who, in a country thousands of kilometers from our own, is trying to find a vaccine. Let’s think about this and take this opportunity.
Our thoughts The cognitive and affective empathy test tells us about how we connect with our emotions and those of others.
