WE HAVE AN EMPATHY GAP; WE CAN FIX IT.

The evidence that Americans are suffering is enough to make you cry.

A new Centers for Disease Control study finds that nearly 60% of female students and nearly 70% of LGBQ+ students experience “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” Ten percent of female students and more than 20% of LGBQ+ students have attempted suicide. Yet state after state is passing legislation to ostracize or stigmatize LGBQ+ students.

We are awash in gun violence and mass shootings, but we are told the right to own weapons of war is sacrosanct.

Meanwhile, antisemitism has skyrocketed, as a study from the American Jewish Committee shows. Some 89% of Jews think it is a serious problem or somewhat of a problem and 82% think it has increased a lot or somewhat. And 57% of Jews see antisemitic content online, and nearly one-fourth of Jews have avoided wearing or displaying things that would identify them as Jewish. Yet, online platforms refuse to police their sites.

If only to ourselves, many of us ask: What is wrong with people? One can certainly identify specific collective failures (e.g., the gun lobby has outsize influence, social media companies need to be regulated). But taking a broader view, it’s fair to conclude we have a serious empathy deficit — a collective inability (or refusal) to see the world from others’ perspectives, to understand people’s fears and hopes and our shared humanity.

That’s not just me talking. Extensive research on empathy has measured its decline. A landmark study in 2010 found that Americans were less empathetic than their counterparts 30 years earlier:

“The authors examined the responses of nearly 14,000 students who had completed a questionnaire measuring different types of empathy. The results show that the average level of “empathic concern,” meaning people’s feelings of sympathy for the misfortunes of others, declined by 48% between 1979 and 2009; the average level of “perspective taking,” people’s tendencies to imagine others’ points of view, declined by 34% over the same period. There was a particularly steep decline between 2000 and 2009.”

Everyone has a theory for why this happened. Too many people live alone, cut off from others. Social media isolates and objectifies people. And people’s capacity for empathy decreases as their stress intensifies.

The empathy decline has manifested itself in an erosion of civility, decency and compassion in our society and our politics. But there is good news: Empathy can be taught and cultivated.

Intervention programs with middle school students, college students and doctors have had remarkable results. As Riess explained, there is evidence that doctors and nurses can improve their empathy as measured by patients. This is done, first, by demonstrating with hard data that doctors who display empathy get better patient results and, second, by teaching communication skills, reflective writing, video-based learning and experiential learning. Riess has adopted a seven-part module to teach empathy skills to doctors.

In a middle school setting, teachers who adopted an empathetic mindset (listening to students’ concerns, fostering trust, adapting the school environment) had fewer students who required detention than did teachers who used a traditional disciplinary approach.

If it is possible to improve how everyone from preteens to doctors treats their fellow human beings, perhaps there is hope that schools, workplaces, civic organizations and religious institutions can begin to shrink the empathy deficit.