Empathy deficit? Eddie Gerald/Alamy Stock Photo

THIS may have passed you by, but the world is in the midst of an empathy crisis. Psychologists first drew attention to it in 2009 with research finding a far lower degree of empathy among university students than in their 1970s counterparts.

That research lit the blue touch paper on what is becoming an industry. Exhortations are rolling in to teach empathy in schools, to pupils and teachers alike. The Pope says we should build a global culture of empathy. Even the Wall Street Journal, the house journal of hard-headed capitalism, published a how-to guide.

It is easy to dismiss such notions as psychobabble. But there is evidence that our responses to human distress are malfunctioning. Emotive media coverage puts us at risk of “empathy burnout”, blunting our ability to feel other people’s suffering (see “How sharing other people’s feelings can make you sick“). In our media-saturated world, that is food for thought.


But we also need to clarify what we mean by empathy. Can you really measure it? Is it possible, or necessary, to distinguish it from compassion and altruism? The terms are often used loosely, and interchangeably.

Before we rush headlong into solving a crisis of feeling, we first need to solve one of meaning.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Hooked on a feeling”