We love to believe that our highly evolved, über rational frontal cortex is responsible for our meaningful decisions. But neuroscience tells us that it’s actually our most ancient, instinctual amygdala that propels decision-making. Studies concluded that meaningful decisions are made instinctively (emotionally) first, then our high-powered frontal cortex kicks in afterward to rationalize the decision.

It’s why you just NEED that new bag, why OF COURSE you should take the new job, why IT’S DEFINITELY OVER between you and that asshole.

Yeah, there’s a weird disconnected relationship between these two parts of your brain. You might have noticed that high IQ individuals often lack EQ skills. Turns out that rationality doesn’t require empathy, but empathy requires cognition.

Empathy has three major components: understand it, feel it, and do something about it.

Empathic Understanding can be Elusive

That’s why you sometimes dismiss people’s emotions as an overreaction.

When we don’t understand the meaning behind the emotion, we think the emotion is false.
Isn’t this the reason why people in underprivileged groups don’t report? Um, yes. Yes, it is. If no one will believe you, why try?

This is the rub: empathy is hard-wired, but it’s inhibited because our tricky frontal lobes demand understanding.

In the face of an inexplicably emotional person, our lizard brain demands a threat assessment and goes searching through memories to figure out what’s going on. If it fails to find a reference point for this level of emotional reaction to a similar experience, it kicks it over to our rational brain, which defaults to skepticism.

Conversations about microaggressions are a great example of this phenomenon. When Paul expresses an opinion about the border wall at work, Cas might come to you afterwards to ask you to tell Paul to keep it to himself. You might want to defend Paul’s right to express his opinion, because you thought the comment was pretty neutral.

What you don’t know is that Cas’s parents emigrated from Somalia and they experienced a series of traumatic events during the entire refugee process. She quotes, “no one leaves home, unless, home is the mouth of a shark.”

Once we understand the story, our empathy is unlocked.

Neuroscience is digging into bias and how we can fight it with active self-awareness. All you have to do is say to yourself, “I will believe them, no matter what their reason is. The emotion is real.”

Empathic Feeling is Automatic

The most common description for empathy is “feeling what another person is feeling”, which we might describe like this:

“What unites us universally is our emotions, our feelings in the face of experience, and not necessarily the actual experiences themselves.”

– Anäis Nin

When someone you care deeply about is feeling a strong emotion (joy, anger, grief, etc), you might find yourself feeling the same! As a social species, our brains are hard-wired for this empathic response. That’s why we love stories; we feel what the characters in the story do and sense a different life through our imagination’s interpretations of the characters’ experiences.

Empathic Action can be Selfish

The doing kind of empathy is when you feel compelled to take action in the face of another’s plight. The complication for many of us is the tendency to believe you can fix their problem for them (or do better than they could).

Your friend: “I’m so angry about this but I don’t know what to do!”

You supporting them: “Tell me how to help. I know you will figure it out!” vs You taking over: “If I were you, I’d do this.”

The instinct to fix it for them might seem to you like a compassionate response, however, it is actually a condescending one. Inspect your instinct to fix it: is it solely from a place of good intention, or do you prove something by being the hero?