usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/edu … 8_st_N.htm
Thnat’s muy experience as well. I am not sure it’s that people are meaner or more selfish, per se. IOW I am not sure it is for the reason the article suggests. I think people are getting shallower in general, not just emotionally, and this cuts off empathy along with other things. Scattered, distracted, emotionally attention deficit disordered, flitting from thing to think, neither thinking nor feeling deeply.
Surfing reality, as well…
I think you have to examine what the actual claims is.
The reports says:“Sara Konrath, a researcher at the university’s Institute for Social Research, looked at 72 studies that gauged empathy among 14,000 college students in the past 30 years. She found that empathy has been declining — especially since 2000.
The research finds that college students today show 40% less empathy vs. students in the 1980s and 1990s. The students are less likely to agree with statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” and "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective."The study did not evaluate why students are less empathetic, but Konrath says one reason may be that people are having fewer face-to-face interactions, communicating instead through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.“Empathy is best activated when you can see another person’s signal for help,” Konrath says.
Michigan graduate student Edward O’Brian, who helped collect data for the study, says the “explosion” in social networking has caused college students to spend less time with each other.”
it’s all a bit vague and the sample is tiny - and only amongst college students, who I have to say represent and increasingly small and less economically diverse representation since 2000.
Can you really judge “empathy” with a few platitudinous questions?
Another study which considered a wider range of factors showed an increase.
www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/0 … truism.pdf
The 2002 and 2004 GSSs provide basic data on the prevalence and structure of empathy and altruism in contemporary American society. They indicate that empathic feelings, altruistic-love sentiments, altruistic values, and helping behaviors are all common. Moreover, over this two year span there was an increase in altruistic values and behaviors.
I would not go onto the stats whether those are right or wrong but the declining of the empathy is obvious as one can feel it easily in the society, if one has the eye for it.
And Moreno, the reason is very simple as i have been stated manytimes in different threads.
It is a tussle between individualism and inclusiveness and former is winning hands down.
This too much emphasis on I, me and my is the very reason of that. We have completely forgotten the meaning of us.
How many of us are now in touch with grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives?
We have come so far that we have almost lost touch with ourselves.
And, the only reason behind all this is that, since last three centuries, the basic premise of the society is liberty, not welfare.
Thus, now the mantra is - Anything that brings more liberty must be good.
But, that does not necessarily true in all cases.
Even the more serious problem is, if any liberty is challenged, it is considered as discrimination, backwardness and religious by default, without giving a serious thought.
Unless we do not abondon this notion, nothing would change and people will become more and more self-centric by each passing moment.
with love,
sanjay
It is not a tiny sample.
This is a valid criticism, but it would still be meaningful about the people who tend to attend college. And these tend to be leaders in society along with middle class professionals. So while working class and poor would be less represented, it would have a very serious impact on society.
The questions are not very different from the ones on the study you cited. I don’t see why they are platitudinous, they directly relate to empathy.
It showed an increase between 2004 and 2006. The other study covered decades. Could be a short swing in the trend covered in the other study. But definitely good information!
I feel this is also true. The study matches my experience.
I Think one can be very individualistic and feel empathy. A lot of the structures that exerted more Control on individuals may have allowed the form of empathy, but not the feeling. My sense is the very feeling is dissipating.
Your arguement makes sense, and it may be a factor since people may interpret independence, freedom and individuality as not caring so much, but this need not be the case. Empathy is a fairly direct reaction to the suffering of anothe person. And I see this diminishing along with profoundity in general.
Even the more serious problem is, if any liberty is challenged, it is considered as discrimination, backwardness and religious by default, without giving a serious thought.
Unless we do not abondon this notion, nothing would change and people will become more and more self-centric by each passing moment.
with love,
sanjay
[/quote]
I see that population amount was not considered as a factor. I see that it is a very important factor for any lack of empathy.
In the US there are hundred’s of millions of people. This study was a meta-analysis of just a few colleges and really, I mean it a TINY sample.
All this can serve to do is to increase your own prejudice, and has nothing to say concerning your headlining claim.
I completely agree about your premise of liberty versus welfare. For instance, some people have so little empathy, and believe in individual liberty so strongly, that they think their own and others’ personal aversion to something like homosexuality is enough grounds to prevent others from engaging in full, meaningful, dignified, human relationships with the partner of their choice.
Anon,
This is not the thread for what you are trying to do.
If you have something to say (even scarcasm), address that to me directly in that very thread where it belongs ( if you can bear the response too).
No need to be shy.
My personal prefrences do not matter at all.
For your clarification, i coloured the precise portion, where the crux lies.
The devil is in the details, but for that, one must be able and willing too.
And, your attempt to dignifying homosexuality is the perfect example of that.
And, also remember, what you considering as full, meningful, dignified human relationship with the partner of their choice was not so merely some decades back.
And also, in the same way, what you consider now is bad and immoral, could also be considered as dignified human choice merely some decades after.
If you cannot see it coming, i cannot help it.
with love,
sanjay
No worries Sanjay, this is all on topic here as long as we leave it at that - an example for discussion.
I still go with too many bodies surrounding each other. Its a natural reaction for survival. We are family/herd/pack creatures by nature. Not species orientated. We do not see species as we see those in our family groupings. Competition for resources is part of it, a big part. To give to species is to remove and endanger family. Simply put its all a knee jerk reaction that we cannot always control… Young people in college are extremely competitive for their family and self.
This is true. Anthropologists talk about magic numbers for toleration and care. In rural communities you don’t find people stepping over heat attack victims in the street whereas you do in New York.
However, social media and other forms of Internet communication enable a sort of comfortable distance by which many people can share MORE empathy with differently coloured people from all over the world and get concerned with their plight whereas before they would not even know the existed.
In other words you can easily bring people into your “family”, or other association group that you will never meet face to face. People can now find common cause with others on grounds utterly different from family, race or nation.
You have only to look at the phenomenon of world-wide protests, against G8, the environment, for liberty; brazil, Egypt, Ukraine, Arab Spring, Occupy movement; and so on. All making connections via the Internet and being inspired by the efforts of others.
None of which could happen - at least not with such speed just 20 years ago.
None of the survey’s mentioned in this thread investigated the empty OF social media; they only see it as counter to empathy not extending it to further areas of human consciousness.
“In rural communities you don’t find people stepping over heat attack victims in the street whereas you do in New York”
Lol.
Actually the entire issue of homosexuality, women’s rights, and free-love. are all examples of how Empathy has massively increased over the last 50 years.
In each of these categories people are far more tolerant and understanding of other’s wishing to be able to live their own lives in the way they need to.
50 years ago all through the West it was illegal to be homosexual, and women were expected to stay home and look after children. Couples were supposed to get married and avoid all sexual contact before marriage.
Thankfully imposing these ridiculous regimes upon people is now met with the horror it deserves whilst 50-60 years ago any change in the status quo; gay sex, sex before marriage, and women expecting to have a career were met with abuse and condemnation.
It is only tiny minority that cling to these out-of-date ideas and lack the basic empathy to allow people to do as think think best suits them.
It’s clear enough we have left that lack of empathy far behind.
True but, I see hobby more than true empathy.
Those things were less easy to organize, it’s true. But so was organized hate, racism, pedophilia, and individualized versions of these. It has facilitated people with common interests getting together, yes, but for good and for ill, regardless of how you fill those categories. But people are sucked into their media away from people around them. I see people on dates staring at their phones and texing. People are much less where they are and the type of Communication facilitated by the new media is generally very shallow. Sure, some people use it for Deep stuff and connect and do great things. but overall the effect, as I experience it and as charted in most of the research I have found on the issue, is that people are less connected to other, less empathetic, more distracted…They have a lot of Connections, many not easily possible or possible at all Before. But these Connections are shallower.
The most common search Words are sex related. And then the huge surfing after popular Culture crap. (and note, I don’t Think all of popular Culture is crap, but it is popular Culture crap people are surfing for - Miley Cyrus Twerking, some other ‘star’ drunk and so on.)
I don’t think we have seen a rise in paedophilia, but modern comms have seen the rise in catching pedophiles.
That wasn’t my Point. I wasn’t saying it was creating pedophiles, just as I doubt it is creating lefties to protest the G8. As far as catching pedophiles, great. But it also allowing both democracies and dictatorships to track everyone and especially opposition. But this is NOT what the thread is about. It is about how the medium is affecting empathy.
Johnny Carson noted that his neighborhood seemed a lot safer in the 1950s than it was in later decades. I’ve noticed the same thing. In our neighborhood in the 1950s crimes were rare. By the year 2014 they became hotbeds of crime mainly due to the territorial wars of gangs who sell drugs. Now murder, robbery, arson and theft are common occurrences here. The streets are meaner than they were!