The Limits of Empathy

Idea in Brief The Situation We all know that empathy is essential to effective leadership, management, product development, marketing—pretty much any aspect of business that involves people. But it has its limits. The Problem Empathy taxes us mentally and emotionally, it’s not an infinite resource, and it can even impair our ethical judgment. That’s why if we demand too much of it from employees, performance will suffer. The Solution You can take steps to prevent the ill effects and promote the good. For instance, have people focus on certain sets of stakeholders, help them meet others’ needs in ways that also address their own, and give them empathy breaks so they can replenish their reserves. A few years ago, Ford Motor Company started asking its (mostly male) engineers to wear the Empathy Belly, a simulator that allows them to experience symptoms of pregnancy firsthand—the back pain, the bladder pressure, the 30 or so pounds of extra weight. They can even feel “movements” that mimic fetal kicking. The idea is to get them to understand the ergonomic challenges that pregnant women face when driving, such as limited reach, shifts in posture and center of gravity, and general bodily awkwardness. It’s unclear whether this has improved Ford’s cars or increased customer satisfaction, but the engineers claim benefits from the experience. They’re still using the belly; they’re also simulating the foggy vision and stiff joints of elderly drivers with an “age suit.” If nothing more, these exercises are certainly an attempt to “get the other person’s point of view,” which Henry Ford once famously said was the key to success. Empathy is all the rage pretty much everywhere—not just at Ford, and not just on engineering and product development teams. It’s at the heart of design thinking, and innovation more broadly defined. It’s also touted as a critical leadership skill—one that helps you influence others in your organization, anticipate stakeholders’ concerns, respond to social media followers, and even run better meetings. But recent research (by me and many others) suggests that all this heat and light may be a bit too intense. Though empathy is essential to leading and managing others—without it, you’ll make disastrous decisions and forfeit the benefits just described—failing to recognize its limits can impair individual and organizational performance. Here are some of the biggest problems you can run into and recommendations for getting around them. Problem #1: It’s exhausting. Like heavy-duty cognitive tasks, such as keeping multiple pieces of information in mind at once or avoiding distractions in a busy environment, empathy depletes our mental resources. So jobs that require constant empathy can lead to “compassion fatigue,” an acute inability to empathize that’s driven by stress, and burnout, a more gradual and chronic version of this phenomenon. Health and human services professionals (doctors, nurses, social workers, corrections officers) are especially at risk, because empathy is central to their day-to-day jobs. In a study of hospice nurses, for example, the key predictors for compassion fatigue were psychological: anxiety, feelings of trauma, life demands, and what the researchers call excessive empathy, meaning the tendency to sacrifice one’s own needs for others’ (rather than simply “feeling” for people). Variables such as long hours and heavy caseloads also had an impact, but less than expected. And in a survey of Korean nurses, self-reported compassion fatigue strongly predicted their intentions to leave their jobs in the near future. Other studies of nurses show additional consequences of compassion fatigue, such as absenteeism and increased errors in administering medication. Failing to recognize the limits of empathy can impair performance. People who work for charities and other nonprofits (think animal shelters) are similarly at risk. Voluntary turnover is exceedingly high, in part because of the empathically demanding nature of the work; low pay exacerbates the element of self-sacrifice. What’s more, society’s strict views of how nonprofits should operate mean they face a backlash when they act like businesses (for instance, investing in “overhead” to keep the organization running smoothly). They’re expected to thrive through selfless outpourings of compassion from workers. The demand for empathy is relentless in other sectors as well. Day after day, managers must motivate knowledge workers by understanding their experiences and perspectives and helping them find personal meaning in their work. Customer service professionals must continually quell the concerns of distressed callers. Empathy is exhausting in any setting or role in which it’s a primary aspect of the job. Problem #2: It’s zero sum. Empathy doesn’t just drain energy and cognitive resources—it also depletes itself. The more empathy I devote to my spouse, the less I have left for my mother; the more I give to my mother, the less I can give to my son. Both our desire to be empathic and the effort it requires are in limited supply, whether we’re dealing with family and friends or customers and colleagues. Consider this study: Researchers examined the trade-offs associated with empathic behaviors at work and at home by surveying 844 workers from various sectors, including hairstylists, firefighters, and telecom professionals. People who reported workplace behaviors such as taking “time to listen to coworkers’ problems and worries” and “helping others who have heavy workloads” felt less capable of connecting with their families. They felt emotionally drained and burdened by work-related demands. Sometimes the zero-sum problem leads to another type of trade-off: Empathy toward insiders—say, people on our teams or in our organizations—can limit our capacity to empathize with people outside our immediate circles. We naturally put more time and effort into understanding the needs of our close friends and colleagues. We simply find it easier to do, because we care more about them to begin with. This uneven investment creates a gap that’s widened by our limited supply of empathy: As we use up most of what’s available on insiders, our bonds with them get stronger, while our desire to connect with outsiders wanes. Preferential empathy can antagonize those who see us as protecting our own (think about how people reacted when the Pope praised the Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse). It can also, a bit more surprisingly, lead to insiders’ aggression toward outsiders. For example, in a study I conducted with University of Chicago professor Nicholas Epley, we looked at how two sets of participants—those sitting with a friend (to prime empathic connection) and those sitting with a stranger—would treat a group of terrorists, an outgroup with particularly negative associations. After describing the terrorists, we asked how much participants endorsed statements portraying them as subhuman, how acceptable waterboarding them would be, and how much voltage of electric shock they would be willing to administer to them. Merely sitting in a room with a friend significantly increased people’s willingness to torture and dehumanize. Although this study represents an extreme case, the same principle holds for organizations. Compassion for one’s own employees and colleagues sometimes produces aggressive responses toward others. More often, insiders are simply uninterested in empathizing with outsiders—but even that can cause people to neglect opportunities for constructive collaboration across functions or organizations. Problem #3: It can erode ethics. Finally, empathy can cause lapses in ethical judgment. We saw some of that in the study about terrorists. In many cases, though, the problem stems not from aggression toward outsiders but, rather, from extreme loyalty toward insiders. In making a focused effort to see and feel things the way people who are close to us do, we may take on their interests as our own. This can make us more willing to overlook transgressions or even behave badly ourselves. Multiple studies in behavioral science and decision making show that people are more inclined to cheat when it serves another person. In various settings, with the benefits ranging from financial to reputational, people use this ostensible altruism to rationalize their dishonesty. It only gets worse when they empathize with another’s plight or feel the pain of someone who is treated unfairly: In those cases, they’re even more likely to lie, cheat, or steal to benefit that person. In the workplace, empathy toward fellow employees can inhibit whistle-blowing—and when that happens, it seems scandals often follow. Just ask the police, the military, Penn State University, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and WorldCom. The kinds of problems that have plagued those organizations—brutality, sexual abuse, fraud—tend to be exposed by outsiders who don’t identify closely with the perpetrators. In my research with Liane Young and James Dungan of Boston College, we studied the effects of loyalty on people using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online marketplace where users earn money for completing tasks. At the beginning of the study, we asked some participants to write an essay about loyalty and others to write about fairness. Later in the study, they were each exposed to poor work by someone else. Those who had received the loyalty nudge were less willing to blow the whistle on a fellow user for inferior performance. This finding complements research showing that bribery is more common in countries that prize collectivism. The sense of group belonging and interdependence among members often leads people to tolerate the offense. It makes them feel less accountable for it, diffusing responsibility to the collective whole instead of assigning it to the individual. In short, empathy for those within one’s immediate circle can conflict with justice for all. How to Rein In Excessive Empathy These three problems may seem intractable, but as a manager you can do a number of things to mitigate them in your organization. Split up the work. You might start by asking each employee to zero in on a certain set of stakeholders, rather than empathize with anyone and everyone. Some people can focus primarily on customers, for instance, and others on coworkers—think of it as creating task forces to meet different stakeholders’ needs. This makes the work of developing relationships and gathering perspectives less consuming for individuals. You’ll also accomplish more in the aggregate, by distributing “caring” responsibilities across your team or company. Although empathy is finite for any one person, it’s less bounded when managed across employees. Make it less of a sacrifice. Our mindsets can either intensify or lessen our susceptibility to empathy overload. For example, we exacerbate the zero-sum problem when we assume that our own interests and others’ are fundamentally opposed. (This often happens in deal making, when parties with different positions on an issue get stuck because they’re obsessed with the gap between them.) An adversarial mindset not only prevents us from understanding and responding to the other party but also makes us feel as though we’ve “lost” when we don’t get our way. We can avoid burnout by seeking integrative solutions that serve both sides’ interests. Take this example: A salary negotiation between a hiring manager and a promising candidate will become a tug-of-war contest if they have different numbers in mind and fixate on the money alone. But let’s suppose that the candidate actually cares more about job security, and the manager is keenly interested in avoiding turnover. Building security into the contract would be a win-win: an empathic act by the manager that wouldn’t drain his empathy reserves the way making a concession on salary would, because keeping new hires around is in line with his own desires. Give people breaks by allowing them to focus on their own interests. There’s only so much empathy to go around, but it’s possible to achieve economies of sorts. By asking questions instead of letting assumptions go unchecked, you can bring such solutions to the surface. Give people breaks. As a management and organizations professor, I cringe when students refer to my department’s coursework—on leadership, teams, and negotiation—as “soft skills.” Understanding and responding to the needs, interests, and desires of other human beings involves some of the hardest work of all. Despite claims that empathy comes naturally, it takes arduous mental effort to get into another person’s mind—and then to respond with compassion rather than indifference. We all know that people need periodic relief from technical and analytical work and from rote jobs like data entry. The same is true of empathy. Look for ways to give employees breaks. It’s not sufficient to encourage self-directed projects that also benefit the company (and often result in more work), as Google did with its 20% time policy. Encourage individuals to take time to focus on their interests alone. Recent research finds that people who take lots of self-focused breaks subsequently report feeling more empathy for others. That might seem counterintuitive, but when people feel restored, they’re better able to perform the demanding tasks of figuring out and responding to what others need. How do you give people respite from thinking and caring about others? Some companies are purchasing isolation chambers like Orrb Technologies’ wellness and learning pods so that people can literally put themselves in a bubble to relax, meditate, or do whatever else helps them recharge. McLaren, for example, uses the pods to train F1 supercar drivers to focus. Other companies, such as electrical parts distributor Van Meter, are relying on much simpler interventions like shutting off employee email accounts when workers go on vacation to allow them to concentrate on themselves without interruption. . . . Despite its limitations, empathy is essential at work. So managers should make sure employees are investing it wisely. When trying to empathize, it’s generally better to talk with people about their experiences than to imagine how they might be feeling, as Nicholas Epley suggests in his book Mindwise . A recent study bears this out. Participants were asked how capable they thought blind people were of working and living independently. But before answering the question, some were asked to complete difficult physical tasks while wearing a blindfold. Those who had done the blindness simulation judged blind people to be much less capable. That’s because the exercise led them to ask “What would it be like if I were blind?” (the answer: very difficult!) rather than “What is it like for a blind person to be blind?” This finding speaks to why Ford’s use of the Empathy Belly, while well-intentioned, may be misguided: After wearing it, engineers may overestimate or misidentify the difficulties faced by drivers who actually are pregnant. Talking to people—asking them how they feel, what they want, and what they think—may seem simplistic, but it’s more accurate. It’s also less taxing to employees and their organizations, because it involves collecting real information instead of endlessly speculating. It’s a smarter way to empathize.

The Limits of Empathy

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