Shocker: Empathy Dropped 40% in College Students Since 2000

By STATS fellow Maia Szalavitz

College students who hit campus after 2000 have empathy levels that are 40% lower than those who came before them, according to a stunning new meta-analysis by University of Michigan researchers, which includes data from over 14,000 students.

Although we argue in Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential–and Endangered that modern child-rearing practices are putting empathy at risk, this is the largest study presented so far to quantify the decline.

Previous research done by psychologist Jean Twenge had measured what she labeled a “narcissism epidemic,” with more students showing selfish qualities and with increases in traits that can lead to a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. That is a condition in which people are so self-involved that other people are no more than objects to reflect their glory.

But I was less than convinced by that data because some of the measures of narcissism–statements like “I am a special person,” –might reflect a lifetime spent in classrooms aimed at raising self-esteem rather than a true increase in self-centeredness.

The survey on empathy used in this study–which you can take for yourself here–however, is another matter. While it so obviously measures empathy that you could easily game it to make yourself look kinder and nicer, the fact that today’s college students don’t even feel compelled to do that suggests that the study is measuring something real. If young people don’t even care about seeming uncaring, something is seriously wrong. Another survey in the research found that people also think that others around them are less compassionate.

Why might today’s students be less empathetic than their elders? One of the culprits we identify in Born for Love is the way that they spent most of their time early in life. Today’s kids play outdoors much less–and they spend far less time in unstructured activity with others than prior generations.

Without unstructured free time with playmates, children simply don’t get to know each other very well. And you can’t learn to connect and care if you don’t practice these things Free play declined by at least a third between 1981 and 2003–right when the kids who hit college in 2000 and later were growing up.

When it comes to relationships, a little gratitude goes a long way

New research out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggests small gestures that provoke gratitude may be associated with happier and stronger relationships.

The study consisted of more than 65 couples who were already in committed, satisfying relationships. Over the course of two weeks, the participants kept nightly diaries where they would record actions from their partner that benefited them, as well as any thoughtful gestures, no matter how small, they may have completed toward their partner.

The participants were also told to record their emotional responses to these interactions with their significant other, in addition to overall relationship satisfaction. The results indicated that gratitude was strongly associated with relationship satisfaction for both men and women.

Dr. Sara Algoe, lead author, says in the study’s news release:

“Gratitude triggers a cascade of responses within the person who feels it in that very moment, changing the way the person views the generous benefactor, as well as motivations toward the benefactor. This is especially true when a person shows that they care about the partner’s needs and preferences.”

Here are some additional findings reported by WebMD:

43% of women and 36% of men said their partners did something thoughtful for them.

35% of women and 33% of men said they did something thoughtful for their partners.

Participants agreed with their partners 61% of the time and disagreed 39% of the time.

Of the days when the partner reported doing something thoughtful, the participant agreed 51.2% of the time. However 48.8% of the partner-reported thoughtful behaviors went undetected by the participant.

Men were more likely to associate gratitude with indebtedness than women.

This study is published in the June issue of Personal Relationships.

Maia Szalavitz on Empathy

Originally posted on our collaborative site, Ourblook.

OurBlook interview with Maia Szalavitz, co-author of the new book “Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential — And Endangered”

How do you define empathy, and what new scientific findings have emerged about it?

MS: Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and care what it’s like to be there. It has at least two distinct parts. The first is what can be called “cognitive empathy” or “theory of mind.” This is basically understanding that there are other minds out there, they have different perspectives from yours and that by projecting yourself mentally into their heads, you can usually get a sense of what they might feel or want. This is the part that often causes problems for people with autism.

The other piece is the caring aspect or “emotional empathy.” This is feeling the feelings of others and wanting to help. Autistic people are actually frequently very sensitive to emotion and some seem to suffer from being overwhelmed by emotional empathy … not from having a lack of it.

The people who truly lack emotional empathy are sociopaths. They actually have a surfeit of cognitive empathy … they can easily consider other people’s perspectives but they use this information to manipulate them, not to help.

There are literally thousands of new scientific findings on empathy that have emerged over the last decade or so … social neuroscience is one of the hottest areas of research and empathy is at the center of social connection. One of the most important is the discovery of “mirror neurons” that respond by simulating someone else’s actions when you watch them. For example, if I smile at you, neurons in your brain that fire when you smile will start firing and will even stimulate the muscles involved in smiling slightly even if you don’t reciprocate. Your brain is giving you a hint that I’m happy by running a model of what happens to you when you smile … and this obviously prompts a tendency to reciprocate.

Such neurons provide an obvious explanation for the inclination we have to emotional contagion and for the basis of the ability to understand other minds. There are some controversies over the specifics, but the idea has great explanatory power and there are lots of reasons to believe some kind of system like this exists.

How can we tell when we have too much empathy for a person or situation, too little or the appropriate amount?

MS: Too much empathy can result in something called “empathic over-arousal” where you get so distressed by someone else’s pain that you run away or distract yourself rather than help. So, that’s something that can cause problems.

The right level of empathy, of course, also depends greatly on the situation. Doctors need to shut off empathy for pain … there was a recent study showing this with brain imaging … in order to function in the hospital. They aren’t going to be able to help you if they are sitting around worrying about how much pain you’ll feel when you wake up from surgery. When they ignore their own family’s distress, however, that’s not so good. But this shutdown of empathy is so common in professions like medicine and law enforcement that the insensitive doctor and the cop who can’t maintain relationships have become cliches.

Vital Statistics

Men lie more than women, according to a new poll

A poll of 3,000 people in the U.K shows that the average British man lies about three times a day, an average of 1,092 times a year. Meanwhile, the survey found women tend to lie only twice a day on average, approximately 728 times a year.

The survey found that mothers are the most popular target for lies. Only ten percent of those surveyed said they are likely lie to their significant other. The top lie for men was found to be: “I didn’t have that much to drink.” As for women, the number one lie is, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.”

Gun violence increasing in Ireland

According to new research, the rate of gun killings in Ireland is five times that of England and Wales. Ten years ago, the rates were almost equal (7.8 percent in Ireland and 7.2 percent in England and Wales). The research indicates that the tougher laws enacted for crimes involving firearms are ineffective, according to study leader Dr. Liz Campbell of Aberdeen University,

In 1998, 7.8 percent of murders involved guns; in 2008, it leaped to 38.2 percent of all killings. Meanwhile, only 6.8 percent of murders and manslaughters in England and Wales involved a firearm. Campbell says that this new research indicates that the firearm laws in the Irish Republic show a “narrow perspective”.

Newborns learn even while sleeping

A new study shows that newborns’ brains continue to be extremely active while asleep. Researchers tested 26 one to two day-old infants by playing clips of music followed by a puff of air directed at their eyes 200 times over a thirty minute period.

Toward the end of the half-hour, 24 out of the 26 infants began tightening their eyes in anticipation of the puff of air. Brain-wave activity also increased significantly in frontal potions of the brain, possibly reflecting how memories were updating.

Bad at relationships = good survival skills

New research shows that insecurity may have its benefits. Those that are insecure in a relationship may be more alert to a variety of possible dangers. The research team suggests that evolution would favor a mix of various types of attachment behavior (such as insecure, secure, anxious, and avoidant), as mixed groups are more likely to survive.

To conduct this study, the researchers put groups of three alone in a room with a hidden smoke machine. Groups that contained a participant who scored high for insecure attachment were quicker to notice the smoke and react. The same was also true for groups that contained a member that scored high for anxious attachment.

Science and Society

Originally posted on our collaborative site, OurBlook. Interview with Vikram Savkar, senior vice-president and publishing director for Scitable, a free online science library.

With the country embroiled in public debates around health care and the economy … and upcoming U.S. energy policy … what problems do the public and experts face in discussing science and statistics? If science can be used, can it also be abused?

VS: Many mass media outlets have cut back significantly on their investment in science journalism. The result is that there is much less well informed reportage on science today across the board than there was even 10 years ago. What remains can be quite good in some quarters, but can also at times be misleading, or poorly argued, and occasionally even sensationalistic. But eliminating discussion of science from political forums is a terrible alternative … our public dialogue must be based on facts and evidence, not just dogma.

The challenge we face is to keep science front and center in our national conversations about health care, energy, climate change and so on, but to do it in a way that involves clear and reliable presentation of balanced, informed positions … and all this despite the continuing shrinkage of the press floor. It’s not an easy challenge to solve, but it’s an essential one. So many of the existential issues we face as a country today intimately involve science. It’s more important than ever for the public at large to have a real degree of personal familiarity with the actual scientific research being conducted, analyzed, and debated in our labs and academic institutions.

As examples, can you cite any scientific facts that aren’t generally known but would be important in understanding the above issues?

VS: There are many examples of ideas that have been at times widely accepted by one side or other of the political spectrum as ‘fact’ and determinative of one course of action, but which in fact need to be considered in a broader context, which may suggest very different conclusions about what the right course of action is.

For example, many people initially embraced the use of corn-based ethanol in cars as a necessary partial solution to the climate change issue, because they give rise to fewer greenhouse gas emissions than our current fuels. But from a broad view, the impact of corn-based ethanol on climate change plays out a little differently. The production and transportation of a quantity of corn biofuel sufficient to offset our entire current dependence on gasoline would create new kinds of greenhouse gas emissions. So the net impact on emissions of migrating cars to these fuels is not immediately clear. That doesn’t mean that biofuels are ‘bad’, but it does mean that we need to assess their risks and benefits carefully before putting our weight behind them.

The effects of television on toddlers

A study out of the University of Montreal and the University of Michigan has found that television watching toddlers may suffer negative effects years later. This is one of the few studies that has followed children from toddler age to their early years in the classroom, the LA Times reports.

1,314 children were enrolled in the study. In order to determine any possible effects, parents reported on the levels of television watching at ages 2 ½ and 4 ½, while both parents and teachers evaluated the children’s academic and lifestyle habits at the age of ten. The study found that when 29 months old, toddlers watched an average of 8.82 hours of television per week. At the age of 4 ½ years, that amount increased to an average of 14.85 hours per week.

Time’s Wellness blog reports that each additional hour of television that children watched at 2 ½ years old, was associated with a 7 percent decrease in classroom engagement and a 6 percent decrease in math achievement. It also corresponded with a 13 percent decrease in physical activity on weekends, as well as a 10 percent increase in video-game playing and a 10 percent greater possibility of being bullied by classmates.

Here are some options to consider, according to Time:

The AAP and pediatricians encourage parents to minimize the TV toll by keeping televisions sets out of kids’ bedrooms, monitoring what they watch and watching TV with their children and discussing the content — at the very least, TV can help spur intellectually stimulating and engaging conversation within families.

This study is published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.