Instinctive empathy involved an uncontrollable emotional reaction to someone else’s experience—crying when someone else cries, for example, or blushing with secondhand embarrassment. Intellectual empathy was more distant: recognizing someone else’s emotion but not feeling it yourself.

Social technology is ostensibly about connecting people, but it doesn’t often foster the empathy that’s needed for real human connection.

Studies show that teaching traits like kindness, compassion, and empathy, in an explicit and intentional way at a young age, can make a difference. A 2011 meta-analysis of social-emotional learning, which many US curricula have embraced in recent decades, suggested that it led to higher graduation rates and safer sex, even eighteen years later.

Another friend, a woman, scolded me for not defending her husband in a debate about the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. You have a lot of learning to do, she said to me, before blocking me and never speaking to me again.

people’s level of empathy seems to correlate with their position in society.

“Empathetic people are happier, more self-aware, self-motivated, and optimistic. They cope better with stress, assert themselves when it is required, and are comfortable expressing their feelings. There was only one scale where non-empathetic people scored higher: Need for Approval.”

Franchesca Ramsey, an activist and actress who gained fame from a series of viral YouTube videos, writes about this poignantly in her book Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist.

What good does empathy actually do us? At the most basic level, it helps us connect with other humans.

cognitive empathy (understanding another person’s mental state) and affective empathy (responding emotionally to the other person’s mental state—i.e., sharing their feelings).