Empathy Is More Practical Than It Sounds

How Understanding Another View Can Improve Everyday Decisions And Conversations

How often does a disagreement become easier once you understand what the other person is actually experiencing?

Empathy can be practical information gathering. Understanding another perspective may help us communicate more clearly, make better shared decisions, and respond to the person rather than our assumptions.

• Empathy includes related emotional and cognitive processes.
• Perspective taking asks us to consider information another person may have.
• Understanding another view does not require agreeing with it.
• Listening can correct assumptions that imagination alone may create.
• Empathy can improve everyday conversations and shared decisions.
• Curiosity often makes empathy more accurate and useful.

Empathy Does Not Require Agreement

The word empathy can sound emotional or abstract.

In everyday life, it can begin with a very practical question.

What might I be missing from where this person is standing?

Consider two coworkers discussing when to schedule an important meeting.

One wants 8:00 in the morning. The other keeps asking for something later.

It would be easy for either person to interpret the disagreement personally. One might see the other as inflexible. The other might see the early meeting as inconsiderate.

Then one question changes the conversation.

The coworker requesting the later meeting explains that she takes her father to a medical appointment every Tuesday morning.

The disagreement now contains information that was missing.

Neither person had to surrender a principle.

They simply understood more of the situation.

There Is More Than One Part Of Empathy

Psychological research distinguishes several processes that everyday language often places under the broad word empathy.

Emotional empathy involves sharing or responding to another person’s emotional state. Perspective taking involves trying to understand another person’s intentions, thoughts, goals, or point of view.

Researchers have found that these processes are related, yet they are not identical. They can involve distinguishable psychological and neural mechanisms.

That distinction is useful.

You do not need to feel exactly what another person feels to recognize that their information, priorities, or circumstances differ from yours.

Sometimes understanding that difference is enough to improve a decision.

Your View Feels Complete From Where You Stand

One obstacle to perspective taking is surprisingly ordinary.

We know what we know.

That knowledge becomes the starting point for interpreting what everyone else sees.

Research on perspective taking has found that people can anchor judgments in their own knowledge and overestimate how much another person shares their perspective. Feedback about another person’s actual experience can help reduce some of this egocentric projection.

Think about giving directions.

You know exactly where the restaurant is.

You tell a visitor, “Turn right where the old grocery store used to be.”

Perfectly clear.

To you.

Your listener has never seen the grocery store.

Good communication requires more than transmitting information. It requires considering what information exists on the receiving side.

That is perspective taking in an extremely practical form.

Ask Before You Imagine

There is an important caution.

Trying to understand another person does not mean we can accurately imagine everything happening inside that person’s mind.

Our own experiences can interfere.

Research examining emotion recognition found that having experienced something similar did not necessarily make participants more accurate at identifying another person’s emotions. Under some conditions, perceived similarity was associated with less accurate recognition.

That gives empathy an important companion.

Curiosity.

Instead of thinking, “I know exactly how you feel,” we can ask:

“How is this affecting you?”

Instead of deciding why someone made a choice, we can ask what mattered when they made it.

Words provide information that imagination cannot always supply. Research on empathic accuracy has found that attending to what another person actually says can provide useful clues to what they are thinking.

Empathy becomes stronger when listening accompanies perspective taking.

Better Conversations Need Better Information

Many disagreements contain an information problem hidden inside an emotional one.

• A family member wants to leave a gathering early.
• A friend declines an invitation.
• A coworker questions a plan.
• A customer seems impatient.
• A teenager becomes unusually quiet.

We can immediately construct explanations for each behavior.

• They are bored.
• They do not care.
• They are difficult.
• They disagree with me.

Something may be wrong.

Perhaps one interpretation is correct.

We still do not know until we learn more.

A useful conversation moves from interpretation toward information.

• What happened?
• What are you concerned about?
• What would make this easier?

Those are simple questions.

Their answers can completely change what we decide to do next.

Empathy Can Improve Decisions Made For Others

We regularly make choices affecting other people.

Parents make decisions for children. Families make plans together. Managers assign responsibilities. Friends choose activities. Communities decide how shared resources should be used.

Research has even found relationships between empathy and how people make certain reward decisions on behalf of others.

The broader lesson is straightforward.

When a decision affects someone else, understanding what matters to that person provides relevant information.

Empathy does not replace facts, boundaries, expertise, or responsibility.

It adds another source of information to the decision.

Everyday Empathy Is Often Ordinary

Empathy does not always arrive during a serious conversation.

It may appear when you lower the television while someone is reading.

• You explain unfamiliar terminology to a new coworker.
• You notice that a restaurant server is handling several tables at once.
• You allow another driver enough space to merge.
• You ask an older relative whether the music is too loud.
• You give someone time to finish explaining an idea before responding.

Studies of everyday interactions show that empathy is dynamic and varies across situations. Research also connects empathy with the affiliative qualities of ordinary social interaction.

This makes empathy less of a personality label.

It becomes something we practice in particular moments.

Understanding Is Not Surrender

There is another misconception worth removing.

Understanding another perspective does not require adopting it.

Two people can understand each other clearly and still disagree.

You can understand why a friend wants to spend money differently while maintaining your own financial boundary.

You can understand why a coworker prefers one approach while choosing another.

You can understand someone’s disappointment while still saying no.

Empathy can make boundaries more informed.

It can also make disagreement more respectful.

I understand your view and I agree with your view are different statements.

Keeping them separate allows empathy to remain useful even when consensus is impossible.

Conclusion

Empathy can sound complicated when we treat it only as an emotion.

In everyday life, it is often remarkably practical.

Another person’s perspective contains information.

When we ask, listen, and learn before assuming, that information can improve conversations, relationships, and shared decisions.

• We may still disagree.
• We may still maintain boundaries.
• We may still choose differently.
• We simply make those choices with a better understanding of the people affected by them.

Reflection Question

When has understanding someone’s circumstances changed how you interpreted their behavior?

Practical Action | Ask One More Question

During one conversation today, notice when you begin assuming what another person means, wants, or feels.

Ask one genuine question before forming your conclusion.

Then listen to the complete answer.

• You may not change your decision.
• You may change your understanding.

References

1. Stietz, J., et al. (2019). The Aging of Empathy: A Meta Analysis. Psychology and Aging, 34(8), 1143–1155. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000371
2. Rauers, A., et al. (2020). Similarity in Personal Experiences and Empathic Accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(5), 1137–1158. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000255
3. Hall, J. A., & Schwartz, R. (2019). Empathy Present and Future. Journal of Social Psychology, 159(3), 225–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2018.1477442