Empathy is our ability to feel and imagine the thoughts and emotions of other people.
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November 2022
HUMANITIES AND HUMAN FLOURISHING NEWSLETTER
Advancing the understanding, assessment, and cultivation of well-being by means of a deep and sustained collaboration between the arts, humanities, and the social sciences
Empathy: Feeling through the Arts and Humanities
Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, La Mélancolie (18th century)
What do you see in the painting above?
The contemplative posture of the woman? The warm hue? The beads ornamenting her clothes? When we view art, we perceive details and process how they fit together. Art gives us something to think about.
But engaging with art isn’t just thinking. How does the painting make you feel?
Compassionate? Pitiful? Uneasy? Perhaps you feel the woman’s sense of melancholy. Perhaps you relate to what the woman is going through.
If the painting made you feel something, that is empathy at work.
Empathy is our ability to feel and imagine the thoughts and emotions of other people. It is psychologically and socially very important. Empathy is associated with more selflessness and generosity, and stronger relationships. It also helps us cooperate. And, it makes us more tolerant and understanding. Remarkably, empathy can extend to complete strangers, or even fictional characters like Lady Macbeth or Harry Potter.
This explains why empathy may drive our emotional response to art in general. Indeed, one study found that more empathetic people responded more intensely to paintings, both mentally and physically. Another study suggests that more empathy helps us better understand the subject and perspective of artworks, and that empathizing with art strengthens our empathy for other people.
Notably, Joyce Zazulak and her team looked at the impact of arts-based programs on the development of empathy. They found that participating in an arts curriculum improved fantasy -- how people identified with others in fictional situations. Their findings suggest that arts programs can improve our ability to think about the concerns of others.
The idea that empathy drives richer engagement with art is both interesting and intuitive. But, empathy has broader psychological and social relevance – it makes us more generous, sociable, cooperative and tolerant. This is a terrific reason to go to museums, read books and watch movies. Engaging with the arts in these ways may improve our ability to more deeply and effectively empathize with the real people in our lives.
Think about a time when a work of art – a novel or poem, a song, a play or performance, a piece in a museum, a film or television show – depicted a life or state of being that looked different from your own. Did you have an empathetic response? What about the work and your reaction to it did (or did not) lead to your ability to cultivate feelings of empathy?
Empathy in Research
Recent research by Kou, Konrath, and Goldstein (2020) suggests that engaging the arts – including visual art, literature, and the performing arts – is associated with greater empathy and prosociality. Further, these effects endure over time – early arts engagement predicts future empathy and prosociality.
Empathy in Practice
In 2017, the Minneapolis Institute of Art launched the Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts. The goals of this center are to understand how the visual arts can help us build our empathy muscle, compile research on this topic, and gather resources for promoting empathy through visual art.
HHF News
Led by David B. Yaden, HHF recently published “A Meta-Analysis of Religion/Spirituality and Life Satisfaction” in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Upcoming Events
As part of the HHF colloquium series, we will be hosting a series of conversations between scientists and practitioners on the arts, culture, and well-being. This fall, we will hear from innovators working in research institutions and art museums on how the work of art museums can promote well-being in individuals and communities. We welcome you to join us for these virtual events and to take part in these important exchanges:
- November 16, 10:00 to 11:30am ET - Rebecca Chamberlain + Dana Bishop-Root (register here)
Couldn't make it to one of our past colloquia? Check out the recording on our HHF YouTube Channel.
This newsletter was created by Andrew Trousdale, Katherine Cotter, Sarah Sidoti, and James Pawelski.
