Empathy is Overrated

It is our actions that matter, not how we feel.

Photo: Owl Stories/Getty Images

This piece was originally published to Medium on April 3, 2020.

I used to know this guy, Steven, who was very invested in thinking of himself as “an empath.” Actually, I’ve known a lot of people like that. I hang around artists, actors, and queer people who read a lot of self-help books; in those circles, identifying as an empath is common. But when I think about the misunderstood nature of empathy and the way it gets overhyped in our culture, Steven in particular always comes to mind.

Steven was a kindhearted, warm person with a rich social network. He was perceptive and fascinated by the inner lives of everyone around him. An active spreader of benevolent-seeming gossip, he always knew who was suffering, which friends were having a fight, who was about to hook up with whom. If a longstanding couple was contemplating divorce, he was the first to know. If someone got a new job or was admitted to graduate school, he was the person who showed up first to help them celebrate.

Sometimes, Steven’s emotional instincts struck me as superhuman. He once comforted me when I was in the middle of a drunken crying jag at a crowded party. I’ve never forgotten how loved and protected he made me feel in that moment. We barely knew one another at the time, yet he knew exactly what to say to quiet my sobs.

At other times, Steven’s empathy seemed to be a protective facade. Normally so good at reading people, he somehow struggled to respect when people seemed uncomfortable or didn’t want to do what he wanted to do. He would share all the deeply personal information his friends trusted him with — no matter how embarrassing or damning it was. One time I told him about a man who had been following me down the street harassing me, and Steven became so distressed I had to make him feel better about it. Instead of helping the two of us connect, his oversized empathy sometimes drove us apart.

Feeling another person’s emotions does not innately make you a good person.

Our culture is obsessed with the power of empathy. Whenever a politician strips a marginalized group of their rights, the left decries the lack of empathy. When hate groups rise up and spout vitriol, their apparent lack of empathy is blamed as the root of their evil. Even critiques of capitalism somehow become conversations about empathy. It’s as if people believe the most pressing problem is lack of love in billionaires’ hearts, not the systems of power and capitalism that made them billionaires.

As an Autistic person who cares about social issues, this obsession with empathy frustrates me. Feeling another person’s emotions does not innately make you a good person. Being emotionally sensitive doesn’t ensure that you’ll take the steps necessary to help someone. And those of us who struggle with empathy are not monsters or robots. We are just as capable of acting compassionately as anybody else.

Empathy is overrated. It is an alluring illusion. In reality, we never know how another person feels. And we don’t have to. We don’t need intuitive, magical empath powers to uplift other people or to right society’s wrongs. Our actions and choices can matter so much more than how we feel.

Empathy is an illusion

You’ve probably heard empathy defined as “feeling what another person feels.” Even in psychology, we often explain empathy that way. Empathic people feel sad when other people are sad. When you witness someone getting punched, empathy might make your own brain light up with pain. It’s almost like having psychic abilities. Right?

Empathy is an emotional simulation of what you believe another person might be feeling.

The problem with this definition of empathy is people tend to take it literally. Self-identified empaths (as well as highly sensitive people, or HSPs) often believe they are uniquely intuitive and have a “sixth sense” for how other people feel. Nearly every popular book about empaths and HSPs feeds into this belief. They describe empathy as a “gift,” using awed, vague language that suggests it’s almost like magic.

This isn’t actually the case. At best, empathy is an illusion. It’s an emotional simulation of what you believe another person might be feeling. These simulated emotions can be intense and compelling, but that doesn’t mean they are correct. If a person’s facial expressions are hard to read or if their experiences and reactions are a little out of the ordinary, empathy may fail to tell you what they’re going through.

I’m an Autistic person, and empathic people read my emotions incorrectly all the time. I once had a co-worker, Lauren, who was very sensitive and kind. Lauren was absolutely convinced I was a miserably sad, lonesome soul. Every time she popped into my office to say hello, she’d notice I was frowning, so she’d frown back at me in an exaggerated way and ask in a low, concerned voice if I was doing “okay” — as if I were a scared baby bunny lying injured in the woods.

When Lauren looked at me, she felt kind of sad and uncomfortable. She assumed that meant I was sad and uncomfortable, too. In reality, my resting facial expression is just flat and seems “emotionless,” especially to non-Autistic people. Research shows that neurotypical people often feel uneasy around Autistic folks, even if they can’t pin down why. Confusion over how we express emotion is often a big part of it. In her attempts to connect with me emotionally, Lauren left me feeling alienated and misunderstood.

When we’re too confident in the intuitive magic of empathy, we risk making all manner of errors. We may assume that a person on trial for a crime is heartless and sociopathic, when really they’re frozen with panic. Those of us who are non-Black may believe a Black woman is “angry” because racism has clouded our perceptions. We may only have sympathy for people who express emotions in ways that seem normal to us based on our culture. Instead of bringing us together, misplaced empathy can drive us apart.

Empathy is not perspective-taking

In psychology, we sometimes draw a distinction between affective (or emotional) empathy and cognitive (or mental) empathy. Affective empathy is feeling what (we believe) another person is feeling. When the average person uses the word “empathy,” that’s the one they mean. Cognitive empathy, also known as perspective-taking, is imagining what it’s like to see through another person’s eyes and thinking about what they might be going through.

Perspective-taking is distinct from empathy in many ways. For one, perspective-taking is a skill that anyone can practice. You don’t have to be naturally good at it. Perspective-taking involves thinking carefully about a person’s life and critically analyzing how they think, and we can update or refine our understanding as new information comes in. It’s not an instinct; it’s a behavior you can choose to take.

Many Autistic people—as well as people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and others—have a hard time with empathy. We often overcompensate by developing keen perspective-taking skills. I can’t always read someone’s emotions from their face or tone of voice, but I can pay attention to the content of what they say, think about what I know about them and their lives, and draw reasonable conclusions from all that data.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the lives of other people, trying to piece together an understanding of how they might experience the world. Whenever I meet someone new, I try to think about how I can avoid accidentally hurting or alienating them. If they’re a member of a marginalized group, I keep in mind the dozens of ignorant, microaggressive things people probably say to them all the time, and I try my best to avoid doing any of that. If they share personal, sensitive information with me, I try to really listen and not respond with any undermining cliches.

It always shocks me when a supposedly more empathic, non-Autistic person wanders into the exact same conversation and immediately says the most obvious thing that comes to mind or downplays another person’s emotions with treacly look-on-the-bright-side language. Such a lack of care is unfathomable to me. Yet people who are supposedly empathic behave this carelessly all the time. Some people find socializing so effortless that they never had to learn to perspective-take. As a result, many of their interactions are thoughtless, bubbly, and ultimately, pretty shallow.

Empathy is overwhelming

One of the other drawbacks of empathy is how overpowering it can be. When you are caught up in feeling another person’s emotions (or what you believe their emotions are), you may not be able to think clearly. You may even lose sight of the person you’re empathizing with.

Autistic people are often stereotyped as lacking empathy, but one common theory of Autism is that we experience excessive, distressing levels of empathy. Autistic people can easily get overloaded by the anguish, rage, or even joy of other people. We may become confused by intense yet hard-to-name emotions we feel. It can cause us to have meltdowns or to dissociate.

I sometimes get stressed when people are raucous and laughing too loudly; even though I want to share their happiness, it puts me on edge. On the flip side, talking deeply with a distressed person can leave me feeling drained for days afterward. When I get overwhelmed with another person’s emotions, I start to check out. I look even more detached and robotic than usual. I may be unable to make eye contact with them. I may even start falling asleep. This is an Autistic shutdown, but people mistake it for apathy and a lack of empathy.

The real problem is that intense empathy sometimes inhibits helping behavior.

Empathy can overwhelm non-Autistic people in damaging ways, too. Sometimes, people get so wrapped up in empathizing with another person that they forget to focus on who was actually harmed. A white person might cry about racism so loudly that it pulls focus from the people of color actually suffering, for example. Or a supposedly supportive feminist friend might be so distressed to hear about your abusive ex that you find yourself having to comfort them, instead of the other way around.

A lot of people would chalk this kind of behavior up to narcissism, but narcissistic people can be caring and compassionate just like anyone else. The problem here is not that people feel intense emotions about events that don’t involve them. Those feelings are completely neutral, and they are neither evil nor good. The real problem is that intense empathy sometimes inhibits helping behavior.

It’s fine to feel immense sadness on behalf of someone else, so long as you don’t mistake that for taking productive action. At the end of the day, it is how you behave that matters far more than what you’re feeling.

Empathy is not compassion

Empathy is an internal experience. By itself, it does nothing to remedy structural injustice or bring comfort. When progressive left-leaning people decry the lack of empathy in our culture, what they really mean is the lack of compassionate acts. Thankfully, people don’t need empathy to behave compassionately.

Compassion drives us to do things like check up on older isolated relatives, donate money to unemployed people’s crowdfunding campaigns, and volunteer time driving people to the polls. Unlike empathy, which is mostly emotionally driven, compassion can be emotional, intellectual, or even philosophical in nature.

I might decide to advocate for my university’s graduate student union because worker exploitation makes me sad, or I might get involved because I recognize, intellectually, that such efforts are important. It doesn’t matter whether my heart or my mind led me to behave compassionately. What matters is that I made the choice to get involved.

Autistic people are often deeply compassionate, regardless of whether we feel empathy or not. People who are even more deeply demonized, such as those with antisocial personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, can also behave compassionately without empathy. You don’t have to feel someone else’s feelings in order to care about their well-being. You just have to believe that human life has worth and that suffering should be prevented and minimized as much as possible.

Unfortunately, many highly empathic people don’t realize a life without empathy can be just as socially connected and loving as one with it. They may believe that empathy is the only route to taking social injustice seriously. In fact, some people might even believe empathy itself is an act of compassion.

That simply is not the case. You can’t just feel deeply for someone who is suffering. That’s about as effective as praying for them. If you really want to improve a person’s circumstances, you have to put time and resources into helping them.

Empathy is overrated. For those who experience it, it may seem like the most genuine form of human connection that exists. Take it from me, someone with limited empathy who nonetheless cares about humanity a great deal: Your empathy is an illusion. It’s not a replacement for thinking intentionally about other people and what they might need.

If empathy is what fills you with the desire to better humanity, that’s great. Listen to that impulse. Translate your feelings into direct action. And while you’re at it, stop demonizing those of us who take action for other reasons.