Are you growing your Empathy Muscle?
 
People are born with empathy solely on the feeling level. Infants seem to understand when something is wrong with another person. Over time, empathy matures. The empathy grows and evolves from just a feeling to including an intellectual understanding.
 
NYU Developmental Psychologist Martin L Hoffman researched infant and toddlers’ empathy capabilities. 👶 A one-year-old attempts to comfort a crying friend by bringing over Mommy, even though the friend’s mother was also in the room.
 
Harvard Psychologist Robert Rosenthal devised the largest study on the topic of empathy. It was named The Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity. It defined how people read non-verbal messages. Testing over 7,000 Americans and folks from 18 other countries, subjects viewed a videotape of a young woman who expressed a cadre of emotions. Scenes included motherly love, jealous anger, seduction, disgust, compassion, and rejection. One or more nonverbal cues were edited out alongside muffled sound. Essentially, the viewer could only see portions of the screen, from facial expressions in one scene or isolated body movements in another. Hence, the viewer was left to interpret the nonverbal cues.
 
Rosenthal’s studies found that people who better interpreted nonverbal cues were more socially adept, better adjusted, and more sensitive.
 
Three main findings were revealed:
 
1️⃣ Women were more empathic than men.
2️⃣ During the 45-minute test, men’s empathetic skills improved.
3️⃣ Studying over 1,000 children: highly empathic students were the most popular among peers, emotionally stable, and had better grades regardless of IQ scores.
 
💡In times of personal, professional, and societal earthquakes, it’s important to gain a higher ground of empathy.
 
➡️ Consider this a challenge for each of us to improve our respective Empathy Muscles.

#leadershipskills #solutions #empathy #NonVerbalSensitivity