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Empathy for Dummies


On many occasions, I have been told to “be more empathetic.” 

When I ask why, I typically get this reaction:  

  1. This is a ridiculous question. I am not going to answer it because it is so ridiculous.
  2. Empathy is the right thing to do! You should feel bad for that person. We’re humans, after all.

These explanations never really helped. Ironically, they felt unempathetic to me. I interpreted their reasoning as advising me to be fake and lie. And so, for a long time, empathy was a vaguely frustrating and unhelpful concept. An idea that did not help me or the people around me with anything productive.

I get it. Empathy is supposed to be mostly a feelings thing, not an intellectual exercise. But I have a tough time implementing long-term changes because of (what I view as) a weak moral justification. I need to buy in on some level. It was not until I learned a more pragmatic framing that I was able to make lasting progress in this area, and I thought it’d be worth sharing what unblocked me in case you feel the same way.

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First, a definition: Empathy is when you try your best to build an accurate model of someone else’s world in order to better understand them.

I found most people (even the really mature, secure, empathetic ones!) who were telling me to just be more empathetic were not using the word in this way. They had a different agenda. Usually, “be more empathetic” was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior).

But having empathy does not necessarily mean you need to change the way you behave or feel.

The definition I’ve written above—which is closer to the dictionary definition—resonated more deeply. And it’s stuck! Stuck because empathy, real empathy, feels useful and honest. It is an essential aspect of doing anything involving two or more people (and while not all of the best things in life involve two or more people, many do!). It is a matter of function. How do you expect to coordinate, especially on something very complicated and important, without understanding other people’s perspectives?

The popular version of “empathy”, the version that is simply asking you to change your behavior, is not necessarily useful. But real empathy can be.

Useful for things like:

  • Navigating conflicts better
  • Being more effective by understanding how other people will receive your words and actions
  • Reducing your own frustration by understanding where people are coming from

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So how do you become more empathetic?
Well, life is not a computer program. Words can’t do all of this explanation justice, and there’s something naive about trying to write a formula for building empathy. A lot of it is emotional; feelings stuff. So we’re not going to attempt to prescribe a step-by-step process. But, we will share some ideas that have helped us be better at understanding other people:

  • It’s easier to pretend to understand someone than to really understand them. Be careful about constructing straw-man versions of other people’s worldviews which make that person seem dumb and make you seem smart. (We think this is what most people do most of the time.) 

  • One way to get around the straw-man tendency is to ask: What is the best possible explanation for their behavior? This might not be the correct explanation. But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help.

  • Remember that almost nobody is the villain in their own story. You may think their story is incorrect, and you may be right. But they actually believe it. They most likely aren’t sitting on a big Bad Guy throne and twirling their mustache thinking about how much they hate you.

  • You can test your model by making API calls of sorts: plug in various situations and see how you think the person would respond. This can help expose holes in your thinking. For example, if you’ve decided that Person A disagrees with you because they hate you—what about when they disagree with other people? Do they hate all of those people? Something else is going on here.

  • Explore life and meet a wide range of people. It may be comfortable to find people like yourself, but go talk to people who come from different places and try to understand where they are coming from. Get out of your comfort zone. Listen to new music. Read alternative books. You may be surprised by what you’ll find.

  • Start paying attention to the subtle details. It’s easy to get bored by the surface-level small talk. But have you paid attention to how the other person is asking the question? What emotions are they conveying? Why are they conveying them? How well do you really understand what is going on? How much relevant  information are you missing from the picture?

  • Realize that  practicing real empathy does not mean you need to change your behavior. You can obviously do whatever you want. It’s just often the case that as you learn more information, you’ll be tempted to change your behavior to the extent it helps you with whatever it is you are trying to do.


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It’s worth repeating again that the entire premise of this essay is a bit ridiculous. Do we really need to define empathy? Most of us have some built-in definition already. But I don’t think those definitions are commonly compatible, and I do think the definitions of words can be clarifying.

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