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The Art and Science of Relating: Empathy 101, with Alan Alda, Actor & Author, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
An Actor’s Take on EQ
I think my interest in the connection that we have emotionally to one another, or what has been called EQ or empathy, is really based on my experience as an actor. When you’re on the stage with another actor and you have a line coming up, you don’t say your line because it’s in the script. You don’t say it because you’ve memorized it and now’s the time to say it. And you don’t say it in a certain way because you decided that’s how you’re going to say it. You say the line because the other person has done something or said something that makes you say it, and makes you say it in a certain way. And that’s slightly different each time this interaction takes place. As I learned to do that better and better, the better I got as an actor.
And when I started working with scientists and helping them on a science program that I did, where I interviewed hundreds of them, helping them get their science out to the public, I realized that they got their message out to the public better the more we connected in the same way I had connected on stage, through relating. It was a conversation that was open and easy, and just between the two of us. It was two people talking – it wasn’t one person saying, “Tell me what you know,” and then the other person just reciting what they knew. It’s very much like the experience I described on the stage, where the scientist didn’t say what they said to me because it was in their book. They said it to me so I’d understand it. And I responded to that personal connection.
And that to me is the basis of communication. It has to do to a great extent with empathy, the way I understand empathy, because if you don’t know where the other person is in their head – what they’re feeling and in terms of what they’re thinking, which is more theory of mind than empathy. But if you don’t know generally what’s going on inside their head, it’s very hard to meet them where they are – to start with what they already understand. To know what they care about. Do they care about hearing what you have to say? What is there about what you have to say that matches what they care about so they’ll understand it and remember it?
Empathy as a Tool
When I first heard the word empathy and heard people talking about it, I was reluctant to include it in my toolkit because I thought empathy sounds like going soft and being forgiving of everything. It sounds like something that was not as intelligent as I wanted to be. It sounded like you were just giving yourself over to people. I don’t think empathy necessarily, automatically makes you a better person. I think empathy is a tool that you can use to do better things toward other people if you have the motivation to communicate better, to help take care of their needs, that kind of thing.
On the other hand, I think there’s something that I call dark empathy, and dark empathy is when you know what’s going on in somebody’s head and you use it against them. Interrogators use your feelings to make you helpless in their presence so you’ll say anything they want you to say. Bullies know how to use what you’re feeling to make you do what they want. If empathy made you a good person, we wouldn’t have bullies. Because I think they have a lot of empathy, but they use it against us. So I think it’s a neutral thing. Empathy, I don’t think, makes you a good person. But if you want to be a good person it’s a tremendous aid, it’s a great tool.