Insights

For years, our saturated news media environment and social media have made it challenging to pause and recognize the human element in the content we consume. News stories about war zones or natural disasters, or crime and the associated death tolls flash across our screens constantly.

As humans, an overwhelming situation can often cause our sense of empathy to fade. It becomes so hard to empathize with the amount of hurt and death; our brains shield us.

Empathy makes us human and creates a shared experience. It allows us to see our neighbor struggle and rush to help. Intellectuals often compare it to a muscle that must be exercised. The challenge of our current political and cultural environment is to find exercises that target this muscle, which can easily be ignored or forgotten in a fast-paced life.

Retreating to our corners does not advance our national objectives. In many ways, a lack of empathy slows down progress. Common goals are less appealing if there is no understanding of how they would improve the lives of other citizens. When policymakers display a lack of empathy for their colleagues, these sentiments trickle down to their constituents.

Voters are already responding to the scarcity of understanding in our current political climate. In innovative new research, Center Forward asked voters to document their experience just before the election, just after the election, and about a month into President Trump’s second term. We found a troubling amount of disengagement from politics, but also people separating from their communities. Respondents wrote in about avoiding conversations with their friends and families and often created boundaries for their mental well-being. When asked to describe a situation in which they disagreed with someone, many respondents reported a loss of trust or respect for the other participant in the conversation, especially when they felt the other did not respect them.

Alas, we saw a glimmer of hope. People who came to conversations earnestly hoping to learn or to hear a new opinion walked away feeling heard, even if they disagreed with the other person’s opinion. When their approach to the engagement was not to change another’s viewpoint, but to learn, they found significant value in the interaction. They held basic respect for the person on the other side of the table and were less likely to rush back to their corner when confronted. This sense of understanding for other people who hold different opinions relies on the ability to empathize.

Bipartisanship rests upon compassion and seeing the human on the other side of the political aisle.

Lawmakers build their careers on their ability to sympathize with their constituents. They – and their constituents – would be better served if they approached their colleagues across the aisle with that same compassion in order to pass common-sense legislation. As voters continue to disengage from political discourse, it is crucial to increase and amplify these acts of bipartisanship. The case for empathy is simple – it makes us better people, and in turn, makes our politicians more effective leaders, resulting in sound policy and a brighter future for our country.