Speaking of Psychology - The Decline of Empathy and the Rise of Narcissism with Sara Konrath, PhD

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

Concern and care for others’ feelings are virtues we seek to instill in our children, yet they are sorely lacking in many adult Americans today. There’s scientific research to back up the notion that Americans are caring less for others and more about themselves. Our guest is Sara Konrath, PhD, an associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University and director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research. We’ll be exploring why empathy is declining and what we can do to create more kindness and caring in our communities. Join us online August 6-8 for APA 2020 Virtual.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association that explores the connections between psychological science and everyday life. I'm your host, Caitlin Luna. Concern and care for others' feelings are virtues we seek to instill in our children, yet they are sorely lacking in many adult Americans today. Flip on the news, scroll through social media sites, or read the comments on any news article, and you realize just how unempathetic so many of us are. There's scientific research to back up the notion that Americans are caring less and less for others. For instance, one study found a steep decline in empathy among young people from 1979 to 2009. One of the authors of that study is joining me today. Dr. Sarah Conrath is an associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University

and director of the interdisciplinary program on empathy and altruism research. She teaches classes on the psychology of giving and altruism and health. Her other work has also found that narcissism is on the rise in young people, and she's done some fascinating research examining narcissism's effect on social media usage. We'll be exploring why empathy is declining and what we can do to create more kindness and caring in our communities. Welcome, Dr. Conrath. Thanks for having me. When I was researching this topic, I came across an article in the New York Times from 1989, the cited research that found that newborn babies can display empathy, which was notably by crying in response to another nearby baby. Other research from our journal developmental psychology from that same time period found that mothers have a profound influence on their child's development of empathy.

From your perspective, is it nature, is it nurture, or is it both? And why are mothers more influential in the development of empathy? Based on research that I know of, it's actually both, like most things in psychology. There's lots of research showing that empathy has a genetic component, about half of empathy that a baby is born with is a different. genetic component. But then the parenting, the schools, the community, the environment, the culture can have an influence on empathy as well. So the context matters along with the genetics. And I like that study actually on the prying response because even primates, other primates, have that kind of response and that what I call proto-empathy. It's the building block of

empathy to feel what others are feeling, that emotional contagion, but obviously we need to go a lot more further for it to be deeper, more mature empathy. So other animals, animals other than humans, you're saying, do exhibit empathy? Different kinds of empathy, yes. Not necessarily the sophisticated kind of mental gymnastics that we can do when it comes to understanding other people's intentions and motivations. but there is some evidence by primatologists and others finding that there are some forms of empathy, including care, concern, in different types of animals, such as primates and even rats. Well, that's really fascinating thing.

I mean, I could see primates, of course, because we're closely linked, but they're seeing it in rats as well. Why do you think they're seeing it in an animal that's so different from our species? I think I would guess that in many mammals, that would be what why? they would see it in animals that are that rear their young in similar ways because of the nurturing that comes from early parenting. And that kind of links to your question about why mothers. I don't think there's something, you know, at least in humans, that makes mothers somehow better at teaching empathy, obviously, because humans are very flexible and adaptable.

But I do think that within humans, mothers are spending a lot more time with their babies and children than fathers. And I think it's the person who's spending the time that will have the most influence on developing empathy. That would be really interesting to do this study today because the one I just mentioned we were just talking about was from 1990s. So seeing as how culture is shifted with the more stay-at-home dads, fathers may be more involved than they were at that point in time. It might be interesting to see how that would play out if, you know, fathers, if they're teaching their children more empathy. Do you think that would be the case today? It might be different. There's probably been a probably more of a role, but still, if you look at current research on the time spent with children, women are still spending more time than men, even though both women and men are spending more time over time. So since the 60s, there's been an increase in the time we actually spend with children taking care of them.

Really, I mean, that's probably a topic for another time, but that's really fascinating because you think today, you know, people are most people are working, you know, we're working longer hours, yet we're spending more time with their children. But you're talking about that genetic component. component, which is really fascinating. But so does that mean that some people are just inherently born more empathetic than others? I would think that they're born more responsive. So like those infants, there's probably differences in infants and which ones are more likely to cry when they hear the other one cry. And that that's a building block for later, you know, more general types of empathy that

are more mature. There are genotypes that are associated with more empathy. So people's actual genetic, you know. structures such as the oxytocin receptor gene. So there are, you know, some people who I think have more of a inherent potential, but all of us can learn. Yeah, I wanted to touch on mirror neurons, which is something that came up as I was looking into this topic. Do you think mirror neurons play a role in empathy? Mirror neurons are the areas of our brain that are overlapping with other people's actions so that if we see a person pick up a cup,

then the area of the brain that would light up when we pick up the cup is activated. So it shows you that there's this inherent physiological connection between people. And I do believe that mirror neurons help us to become more empathetic because they help us kind of have a moment of similar experience with somebody and that can lead to deeper expressions of empathy. Does that go along why you think empathy even exists in the first place? You talked about, you know, mother animals, nurturing their young, you know, talking about mirror neurons, it's being a pro-social behavior among animals. Is that why you think empathy exists? Is it exist to keep us, I guess, when we're pack animals, we're social animals, does it exist to keep us together? Does it exist to keep us thriving and to keep the species alive? I do think that there's a biological basis for empathy and that the reason it keeps, it stays in our societies over time is because it helps to keep infants alive, right? The nurturing, the parental nurturing helps to keep infants alive.

And then we can generalize that to relatives and to people who are our friends and then even to strangers. So there obviously is a genetic component, as you mentioned. but, and it can be a learned behavior as well, the nature and nurture. How can we cultivate empathy within ourselves? There are many, many different ways and lots of research trying to increase empathy. So I don't think there's one way. I think the first thing I would say is that we have to want to. It has to be important to us.

The motivation really matters. And then from there, there's many ways. There's research showing that, for example, reading fiction actually helps to increase empathy and also focusing on similarities between yourself and others, just imagining, actually taking a moment, imagine what other people are feeling and thinking and what the world is like in their perspective. So there's many, many, many ways to increase empathy.

There's some research on the role of the arts and how it can help us to be more empathetic. And a big factor is actually just having experience, practicing with nurturing, you know, either animals or vulnerable, you know, children or babies because just the practice of interacting with another being who can't really just tell us in words what they're feeling or what they need. It helps us to tune in and to imagine and to respond. I want to touch on something you just mentioned. I found really interesting was about how reading fiction can make you more empathetic. Do you have more to share about why that would be the

case because you almost think it might be nonfiction. I don't know. What is it about fiction that makes people more empathetic or increases that trait? Well, overall, the research is finding that just reading in general is helpful. But fiction in particular, because it allows us to imagine other people's lives. And oftentimes in fiction, you're getting a window into what's going on in someone's mind. So you can kind of almost like, you know, see the world through their eyes and practice what it might be like to be another person. And that person could be somebody really, really different. You know, it could be a different gender or political affiliation or ethnicity or culture. And you just have to live all these different lives and

be exposed to people you might not encounter in your everyday life from sort of the inside perspective. That is incredibly fascinating. I'm going to hold on to that one. It's a good fact to use at some point. And I want to go back to that study I mentioned in the intro here. So you found that among young people, empathy is declining. So can you share why you think empathy is on the decline? I know that was the last study ended over 10 years ago now. But from that time period, what did you find? Why do you think that was the case? And where does the research stand today in terms of what's happened between 2009 and 2019? Okay. So just to clarify, we found that college students, American college students, self-reported that they were

becoming lower in empathy over time when we looked at different samples and studies using a meta-analysis over time. Other researchers also looked at national samples of high school, seniors, and college freshmen, and found similar results that there had been declines over time in concern and for others. But all these studies so far have only been done up to 2009. And we're now working on updates to these studies. So I'm not sure what's happening since then. And I know it's easy to say that assume that things are declining. But until we have the data, I don't know what's happening. But I think, you know, it's hard to say with cultural change why that's happening. So I can only guess. But after, you know, about 10 years of thinking about it at this point, I have some ideas. And

I'm working on a book, finishing my book called Culture of Burnout, that tries to explain what's happening and why. And over time, I started realizing that the declines in empathy were happening at the same time as the rise in mental health problems among young people. And I put together and saw those both as symptoms of burnout. And so I've been thinking about that empathy is not just, or the decline in empathy is not just an excuse down on our youth and tell them that they're not. not kind, but it's an opportunity for us to understand better the pressures that are on them

right now and the expectations that are pushing them to really just try to achieve success with a lot of, you know, challenges that earlier generations didn't face. It says incredibly high tuition rates that are rising very, very fast, higher than the cost of health care, for example. The expectations on trying to get a job with a college degree is really challenging. Rising inequality makes it very hard for average people to have a sustainable lifestyle economically and so on. So all of these different pressures on young people, I think, kind of crowd out their focus on their own self-care and care for others because they're really focused on just trying to be successful and make it. Yeah, that's a really interesting connection

that one that I hadn't even thought of. I just thought maybe it was just because, you know, what's going on in the culture and in the world today. But that's absolutely fascinating. It could be because of so much pressure on people. And of course, how can, you know, if you're already burned out yourself, you're facing all these pressures, you're worried about your economic future, which it's widely covered that, you know, generations today will not do better or maybe the same as, as previous generations. There's a lot of pressure on our young people today. And so I guess there's really no wonder why someone wouldn't be as empathetic because they're more concerned about themselves and surviving. That's what I think at this point. I think I used to think I wasn't sure

earlier and I had other ideas, but over time, this is sort of what I see is happening. And when I've talked to young people about it, I mean, they are like, yes, like you get us. You understand this. We're very stressed out and, you know, they're just, they're really good at working, like work. and leisure. Like the, I've talked to college students about this idea of culture of burnout. And one of the things I ask about is sort of, okay, so, you know, in an ideal life, you have an eight-hour workday, which we fought for, you know, for workers' rights to have an eight-hour workday. You have eight hours of sleep and you have eight hours of leisure.

And then, like, people start laughing. Students laugh at that. It's like, I was like, okay, I didn't know that was a joke. But okay. And, you know, just listening to stories from young people and sort of the pressures are facing and sort of how taking a break, like even just having a night off, it makes them feel really guilty. Yeah, absolutely. I wonder if that relates to a decline. Maybe people spending more time on hobbies and volunteering if you're, you know, focused on school, if you're focused on work, if you're focused on this, that or the other thing. Right. That's what I think, yes.

Yeah, and I want to bring this over to a topic that keeps coming up in my mind today. day. The lack of empathy or the decrease in empathy that you've seen in your study, obviously we have a 10-year gap of which we don't know yet what's happened. But is that, could that be the cause of why people can be so basically nasty today? And some, you know, you read news article comments and it's just a terrible place to go. It's like where you go if you want to feel bad or I don't know. It's just sort of like you get down that rabbit hole of reading all these awful things people have to say. And, you know, I think in a lot of ways, what comes to my mind is, is the issues going on in our southern border. And just really,

in a lot of cases, you have some people who are incredibly empathetic to the plight of people leaving oppression and violence, but you have so many people who are just downright mean about it and, you know, want to, you know, don't want to help anyone at all. Obviously, this is, there's a lot that goes into that fact into why people behave the way they do. But is this an example of people who might not feel like they have what they need so they cannot be empathetic to others? Yes, I think if people are saying cruel things to others who are oppressed or victimized or in deep trouble, that's a, that is a signal of low empathy because empathy is, we didn't even define it, but I'll define it. Empathy is both imagining other people's perspectives and their

world's cognitive type of empathy. And it's also care and compassion and concern for others, that emotional empathy. So when you're not showing that for somebody, then you are showing low empathy. And I think it's hard to say whether those expressions online are a sign that, you know, empathy is really declined even more or whether people used to say those things

in the privacy of their home and now they just say them, you know, online. I don't know. Yeah. But it is obviously upsetting and concerning to see that groups who are in need are not getting the help that they need. Yeah, or you kept it to yourself and now you feel emboldened, perhaps, because you're,

it can be anonymous online. Yeah. That could be another thing too. And this leads me to my next question about, is there, are there times in history you've noticed where even during that period of time, 1979 to 2009, where people were more empathetic, you know, an example came to mind after 9-11 where it seemed like America came together in a lot of ways, albeit briefly, perhaps. but it seemed like people came together.

I'm not sure if that's necessarily empathy, but are there times where you've seen where people are more empathetic and times where you've seen people are less empathetic? Well, just looking at the data, it looks like it was just declining over time and especially in the accelerating since 2000. I actually looked at the graphs for my study

to see if there was a blip in 2001 and there wasn't. And as somebody who was, I had just, I'm a Canadian and I had just moved to the states in fall of 2001, so a couple weeks before 9-11. And I, as a somebody who is not a citizen living in the States at that time, I can't say that I was feeling empathy from Americans. I was feeling very nervous at the anti-immigrant sentiment. So I don't know that what Americans coming together,

it was coming together sort of to affirm patriotism and sort of, you know, American like amazingness or something. thing, but I don't know, but empathy, I think, would have been broader and would have been empathy for other people, too, and people who were being treated badly and experiencing hate crimes because they happened to be a member of an ethnic group that, you know, that was, that was part of the 9-11 events, but obviously those individuals were not implicated. In fact, people from Middle Eastern countries, my research has found, actually score the highest in the world and empathy. Yeah, that was one thing I wanted to touch on. Are there certain people in the

world who are more empathetic cultures, countries, you know, so you said Middle Eastern people, do you have specific countries on that? Yeah, so we did a study, and I'm going to, I always like to talk about the study limitations because I think people should make up their own mind about whether they think it's a, you know, something they want to believe. But we did a study. It was just kind of an accidental study where we had posted online a link to an empathy measure and people from all over the world for some reason wanted to take this measure. So we had over 104,000 people in the study from 63 different countries. But because it was just kind of an accident, the study was not intended to be a cross-cultural study. It was all in English. So that's important to keep in mind.

But we then were able to compare the different countries and see which ones were misan empathy and lowest in empathy. And we were able to correlate empathy scores at the cultural level with behaviors like volunteering and helping and traits like individualism. So we're trying to kind of validate this as a potential measure. And currently it's like the best available study, but I still think, you know, there need to work on really understanding cultural differences in empathy. When you do a study like that, can you talk about how you measure empathy? Yeah.

So we measure empathy using just a self-report trait measure. So the one we used and that we've used a lot is called the interpersonal reactivity index. So it's just about responding to others. And it's pretty widely used and many scientists appreciate the validity of it. And so it includes statements such as I often have tender concern feelings for those who are less fortunate. Or I try to imagine what other people's side of a disagreement, for example. And those are just off the top. of my head. Those aren't exact. But just so you get a sense of them. And then we, we correlated

them with in that cross-cultural study with rates of volunteering behaviors, which obviously, that's not empathy. That's the behavior. Empathy is either a trade or a feeling. You've talked about the countries that you found that were most empathetic. So what were countries you found that were least empathetic? But we found that individualistic countries were more likely to be low in empathy and also countries that were more accepting of emotions were higher in empathy. And we also found that higher empathy countries had higher rates of volunteering and helping strangers, but it wasn't related to charitable giving, which is interesting. And then finally, this little fun fact, and I don't remember if we actually published this,

but we definitely, I definitely look because I was curious. We found that higher empathy countries had had higher temperatures on average. They were warmer. Hmm. Interesting. Because you kind of think of like a cold, cold person, cold climate. Yeah. I'm from not too far away from Kent.

I'm from Rochester, New York. Yay. Just across Lake Ontario. So I think I'm an empathetic person from a cold area. So that's really interesting, though, about some of the cultures, maybe the cultures where people, you find that people keep themselves don't make small talk might be different than a culture that's more like outgoing and, you know, that sort of thing. It's really, really fascinating. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot too there. I like, you know, I appreciate you sharing the limitations to that too, just how obviously it was only limited to, to English speakers to a certain extent. Yeah. This got me all thinking about how empathy or the lack there of might relate. to people who are more prejudiced or people who commit crimes? Are there connections between empathy and criminal behavior?

Are less empathetic people more likely to commit a crime? Well, I'm not sure if they're more likely to commit a crime, but research does find that on average people who are in jail for crimes, so if they've been caught, that those people score lower on empathy, both kinds of empathy, both emotional and cognitive. I don't think it means that if someone has low empathy, they're predisposed to criminal activity. I just think that, you know, people who have high empathy would find it difficult to hurt others because they're very aware of the consequences of their actions.

And I think that's going to mitigate harm to others. Yeah, so earlier you defined empathy, but can you talk about the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy? we didn't touch on that. Cognitive empathy is, I see it more at this point. They've been studying this for a while. I see it more of a skill. So it's something, you know, it takes time and practice and effort and imagination.

And it's when we can think about what the world is like from someone else's perspective and really from their point of view, not our own necessarily. And we can use, you know, to support that kind of imagination, we can use like our observation. So we can listen carefully, we can pay attention to body language, voice, facial expressions of emotion, and other things like that. So to me, I see that as more of a skill type process. And emotional empathy, I think it can start with that emotional contagion.

So just that moment of sort of feeling what the other person is feeling. But the more mature form is feeling like extending into compassion. So care, care for others. And usually the two of them go together. the research shows that people who are good at cognitive empathy tend to be also compassionate, feel more compassion for others. But you can imagine there are people out there who are good at cognitive empathy but don't care.

And those are psychopaths and we need both together. Yeah, that's another possible another topic for our podcast psychopaths. That's very interesting topic as well. We haven't yet explored. You know, that's wrapping up our section about the study you did. and kind of bring it, bring it full circle. You're showing declining rates. You're doing a new study to see what's happened over the past 10 years.

Do you have any suggestions as a psychologist about what can be done to increase empathy? You know, if it was on the downward trajectory for those, was that 30 years? So if it was on the downward trajectory for 30 years, what can be done to make people more empathetic, to increase our cultural empathy? What do you think can be done? Well, I think I've been thinking about these, about what we can do to try to increase empathy at a broader level, not just like for individuals. Because individually, we've already talked about some things that people can do to make themselves more empathetic. But as a culture, we have to actually decide it's important, right?

And that means we think about, as parents thinking about prioritizing, teaching our children to care for others who are different than them. That means exposing them to people who are different, actually making an effort to, get involved in some ways. And also sometimes it might mean that we have to assess sort of what kinds of messages our children are getting from us, because oftentimes children are internalizing the need to succeed and thinking that that's the only thing that we care about for our children when, in fact, maybe parents do want their children to be caring and empathetic. But moving outside of parents, then school systems are also giving messages to children about what's important and the school is important socializing force.

And unfortunately, there's a lot of pressure on them right now to focus on testing and sort of specific quantitative outcomes for kids. Like, if schools decide to focus more on the whole child, including social and emotional skills, that will make a huge difference. And then community interactions, I think, are important to build empathy because when we're interacting with our neighbors and we're interacting with, you know, co-workers or attending regular, either religious services or groups of various kinds that are community-based, we are interacting with people who we might not see in our tightest circles. And that can challenge us and help us to

grow and expand our circles of empathy. And in your research you did earlier, you were talking about the countries are more empathetic. Did you see a difference in the countries where it depended on what was happening in the society? If it was a country that was at war, were you seeing less rates of empathy because people were more focused on surviving? Are you seeing higher rates of empathy in countries that are doing well, that have more resources that were people, the economy is good? What are the differences did you see in that area? So we didn't look at specifically war, whether countries were at war or not, but we did look at well-being rates based on national surveys. And we did find that empathy was higher in countries

that were happier. You know, so it could be that happier countries, you know, lead to more empathy or that more empathy leads to more happiness or some other reason. But in any case, that link is there. And it wasn't, if I remember right, and I'd have to check, I don't think we found a connection to average income in the country. Interesting. Yeah. So my just a more on other factors. Interesting. Okay. It does seem to be linked to well-being, both. So individuals, so within individuals, empathy is associated with more happiness and well-being, but also across culture, we found the same thing. And also, you did a lot of work, you've done work on narcissism and found that rates of narcissism on young, young people are increasing. Is that related to what

we talked about just a little while ago when you're talking about the pressures on young people? because they have so much outward pressure, is it making people more narcissistic? Is that the right way to describe what you're seeing? Yeah, I see that rising narcissisms, um, similar as the declining empathy because people who are narcissistic are, you know, more focused on themselves and less focused on others.

So it's negatively correlated with empathy. And those two trends were happening around the same time. And again, we're still working on the update for the narcissism paper as well. Um, but yes, I think that just generally all those pressures on young people can make them kind of shrink their scope of self rather than expanding it to include a lot of other people and concerns.

It's just about more like survival in making it. And I think, you know, I don't have any causal evidence of this, but this is what I think is happening. Yeah, that's really, I mean, you think, you know, was it because of social media? and that's my next thing I want to touch on is some of your research you did and you presented this at the APA's convention in San Francisco in 2018. And your study you presented found that compassionate people spend less time on social media than people who are more self-centered and narcissistic.

And you also found that people with lower emotional intelligence or those who have difficulty identifying, describing, and processing their emotions, they use social media more often than those who are more in touch with their feelings. Can you talk a little bit about that and how these traits interact with in the digital age and with social media? Yes. And there's a lot of research, including our own, that finds a correlation between narcissism and social media usage. But I don't necessarily think that means that social media use causes increased narcissism. And the studies that have tracked people over time find, if anything, it's the other way around.

that narcissistic people are just attracted to use social media because it really fits kind of, it can be used to fit their aims, which is to get a lot of attention. But I did find that I did present that work. It's still unpublished, but finding that empathy is correlated with less social media use. But since then, a mini meta-analysis came out with five different studies examining that link between empathy and social media. And interestingly, it actually found that there's a small positive correlation. So more empathetic people are using social media on average a little bit more. Could that be because, you know, social media can be a source for good and it can be an opportunity for people to do good things. I mean, I'm thinking about when people talk about their personal battles with depression and others chime in sharing their stories, their family stories, or people who share posts about a dog.

a high kill shelter and wanting to be adopted. So there's obviously a lot of good things going on social media. I think a lot of times, you know, you hear a lot about the negative aspects of it. So is that one of those examples you're talking about where you're seeing being more empathetic people using social media to connect with others to be forces for good out there? Yes, I think that people might, after looking at the research on this and understanding there's mixed effects both with narcissism and empathy in social media, I think the big picture takeaway that I have at this point is that people are online who they are offline. So empathetic people, when they're online, they're using the technology for different purposes and in different ways

than somebody who's narcissistic. That's really interesting. That's a good way to kind of put a fine point on it. Yeah. So it's like to connect. Right. So empathetic people are trying to, if they're using it a little more, it's because they're trying to connect with others. And there's many empathetic ways to engage. with people. Sometimes I think that not engaging can be empathetic, right? If there's somebody who's saying something really like that's really getting under your skin and making you angry and, you know, maybe the reaction would be that to just say something mean back, maybe inhibiting a mean response is an empathetic response nowadays. Yeah. And also, um, you're a lab from when I was reading. Um, you're using mobile phones. I'm thinking social media making that connection to

mobile phones. You were, you developed an app and you've done research about using mobile phones to implement empathy building programs. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what offerings you have in terms of using, harnessing this technology to build empathy in communities? Yeah. So that's exactly what we're trying to do because a lot of, I think a lot of the response to my declining empathy study was saying like, oh, well, empathy is declining because of social media because of smart phones. And I'm like, well, wait, let's look a little further back. I mean, it's been declining before then and face-to-face social connections were declining before then. So what's going on here? And we responded by saying, well, you know, we don't think that's the

cause necessarily, but this is something that young people really use a lot, you know, actually very attracted to using phones and social media. So why wouldn't we design programs that's kind of from their perspective, speak in their own language. So it's kind of an empathic design response, actually. And we designed two programs. One is called text to connect. And that's a daily text message reminders designed for obviously teenagers and older and young adults. So older young people. So it's just little reminders of to do things that I think everyone knows what to do, but just kind of like next to me you talk to a person, make sure you pay attention to their body language. and, you know, look them in the eye, like some really basic stuff.

Or like next time you're talking to somebody, imagine what it feels like from their perspective. Like these are really obvious little reminders, but we did find, we have a published paper finding that this did help to increase empathy in college students. And we have unpublished data on teenagers for working on writing up, but also finding that it works. And so we also designed and tested a smartphone app designed for children age 10 to 17. And this one is called Random App of Kindness. And we had children come into our lab. And then they received either Random App of Kindness or a different app with for two months. And then we tested what happened to their empathy.

And we found, again, that this app can increase empathy in children. And within that age range, the younger kids preferred it. It was kind of cartoonish and they seemed to like that compared to the older kids. But we still found effects overall. Yeah, what you mentioned before about, I think that's really an interesting point that I've just been thinking about my own life, about how sometimes you just need to be reminded of these basic things. Like, we all know that we should be good to other people. You know, I think it's, you know, we all know, we know these things.

But I think sometimes bringing it to the forefront through these apps, whatever it's through, on a regular basis, if not daily basis, is really helpful in terms of living a better life and being better to people and to yourself. Yeah, that's what we were thinking. And part of it is if we see that there are gaps in our culture and what's surrounding ourselves and our children and these reminders, then why not use the thing that's with us at all times to remind us? I mean, phones are really a lot of potential to change our habits. Yeah. And just touching on your program that you run. It sounds pretty amazing. Interdisciplinary program on empathy and altruism. Is it unique in the field of psychology? And what other disciplines do you have as part of it? Well, we're just a lab group. So

most psychology researchers have a group of collaborators and other people they write with and do research with. So that's pretty much what we are. And it includes communication studies, philosophy. I'm just thinking about the different journals, marketing. I mean, just various you know, and it's been mostly quantitative at this point, but sociology. So just a bunch of different collaborators on the topics of interest related to empathy and altruism. And, you know, this is, this topic is not just a psychology topic. It's actually a topic that many people from various scholarly backgrounds are interested

in. And that's part of why I like working at the School of Philanthropy, because there are people from all different backgrounds, including humanities, and we're all studying questions related to giving and other pro-social behaviors. That's an excellent segue into our next section I want to get into about philanthropy. So the other area you study, you're in the school of philanthropy at Indiana University. And so during research for this topic, you know, I was reading about how much Americans donate every year. And before we started recording, you and I were talking about this a little bit more

and really parsing this information out. And when you look at the stats, they say that $427 billion was donated to charity last year. But as you told me, that number is in terms of like how that's divided up, that money is from mostly wealthy donors and not from individual donors. Can you talk a little bit more about that,

what these trends you're seeing in terms of wealthy donors giving larger chunks to that, to that $427 billion and individual. people giving less? Well, I mean, wealthy donors are individual donors, like say as compared to corporations, which are part of that number two. But when you just look at sort of the percentage of individuals who are giving, overall, there's, if you look at generational changes, my colleague Patrick Rooney at the School of Philanthropy wrote a paper on this recently and found that there are generational declines in the percentage of people who are giving to charity and then also how

much for giving on average. But the reason why we don't see that there are declines in the overall amount of giving is because there are larger donors who are giving more over time. So it makes it look like there isn't an overall decline in giving, but for a lot of the givers, there is a decline over time. And that means that nonprofits have to, you know, they're in a difficult position where they have to think about what the wealthy donors want and how to get, how to receive gifts from those people, or figure out how to get younger generations to be more involved in giving. How does the new tax law play into all that? Because in the past, you know, an individual donor would receive more of a tax benefit for giving. But for many Americans, I know, you know,

myself included, I found out last year the money I gave to chair. the clothes and whatever I donated, I got nothing back for. And so, you know, that is, that's a bummer. You know, you definitely want to feel like your contribution. You want to help others and be altruistic, but you also at the same time, it's, you know, why not get a tax break? So how do you think that might impact individual giving in the future? Again, my colleagues at the School of Philanthropy actually are studying this and are economists and they can, they can answer very much better than I can. but I can speak to work I've done on motivations for giving. I've designed a scale and personality scale that measures why people give clarity on average.

And actually, on average, people are not saying at least self-reporting that taxes are the most important motivation. They're actually saying that they give because they care as of altruism. But I still think that it would be, you know, obviously a major change in a tax law when you're, even if you're not giving. specifically because you want a tax break. If you're used of getting a tax break and then suddenly you don't, that might influence how you respond next year. Yeah, I mean, of course it's like, you know, I can only speak

from my own experience, but like I want to give to these causes, you know, but it's certainly nice, hey, I clear out the closet of some clothes, shoes, you know, gently use items and maybe get a little bit of money back. That was always a nice added bonus. And I was thinking last year as I was doing, earlier this year as I was doing taxes, like, wow, that is probably a little frightening for some, you know,

profits if people aren't getting that tax break and might impact how much they give. So something to monitor. I think that is the case. And it's just that I'm not the one doing that research. There are people looking at that question. And also all of us have a constellation of motives. So it's not like the only thing we care about when giving to charity is all tourism. We all have sort of a mixed different, different reasons.

Like some of it's about trusting charitable organizations or doing this is important when we love or because of taxes or because it makes. that's feel good. So taxes are in the mix. It came out as one of the motivations, you know, out of all the options we had. It's just that it's not necessarily the main one. You co-authored a recent study that found that people who volunteered had a lower mortality rate than those who gave money, which is really interesting. Why do you think that was the case? Well, first I want to just talk a little bit about what we did and then why we think we found the results. So we followed or we used a data set of very, from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that follows older adults.

They've been following people since 1957 when they graduated high school. And we compare different kinds of giving behaviors and also giving related traits, see how they were associated with the risk of dying several years later. And what we found was that giving time in various ways, whether it's volunteering or caregiving or helping friends, giving time is associated with a lower risk of mortality. But giving money was not, it was not associated with a lower risk of mortality.

Also, people who thought that there were nine people, so for social traits was also associated with a lower risk of mortality. Just seeing yourself that way actually would seem to be associated with better health. Yeah, so why do you think giving to others, particularly giving time, as you mentioned, benefits mental and physical health? We think it has to do with, you know, how much people are giving of themselves. You can easily write a check and walk away without thinking about it. But it's hard to do that when you're volunteering.

You're actually engaging, interacting with people. And there's, I think that there's a biological system that helps us to regulate stress. That when we are in a state where we're focusing on others and what they need and caring for others, the system helps to increase our oxytocin and rebuttal. reduce our cortisol. So a bonding hormone, the oxytocin, and then cortisol is a stress hormone. And doing that over and over again, whether because you just are naturally thinking of others and see yourself as prosocial, or whether because you're actually out there helping regularly, doing that can, I think, over time, be associated with better health. But I'm just guessing,

based on our results, we don't quite have evidence yet. This is a really good conversation to be having at this time of year. I mean, this podcast will be running in December. Obviously, people can listen to it at any point, but at this time of year, people are giving a lot, whether they're giving time or money. And it's obviously a time where people are focusing on other people, you hope. So that would be a time to express empathy to others. So this is a very timely conversation. I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. And I think our listeners will really take a lot away from this. And I'm really excited to see what happens with that research. You'll be publishing someday soon about what

happened between 2009 and 2019 with rates of empathy. Yeah, I'm really curious too. And thank you so much for your amazing questions. It was a really interesting conversation. Well, I thank you. I really appreciate that. So before we go, I want to tell our listeners, we want to hear from you. You can email your comments and ideas to Speaking of Psychology at APA.org. That's Speaking of Psychology, all one word, at APA.org. And also please consider giving us a rating in iTunes. It really helps. You can find all episodes of Speaking of Psychology on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and also on our website, speakingofpsychology.org. I'm Caitlin Luna with the American Psychological Association.