Читать книгу The Interpersonal Communication Playbook - Teri Kwal Gamble - Страница 147

Try to exhibit empathy—that is, experience the world through the eyes of another person by recreating that person’s perspective. This means you need to socially decenter, or take the focus off yourself, and place it on another by considering that person’s thoughts and feelings first.⁶⁴ Doing this allows you insight into the other person’s state of mind and lets you see things from his or her perspective.

When you empathize, you also engage in perspective taking—you develop a personal sense of what the person is going through. You imagine what it would be like to be in the person’s position. Through emotional contagion, you experience the same feelings as the person has. Can you imagine, for example, how your significant other feels when you forget his or her birthday? While it is easier to feel empathy for those with whom we identify, it is equally important to be able to put yourself into the shoes of a person with whom you may have little in common. The third ingredient in empathizing is genuine concern for the other person’s well-being. Do you find it easy to empathize with others? Some researchers fear that the ability to empathize is on the decline due to social media’s encouragement of self-promotion as opposed to other-understanding.⁶⁵ On the other hand, others believe that by engaging in virtual reality simulations and having the opportunity to inhabit the body of someone completely different from ourselves, we can develop new attitudes and understandings. Which position is closer to your own?