The Consortium on Moral Decision-Making’s Expanding Empathy Speaker Series returns for its seventh consecutive year starting Thursday, May 8.
Organizer Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and director of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, said the virtual speaker series is an international, interdisciplinary examination of empathy and moral decision-making processes. Cameron notes that now is an important moment to highlight why empathy can help us be stronger, rather than a weakness. ”It is important to use public outreach to communicate interdisciplinary science and humanities research being done at Penn State and worldwide, and to a broad international audience, which is all made possible through the webinar format that the series has been using since 2020.”
The events are free, but pre-registration is required.
The series’ first panel on May 8, noon to 2 p.m. EST, will focus on the nature of empathy. Speakers Phillip Kanske (Technsche Universitat Dresden, Psychology and Neuroscience) and Leda Berio (Ruhr University Bochum, Philosophy), will present their work followed by a discussion with each other and the audience on interdisciplinary considerations. Kanske and Berio will both focus on empathy and social interaction, with Berio focusing on how interactions with non-human agents (e.g., robots) can tell us something about our own empathy.
“I think who receives empathy and who does not is something that strongly defines our social landscape, and a good way to measure what some of our social norms often implicitly dictate,” said Berio. “A challenge we should take seriously is that of measuring and evaluating these patterns in our social interactions and taking our evaluation as a starting point for a better social life.”
The second Expanding Empathy panel, slated for Wednesday, May 14, noon to 2 p.m. EST, will be about the positive and negative aspects of empathy in social life. Presenters Sara Konrath (Indiana University, Psychology) and Fritz Breithaupt (Indiana University, Germanic Studies) will each give short talks on the strengths and limits of empathy and then allow discussion with each other and the audience.
Konrath is the first returning speaker for the series, as she gave a talk the first year in 2019 on declines in empathy over time, the video for which can be viewed here. More recently, she has published on how, in the time since, empathic traits such as compassion and perspective-taking have actually increased. "Other-oriented forms of empathy... it’s not always easy—especially online, where quick reactions can replace deeper understanding. Empathy is like a muscle, and daily empathic practice can help to build it," she said.
According to Breithaupt, who has written about negative aspects of empathy, "Without empathy, our world would be a sad place. “A day when I share emotions with someone else or co-experience their life, is a good day for me that means something. And yet, there are also dark sides of empathy that I explore in my work. For example, polarization can be fueled by empathy for one side at the cost of the other."
The final panel will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 10 a.m. – noon EST. Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota, Philosophy) and Simone Shamay-Tsoory (University of Haifa, Psychology) will give talks on empathy, value fulfillment, learning, and wisdom, followed by conversations with each other and the webinar audience.
Presenter and philosopher Valerie Tiberius said that the conversations that develop at the speaker series are invaluable. “The discussions cross disciplines and force me to acknowledge -- and often to justify -- my starting assumptions. This has been advantageous in developing a theory of well-being.”
Another presenter in the final panel, psychologist Simone Shamay-Tsoory, has studied how people learn from the outcomes of empathizing with others, either positive or negative. She remarked on the task of sustaining empathy, stating "Empathy is not just about understanding others—it’s about aligning with them, both cognitively and physiologically. However, empathy can be selective and often focuses primarily on members of our own group. The real challenge, then, is learning how to regulate empathy and broaden its reach beyond in-group boundaries.”
In terms of the value of interdisciplinary conversations, she noted that “Some of the most important insights arise from stepping outside my disciplinary comfort zone. Events like this one invite conversations with scholars in ethology, philosophy, biology, history, and clinical practice and help refine the questions I ask about empathy and much expanded the ways I think about it."
To view prior talks from earlier years in the Expanding Empathy Speaker Series, and other events hosted through the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, you can visit the archived events here.
The series is being sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute, College of the Liberal Arts, Social Science Research Institute, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and Department of Philosophy and Department of Psychology.