A terrorist attack on a familiar city can inspire a response among global observers not unlike that of motorists passing by a horrible car accident. We slow down to look, to try to understand what happened, and see who was hurt. It isn’t blood and gore we’re after. It’s recognition. Are the victims like us? Could that have been me?
The horrible events in Paris inspired a round of global rubbernecking and then a sloppy debate over whether the Western World cares more about the victims in Paris then those in Beirut, Kenya or now Mali. Predictably that debate evolved into one over race and ethnicity.
But there’s a deeper question here: How exactly does empathy work?
When the news of the Paris attacks hit, I was in a meeting in Washington D.C., with a French-born publisher who quickly became anguished. She grew up in Paris. Her daughter lives there now — and frequents one of the targeted restaurants. She was safe. Her family was safe. But the news invaded her consciousness in a way that seemed to affect her physically. At one point she sat down on the floor, hunched over, and stared gloomily at her smartphone.
It wasn’t until I learned that Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old Mexican American from Southern California, had been killed in the attack that news of the massacre struck me on a more personal level. Nohemi was an American. Like me. She was a Mexican American. Like me. She was from Southern California. Like me. Suddenly the horrible events that occurred 5,600 miles away seemed closer to home. What I had seen as tragic now felt sad.
A few days after the attacks in Paris, I drove down to Cal State Long Beach, the university Gonzalez attended, to ask students how her death had influenced their emotional response to this act of terrorism.
At first I heard reactions not dissimilar to mine. People ticked off aspects of their multi-layered identities that connected directly to Nohemi’s story, which made them feel more deeply about the tragedy.
“All life is meaningful,” 23-year old senior Ernie Smith told me. “But I related to the events more when I found out she was a student, at Cal State Long Beach. Then it really hit home.”
The distinction between generally caring and having that feeling “hit home” is suggested in the difference between the origins of the words sympathy and empathy. Sympathy derives from the Latin and Greek words meaning “fellow feeling.” The word empathy came to English from the German word Einfühlung, which means something like “inner feeling” or “feeling into.” While often used interchangeably, empathy carries a more intimate meaning than sympathy and suggests that the subject understands and is capable of sharing an emotion with the object. Sympathy, on the other hand, implies a greater distance. In a nutshell, you feel empathy when you can imagine being afflicted by the tragedy in question, and sympathy when you cannot.
What 26-year-old senior Catherine Gillespie then told me explains further how identifying — then empathizing — with a victim of a tragedy can place you, at least on some psychic level, closer to the incident.
“The band that was playing at the concert hall where so many people were killed was from Palm Desert, California,” Gillsepie told me. “I’m from nearby Indio. If I had been in Paris that night, I would have gone to see them play.” In others words, her identification with the band enabled her to imagine suffering the concertgoers’ fate, which made her feel for the victims more deeply. Her response also suggests a strong connection between empathy and fear.
Until recently, I would have told you that selflessness is at the core of caring. But after the events in Paris and listening to people’s reactions, I realize that whatever else empathy does for our psyches, it is also a form of self-preservation. I empathize with you, because what happened to you could happen to me. And that would be really horrible.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
