Empathy and Love Languages

Achooooo! If only it were from the dust…

Sadly, the last few weeks have seen much of the western US blanketed in unhealthy smoke. Thick, hurt your lungs, make your eyes water, smell of fire nearby smoke. Spurred by wildfires currently fueled by record-breaking heat and minuscule precipitation, it reminds me more of a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter than a region known for its stunning natural beauty. As the conditions have worsened, it seems our crowded marble has become more aggressive – Abrasive clients and angry drivers abound.

I took the long way home a few nights ago… Around the largest lake in our county, through precious little remaining old growth forest, across a railroad track shaded by a dappled sunset where a doe was shepherding two fawns away from encroaching civilization. I wondered, can empathy in our transactional society be related to the book I had just finished on ‘love languages’?

Two months ago, I reserved Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages as part of a co-reading experiment. I’m not one for the self-help books, unless the travel section is considered self-help these days, but I wanted to give this experiment a try and support my friend. Libby, my library app, took the liberty of finally downloading the title. Sadly, the co-reader has gone but that hasn’t stopped me from reading the material anyway.

Originally penned in 1992, Dr. Chapman distills his thirty years of experience as a marriage counselor into three simple principles:

1. We all have a ‘love tank’ that needs to be tended. (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.)
2. There are five primary ways people express they care for one another, although, these tend to be a continuum more than discrete boxes.
3. We each experience the world differently, often filtering our experiences based on our own ‘love language’. Cue epic miscommunications and mayhem when we realize we aren’t speaking the same language!

Chapman uses vignettes as gentle case studies to help illustrate how easy it is to misunderstand each other and how frank discussions and diligent efforts might mend the hurt. Having sold over 11-milliion copies worldwide, translated into 50 languages, and a #1 New York Times Bestseller for over 8 years the book has now spawned a series distilling the message for children, teens, singles and scores of other demographics. He must be on to something.

Chapman’s observations caught my attention in relationship to empathy in our transactional world. Are people ‘meaner’ because our world is more about transactions than relationships? Especially given that relationships take diligent communications in the right language and transactions do not. In Jamil Zaki’s piece “What, Me Care? Young are Less Empathetic”^[1] he explores two studies examining our changing attitudes. Using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Konrath and colleagues noted, “almost 75 per cent of students today [2011] rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.”^[2]  With a decline in empathic skills between 34% and 48% in the past decade ^[3], it’s unsurprising the world feels grumpy. More alarming to me was a small aside – Jean M. Twenge noticed “during the same period student’s self-reported narcissism has reached new heights.”^[4] Zaki suggests several possible reasons, including what information we consume and how we engage with it, noting work by Raymond A Mar demonstrating “adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.”^[5] Cue flashing master alarm…

P.J. Manney observed in her Op-Ed “Is Technology Destroying Empathy?”^[6] that “We learn to be in the shoes of another person through real-life observations or storytelling” with communication being at the center of empathy creation. For me, Chapman’s ‘love languages’ distilled this idea – if I communicate more deliberately (not just with a partner) based on how others may experience the world, maybe just maybe a little bit of positivity will follow. Obviously, there are no guarantees, but I’d rather have a relationship over a transaction any day, regardless of the effort required. And, read more fiction!

Next on the reading pile are two books – end of summer popcorn fiction Ernest Cline’s ReadyPlayer One; and a work-related non-fiction volume Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Tweets will center on the later so as a not to ruin the storyline in the former. Until then...

Do you know your primary love language? Take the quiz! How might learning a new language change your daily transactions into relationships?

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1: Zaki, Jamil. “What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic” Scientific American, Springer Nature America, Inc., 1 January 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/

2: Konrath, S.H., O'Brien, E.H., and C. Hsing. "Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis." Personality and Social Psychology Review 15.2 (2011): 180-198. Print.

3: Caprino, Kathy. “Is Empathy Dead? How Your Lack of Empathy Damages Your Reputation and Impact as a Leader” Forbes, Forbes Media LLC., 8 June 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2016/06/08/is-empathy-dead-how-your-lack-of-empathy-damages-your-reputation-and-impact-as-a-leader/#162034093167

4: Twenge, Jean M. and W. Keith Campbell. "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement." Free Press, 2009. https://www.narcissismepidemic.com/

5: Mar, R.A., Tackett, J.L. and C. Moore. "Exposure to Media and Theory-of-Mind Development in Preschoolers." Cognitive Development (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.11.002

6: Manney, P.J. “Is Technology Destroying Empathy?” LiveScience, Purch, 30 June 2015, https://www.livescience.com/51392-will-tech-bring-humanity-together-or-tear-it-apart.html

The Armchair Adventurer Returns

Aaaaa-choo! Achoo! Pardon the dust as I reopen the shutters and shake out the dust cloths. Ah good, my overstuffed armchair is no worse for neglect.

Whoosh!

Twelve years ago, I started this adventure to cope with the rigors of doctoral studies. Seven years ago, life disconnected me from blogging about the adventures hidden within the pages I’d been thumbing. Where did I go? Since 2011, I have driven across the country three times for work, run 3 full marathons and nearly 50 half marathons, and acquired a feline family. Through it all, the books have persevered. Each relocation has added another box or two of volumes to complement those shipped from Scotland nigh on ten years past. Slowly. Steadily. The library of my childhood imagination is growing.

Why am I back on the air now? A conversation… Some facts… A story… New goals.

Recent conversation,

               MAM                   Why don’t you read a book?
               9-yr old girl          Why? Am I being punished?
               13-yr old boy       I get punished when people see me reading.

In utter disbelief, I stared at these two children. They’d shot arrows at my bibliophile heart, wounding the very fabric of my being. I love language and ideas and books. How could these tweens not understand the joy found within their pages? It got me thinking. Why do we read? There are tomes on the subject, yet the answer is unique to each reader. In a world where schools require only 20-minutes of reading a day, how will children develop the concentration and imagination to be life-long learners and problem solvers?

Is the problem reading, and intelligence, are out of vogue again? Or are we reading less and if so why? I’m not the only one asking these questions. In Caleb Crain’s essay “Why We Don’t Read, Revisited”^[1] he dug into the Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey for answers. “Between 2003 and 2016, the amount of time that the average American devoted to reading for personal interested on a daily basis dropped from 0.36 hours to 0.29 hours.”^[1] Basically, the average American of 2016 is reading 17 minutes a day down from 21 minutes a day in 2003, or a 20% decline. Worried yet? After an excellent discussion of possible composition effects (i.e. what might be some of the causes for this change), Crain discovered, “The average reading time of all Americans declined not because readers read less but because fewer people were reading at all, a proportion falling from 26.3 per cent of the population in 2003 to 19.5 per cent in 2016.”^[1] Back of the napkin, that’s a decline of about 13.2 million readers, more than the population of the state of Pennsylvania^[2], our fifth most populous state. Anyone else’s master alarm flashing?

Digesting and daydreaming, I remembered being a young reader of 7 or 8. There were the typical books of the early to mid-1980s and carefully chosen classics my parents insisted we have before they were banned or redacted. The volumes that spoke to me were the adventure books. Beverly Cleary’s curious mouse, Ralph, and his motorcycle. Brian Jacques’ Redwall fantasy. A quirky new genre of Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books. I would get lost in the pages, becoming the protagonist, making choices, learning, exploring, going on adventures not possible from our bungalow in the suburbs of Los Angeles. As soon as I’d finish one plotline in a CYOA, I’d read it again, making different choices and traveling a different story arch. I think those early experiences, both with words and books, as well as exploring, set the stage for my life as a scientist and generally curious adult. Now I read for all sorts of reasons. I wonder though, how will children four decades later be shaped if not by books and imagination?

Left to right: ©Joanne Scribner, ©Thomas Canty, ©Paul Granger/BatmanBooks

Although I can’t change the reading habits of Americans, or even my nieces and nephews, I believe as Gandhi did “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” My goal for this space is to share the books and thoughts which color my adventures. I expect to post a review or opinion every Sunday. During the week, feel free to join me over on Twitter for a quiet moment of pause daily.

Next week I’ll offer my opinions on Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages but as a meditation on empathy and civility since the lessons extend well beyond relationships. Until then…

What is your earliest memory of books or reading? How has it shaped who you are today?

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1: Crain, Caleb. “Why We Don’t Read, Revisited” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 18 August 2018, www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/why-we-dont-read-revisited/.

2: "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for theUnited States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2010 to July 1,2017" (XLSX). United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 20 August 2018.