This week, Annie Paul--a journalist, former senior editor at Psychology Today magazine, author of The Cult of Personality, and the forthcoming Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives (Free Press, Sept. 2010)--asks Maia Szalavitz--a journalist writing for Time Magazine online, MSN Health, New Scientist, and the Daily Beast, among others, and author of the recently published Born for Love-- five questions about empathy--our capacity for it, our lack of it, our children's need for it, and how great its influence can really be.

1. For some readers, the word "empathy" will conjure up rather bland associations of niceness. Your book shows, however, that empathy is not a pleasant emotional fillip but an absolutely critical and visceral human capacity. Is there a general misunderstanding or underestimation of empathy and its importance?

Yes, I do think many people think of empathy as some kind of frill or nice extra. They don't realize that if you can't take someone else's perspective (the cognitive part of empathy), you essentially can't do anything social or even economic. Try making money if you have no idea what other people would want to buy or how to sell to them!

And, if you don't care about what it's like to be in someone else's shoes (the emotional part of empathy), you can't love. Since most human happiness comes through relationships and since empathy is fundamental for relational connections, it is very important indeed. Without empathy, there also can't be mutual trust, which is critical for economic growth. Low levels of trust essentially tax every transaction because you need more lawyers, regulators, locks, security guards, prisons-- all kinds of things to ensure that people keep their side of the bargain if you can't really trust them.

Even reading and watching movies requires empathy: you can't enjoy a novel or film without being able to imagine yourself in the characters' situations.

2. When you look through the newspaper each day, do you see a lack of empathy at the root of some of the more disturbing stories you read? Can you give us a few examples of how an empathy deficit may have led to some of our current social problems?

Where to start! Obviously, situations like the recent bullying related suicide in Boston stem from lack of empathy-- if the bullies had been more empathetic, they wouldn't have been bullies in the first place. Then, there's the case of the overwhelmed adoptive mother who sent her young Russian son back to his country alone on a plane. Empathy problems are involved in several ways here: the obvious one is the mother's lack of it, but also, being raised in an orphanage early in life can cause problems with empathy in children. Babies learn empathy from being parented and held-- if they don't have individualized, nurturing physical attention, they can be seriously psychologically and even physically damaged. Babies literally don't grow if they aren't held-- their bodies need physical affection to spur the release of growth hormone.

Also, virtually all predatory crime involves lack of empathy by the perpetrator-- and sadly, a majority of these perpetrators have failed to develop empathy due at least in part to early abuse and neglect. Torture and war are some other obvious cases.

And then there's the growing economic inequality in this country which allows us to tolerate bankers getting huge bonuses while unemployment rises and say, "Now, we have to cut the deficit" rather than offering help to those who were hurt through no fault of their own. Inequality can result from lack of empathy but it can also cause it, by isolating the rich from everyone else, giving them little chance to see the real world impact of economic policies and take the perspective of those who have been harmed.

3. A lot of the technology that has seeped into our everyday lives--from email to Twitter to Facebook to blogging--seems to be about connecting with other people. How is it that these activities could actually be undermining our capacity for empathy?

First, I want to note that these technologies can be either positive or negative forces, depending on how they are used. If a 7th grader is the only one in his school who loves math and he finds online friends who share his interest-- that's a positive and in the past, he would have been much more isolated. On the other hand, if a 2-year-old is spending all her time in front of a screen, this is seriously problematic because that's time she's not spending learning empathy. Screen time with TV or computers for the littlest kids is clearly harmful-- researchers found out recently that Baby Einstein videos actually reduce vocabulary, rather than teaching. So, these things harm our capacity for empathy when they are used by the littlest kids and when they substitute for richer face-to-face contact-- they help when they keep us connected to those far away.

4. As the mother of two young children, I'll ask a shamelessly practical question: How can I make sure that my kids develop a rich capacity for empathy?

You're almost certainly already doing most of this! However, the most important thing you can do is spend time with them and provide an environment rich in unstructured time and full of opportunities to connect with people of all ages. With infants, they need to be held and cuddled: their stress systems and their ability to cope with stress develop as they have empathetic interactions with their parents.

As they get older, helping them identify their own feelings is important-- they can't understand the feelings of others if they don't first understand their own. Also, being explicit about perspective-taking when you are doing things like reading to them (which itself helps teach perspective-taking): ask how they think characters feel and what they would do in that situation.

Modeling altruistic behavior and kindness is also important-- as is teaching kids that doing so can be fun, not just a duty. We tend to think of altruism as a burden or obligation-- but people tend to find it really rewarding and people rarely discuss the happiness you can get from helping and from sharing other people's happiness. Do talk
about this and more importantly, show it.

5. What was the most surprising thing you learned in researching and writing Born For Love?

How large the influence of empathy really is. I'd never really thought about the role of empathy in fiction or how it can be affected by depression. For example, when you are depressed, you tend to "misempathize"-- you think other people are rejecting you when they aren't, for example. I'd never realized how perspective-taking plays
such a big role there.

Further, I discovered "empathic over-arousal" which is something I suffered from as a kid and probably still do from time to time. Basically, you get so distressed by someone else's pain that you run away and ignore it rather than helping. So, being "too empathetic" can actually make you behave in a selfish way! I used to think that this made me a bad person, now I know that it's a real phenomenon and can address it better.