The psychology of empathy is the science behind empathy. It works in everyday life and also in extraordinary moments.
What exactly is the psychology of empathy? Psychologists have been studying empathy for decades. They are in the business of helping people change, and they are academically minded. So, psychology has been an invaluable source of data on what works to help people change.
I’m deeply grateful for the brilliant researchers who have studied empathy and alerted us to its power. In the early 1990s, Dr. Marsha Linehan introduced Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Her method proved that empathy was capable of doing what no other kind of therapy had done: reliably reduce self-harm and suicide.
Linehan saw acceptance and change as two sides of the same coin. When people are invalidated, for example, when someone who identifies as LGBTQ+ has a family or social circle that doesn’t accept who they are, they tend to become isolated and depressed. So, to a large extent, invalidation or a lack of empathy, actually causes illness and self-harm.
Linehan believed that when people feel genuinely accepted, they stop resisting and isolating and become more open to change and connection. Simply the act of validating another person—truly seeing and accepting the reality of who they are and the circumstances that have brought them to this place—is alone enough to unlock new thinking and induce change.
A wave of acceptance-based therapies followed. Motivational Interviewing is one powerful therapeutic mode that consists almost exclusively of validating the patient’s emotions. Because it’s effective even in short sessions, motivational interviewing has been adopted by many hospitals to help people change lifestyle habits that lead to bad medical outcomes, like alcoholism and anti-vaccination beliefs.
In one instance documented by Adam Grant, two 15-minute motivational interviewing conversations about vaccinations turned a hard line anti-vaxxer into a vaccine advocate. And all the interviewer did was accept her stance about vaccines, empathize with her, and treat her ideas with respect, regardless of their actual medical value. Clearly empathy does what admonition, judgment, and disdain cannot: change someone.
Linehan’s discoveries fall in line with ancient mindfulness practices taught by the Buddah. John Kabat-Zinn, the great professor of medicine and founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), actually defines healing as “coming to terms with things as they are.”
Traditionally in Buddhism, suffering is caused by resistance to reality and a tendency to cling to things that are impermanent. Zinn observes that when we don’t accept things as they are, we spend significant amounts of our mental energy grasping or pushing away reality. Zinn calls that clinging, holding on, and sometimes, mere obsession. Simply accepting the reality of things helps free up enormous energy so that we can make better decisions for how to move forward. In Zinn’s methods, you don’t need another person to empathize, validate, or accept you. The work is focused on validating and accepting yourself.
The good news is this, the tactics that work for the professionals work in every day life for the rest of us too. You can use empathy techniques like listening, mirroring, and validation to help people in your office and your family feel seen and heard, accept the reality of the situation, and perhaps even change for the better as well.
All you have to do is remember that acceptance is a necessary step for healing and change. So, stop arguing, cajoling, pleading, and pushing someone to change. It doesn’t work. The pathway to change runs through acceptance, empathy, and gratitude.
This post is part of my Gratitude Project 2025: The Magic of Empathy — a 30-day exploration of empathy and gratitude. Visit the hub to follow along or catch up on past reflections.
If you’d like to explore the science behind gratitude, visit the Greater Good Science Center’s Gratitude Resources.
