Empathy – is it doing you any good?

Empathy – the ability to understand what another person is feeling and why they believe what they do – is sorely in need of revival.

It lies somewhere in the middle of a continuum between detachment – observing another person without feeling any emotion towards them or trying in any way to understand their state of mind – and over-involvement, trying so hard to understand someone that you actually believe you’re sharing their emotions.

Empathy requires effort. You have to observe the other person carefully and ask them sensitively how they’re feeling, and do so without jumping to conclusions based on your own experience. Empathy requires you to listen mindfully, without passing judgment.

Given it’s so difficult, you may wonder whether it’s worth the effort to develop this quality. It is.

Most creatures are born with the ability to cope, or at least to become independent quickly. Not so humans. We’re totally helpless at birth, and it takes some years before we can survive unless those around us recognise our needs and satisfy them appropriately. Empathy is, therefore, necessary for human survival.

We’re not born empathetic, but it seems we’re born with a drive to become so. Newborns are selfish, concerned only with their own survival, without regard to the needs of others. At the same time, however, they’re fascinated by human faces and appear to be searching for the meaning of different emotional expressions.

In 1970, when Jerry Kagan and colleagues at Harvard showed four-month-olds a series of different images, they found even at such a young age, babies preferred looking at human faces more than at any other configuration.

And Lynne Murray, in her book The Psychology of Babies, shows infants as young as 11 weeks trying to copy their mothers’ facial expressions. Learning to understand others, just like learning language, appears to be an inherent part of human development.

Of course, babies aren’t physically capable of helping anyone, so although this skill starts to develop early, it’s difficult to know when exactly it matures. Based on the results of a study known as the Three Mountains Experiment, the child psychologist Jean Piaget claimed children cannot imagine the world from anyone else’s point of view until they’re about seven or eight.

Some clever experiments that followed suggest much younger children – as young as three or four – are capable of appreciating other viewpoints. However, they don’t habitually make use of this ability until about four years later.

We’re living in a time of unprecedented division. Extremely differing opinions are putting a strain on friendships and even dividing families. Now more than ever we need to make an effort to empathise, to understand why another person holds a view that’s different from our own.

It won’t necessarily soften your views or change the other person’s opinion if you’re empathetic. But if you can see the world through their eyes, it may become easier to tolerate your differences and so enjoy their company again in other ways.

• Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist and author of Siblings: How to Handle Rivalry and Create Lifelong Loving Bonds (£12.99, White Ladder). To order for £10.99 plus P&P, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk