Last week, I was teaching a topic I understand well. When a student disagreed with a point I made, I instantly proceeded to explain why I was right and he was wrong. Of course, this resulted in a shutdown by him and others in the classroom. My ego was big, and it was negatively triggered when he started his point of view with, “I disagree with…”
Have you ever done that? Have you ever been so convinced of your own thinking that you refused to see another’s point of view?
There is a name for this type of thinking: Lack of intellectual empathy. Intellectual empathy is having a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them. This requires the consciousness of our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions of long-standing thought or belief.
Michael Jinkins published an article in the Huffington Post about Intellectual Empathy. He tells a story of a professor who demonstrated outstanding intellectual empathy. You can access the article at link.
Jinkins wrote: “Genuine intellectual empathy requires creativity and commitment — a commitment and a willingness to imagine others’ ideas from within. One has to come alongside another person. One has to be willing to say, ‘I may not share your perspective — in fact, I may disagree with you entirely! — but we share a common humanity and so I want to understand what you think.’”
This concept of intellectual empathy made me very aware of something that I have been struggling with but couldn’t put a name to. Now that I have a name for it, I will be able to do something about it.
If you struggle with a lack of intellectual empathy, here are a few actions you can take to improve:
- Go into each situation mindful of your approach and thinking; if you believe it is lacking intellectual empathy, take note and change your mind-set to one of curiosity.
- Change your goal; it is not to be the expert – but to be the learner. What will you learn from this person/group? How will they look at the information in a way you haven’t?
- Challenge yourself to see every point of view and to look for new ways to see the information you already know.
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