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But working with her exploded his prejudices about African Americans. In 1971 he was invited-as a prominent local citizen-to a 10-day community meeting to tackle racial tensions in schools, and was chosen to head a steering committee with Ann Atwater, a black activist he despised. Finding it hard to make ends meet working in a garage and believing African Americans were the cause of all his troubles, he followed his father’s footsteps and joined the Ku Klux Klan, eventually rising to the top position of Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK branch. An episode from the history of US race relations illustrates how this can happen.Ĭlaiborne Paul Ellis was born into a poor white family in Durham, North Carolina, in 1927. HEPs challenge their own preconceptions and prejudices by searching for what they share with people rather than what divides them. We all have assumptions about others and use collective labels-e.g., “Muslim fundamentalist,” “welfare mom”-that prevent us from appeciating their individuality. Habit 2: Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities Set yourself the challenge of having a conversation with one stranger every week. We are confronted by strangers every day, like the heavily tattooed woman who delivers your mail or the new employee who always eats his lunch alone. Crucially, it tries to understand the world inside the head of the other person. And it is a useful cure for the chronic loneliness afflicting around one in three Americans.Ĭultivating curiosity requires more than having a brief chat about the weather. Curiosity is good for us too: Happiness guru Martin Seligman identifies it as a key character strength that can enhance life satisfaction. They find other people more interesting than themselves but are not out to interrogate them, respecting the advice of the oral historian Studs Terkel: “Don’t be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.”Ĭuriosity expands our empathy when we talk to people outside our usual social circle, encountering lives and worldviews very different from our own. They will talk to the person sitting next to them on the bus, having retained that natural inquisitiveness we all had as children, but which society is so good at beating out of us. Highly empathic people (HEPs) have an insatiable curiosity about strangers. Here are the Six Habits of Highly Empathic People! Habit 1: Cultivate curiosity about strangers Research in sociology, psychology, history-and my own studies of empathic personalities over the past 10 years-reveals how we can make empathy an attitude and a part of our daily lives, and thus improve the lives of everyone around us. We can nurture its growth throughout our lives-and we can use it as a radical force for social transformation. And psychologists have revealed that we are primed for empathy by strong attachment relationships in the first two years of life.īut empathy doesn’t stop developing in childhood. Evolutionary biologists like Frans de Waal have shown that we are social animals who have naturally evolved to care for each other, just like our primate cousins. Over the last decade, neuroscientists have identified a 10-section “empathy circuit” in our brains which, if damaged, can curtail our ability to understand what other people are feeling. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.