3 ways to practice empathy skills

Holiday gatherings can come with the invisible stress of potential arguments and conflict. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Tapping into empathy skills, which you can practice, can help prepare you to face conflict head-on and diffuse a disagreement before it escalates.

Stanford University psychology professor Jamil Zaki said research shows that without empathy, people expect the “other person” - whether it’s someone they disagree with politically, or otherwise - to have far more extreme views than they may actually do.

Zaki and other experts said that practicing empathy takes effort. One way to build up those empathy skills is to identify when it may be hard for you to access empathy.

Karina Schumann at University of Pittsburgh suggests to “try to recognize your own patterns and where empathy might break down for you, because we all have unique barriers to feeling empathy."

Another empathy skill is active listening, or listening to the other person without preparing assumptions, preconceived notions or counter arguments in your head.

Finally, research showed that out-of-body experiences can also help.

A study led by Marina Weiler and others at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia found the feeling of not being in your own body leads to the feeling of ego dissolution, or loss of self, and more connectedness with the universe or a “larger collective entity.”

This video was produced by Casey Kuhn, Julia Griffin, Erica Hendry, Travis Daub and Yasmeen Alamiri.

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