Empathy is an ‘entering into’ the life world of another person, said the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin.Sometimes that entering into is easy. If the other person is someone we know well or someone we love, we have many entry points into th…

 Yet the Aurora Theater and Sandy Hook shootings hit forensic psychologist Max Wachtel especially hard, driving him to try to figure out what made these killers and other male criminals do what they do. In doing research, one common element arose&…

That acerbic condescension reflects one of this country’s fundamental problems: an empathy gap. It reflects the delusion on the part of many affluent Americans that those like Kevin are lazy or living cushy lives.A poll released this month by the…

Psychologist Daniel Goleman has written a fascinating piece for today’s New York Times about social status and empathy. It seems that the richer and more powerful a person is, the less empathy he or she is likely to have for people who…