TED2007
Daniel Goleman: Why aren't we more compassionate?
Filmed:
Readability: 3.9
2,222,780 views
Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence," asks why we aren't more compassionate more of the time.
Daniel Goleman - Psychologist
Daniel Goleman, psychologist and award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence and other books on EI, challenges traditional measures of intelligence as a predictor of life success. Full bio
Daniel Goleman, psychologist and award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence and other books on EI, challenges traditional measures of intelligence as a predictor of life success. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:13
You know, I'm struck by how one of the implicit themes of TED
0
1000
4000
00:17
is compassion, these very moving demonstrations we've just seen:
1
5000
3000
00:21
HIV in Africa, President Clinton last night.
2
9000
4000
00:25
And I'd like to do a little collateral thinking, if you will,
3
13000
5000
00:30
about compassion and bring it from the global level to the personal.
4
18000
5000
00:35
I'm a psychologist, but rest assured,
5
23000
2000
00:37
I will not bring it to the scrotal.
6
25000
1000
00:39
(Laughter)
7
27000
4000
00:44
There was a very important study done a while ago
8
32000
2000
00:46
at Princeton Theological Seminary that speaks to why it is
9
34000
4000
00:51
that when all of us have so many opportunities to help,
10
39000
3000
00:54
we do sometimes, and we don't other times.
11
42000
3000
00:58
A group of divinity students at the Princeton Theological Seminary
12
46000
3000
01:02
were told that they were going to give a practice sermon
13
50000
4000
01:06
and they were each given a sermon topic.
14
54000
3000
01:09
Half of those students were given, as a topic,
15
57000
3000
01:12
the parable of the Good Samaritan:
16
60000
2000
01:14
the man who stopped the stranger in --
17
62000
2000
01:17
to help the stranger in need by the side of the road.
18
65000
2000
01:19
Half were given random Bible topics.
19
67000
3000
01:22
Then one by one, they were told they had to go to another building
20
70000
3000
01:26
and give their sermon.
21
74000
1000
01:27
As they went from the first building to the second,
22
75000
3000
01:30
each of them passed a man who was bent over and moaning,
23
78000
3000
01:34
clearly in need. The question is: Did they stop to help?
24
82000
4000
01:38
The more interesting question is:
25
86000
1000
01:40
Did it matter they were contemplating the parable
26
88000
3000
01:43
of the Good Samaritan? Answer: No, not at all.
27
91000
4000
01:48
What turned out to determine whether someone would stop
28
96000
3000
01:51
and help a stranger in need
29
99000
1000
01:52
was how much of a hurry they thought they were in --
30
100000
3000
01:56
were they feeling they were late, or were they absorbed
31
104000
4000
02:00
in what they were going to talk about.
32
108000
1000
02:02
And this is, I think, the predicament of our lives:
33
110000
2000
02:05
that we don't take every opportunity to help
34
113000
4000
02:09
because our focus is in the wrong direction.
35
117000
3000
02:12
There's a new field in brain science, social neuroscience.
36
120000
3000
02:16
This studies the circuitry in two people's brains
37
124000
4000
02:20
that activates while they interact.
38
128000
2000
02:22
And the new thinking about compassion from social neuroscience
39
130000
4000
02:26
is that our default wiring is to help.
40
134000
4000
02:30
That is to say, if we attend to the other person,
41
138000
4000
02:35
we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them.
42
143000
3000
02:39
There are these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons,
43
147000
2000
02:41
that act like a neuro Wi-Fi, activating in our brain
44
149000
4000
02:45
exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel "with" automatically.
45
153000
4000
02:49
And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering,
46
157000
4000
02:54
we're automatically prepared to help. At least that's the argument.
47
162000
4000
02:58
But then the question is: Why don't we?
48
166000
3000
03:01
And I think this speaks to a spectrum
49
169000
2000
03:04
that goes from complete self-absorption,
50
172000
2000
03:07
to noticing, to empathy and to compassion.
51
175000
2000
03:09
And the simple fact is, if we are focused on ourselves,
52
177000
4000
03:14
if we're preoccupied, as we so often are throughout the day,
53
182000
3000
03:17
we don't really fully notice the other.
54
185000
3000
03:20
And this difference between the self and the other focus
55
188000
2000
03:22
can be very subtle.
56
190000
1000
03:23
I was doing my taxes the other day, and I got to the point
57
191000
4000
03:27
where I was listing all of the donations I gave,
58
195000
2000
03:30
and I had an epiphany, it was -- I came to my check
59
198000
3000
03:33
to the Seva Foundation and I noticed that I thought,
60
201000
3000
03:36
boy, my friend Larry Brilliant would really be happy
61
204000
2000
03:39
that I gave money to Seva.
62
207000
1000
03:40
Then I realized that what I was getting from giving
63
208000
3000
03:43
was a narcissistic hit -- that I felt good about myself.
64
211000
4000
03:47
Then I started to think about the people in the Himalayas
65
215000
5000
03:52
whose cataracts would be helped, and I realized
66
220000
2000
03:55
that I went from this kind of narcissistic self-focus
67
223000
3000
03:59
to altruistic joy, to feeling good
68
227000
3000
04:02
for the people that were being helped. I think that's a motivator.
69
230000
4000
04:06
But this distinction between focusing on ourselves
70
234000
3000
04:09
and focusing on others
71
237000
1000
04:10
is one that I encourage us all to pay attention to.
72
238000
3000
04:13
You can see it at a gross level in the world of dating.
73
241000
3000
04:17
I was at a sushi restaurant a while back
74
245000
3000
04:20
and I overheard two women talking about the brother of one woman,
75
248000
3000
04:24
who was in the singles scene. And this woman says,
76
252000
3000
04:27
"My brother is having trouble getting dates,
77
255000
2000
04:29
so he's trying speed dating." I don't know if you know speed dating?
78
257000
2000
04:31
Women sit at tables and men go from table to table,
79
259000
4000
04:35
and there's a clock and a bell, and at five minutes, bingo,
80
263000
3000
04:39
the conversation ends and the woman can decide
81
267000
2000
04:41
whether to give her card or her email address to the man
82
269000
4000
04:45
for follow up. And this woman says,
83
273000
2000
04:47
"My brother's never gotten a card, and I know exactly why.
84
275000
4000
04:51
The moment he sits down, he starts talking non-stop about himself;
85
279000
5000
04:56
he never asks about the woman."
86
284000
1000
04:58
And I was doing some research in the Sunday Styles section
87
286000
5000
05:03
of The New York Times, looking at the back stories of marriages --
88
291000
3000
05:06
because they're very interesting -- and I came to the marriage
89
294000
3000
05:09
of Alice Charney Epstein. And she said
90
297000
3000
05:12
that when she was in the dating scene,
91
300000
2000
05:15
she had a simple test she put people to.
92
303000
2000
05:18
The test was: from the moment they got together,
93
306000
2000
05:20
how long it would take the guy to ask her a question
94
308000
3000
05:23
with the word "you" in it.
95
311000
2000
05:25
And apparently Epstein aced the test, therefore the article.
96
313000
4000
05:29
(Laughter)
97
317000
1000
05:30
Now this is a -- it's a little test
98
318000
2000
05:32
I encourage you to try out at a party.
99
320000
2000
05:34
Here at TED there are great opportunities.
100
322000
2000
05:38
The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called
101
326000
3000
05:41
"The Human Moment," about how to make real contact
102
329000
3000
05:44
with a person at work. And they said, well,
103
332000
3000
05:47
the fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry,
104
335000
3000
05:51
close your laptop, end your daydream
105
339000
3000
05:55
and pay full attention to the person.
106
343000
2000
05:58
There is a newly coined word in the English language
107
346000
4000
06:03
for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry
108
351000
3000
06:06
or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist.
109
354000
3000
06:10
The word is "pizzled": it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off.
110
358000
4000
06:14
(Laughter)
111
362000
3000
06:17
I think it's quite apt. It's our empathy, it's our tuning in
112
365000
6000
06:24
which separates us from Machiavellians or sociopaths.
113
372000
3000
06:27
I have a brother-in-law who's an expert on horror and terror --
114
375000
5000
06:32
he wrote the Annotated Dracula, the Essential Frankenstein --
115
380000
3000
06:35
he was trained as a Chaucer scholar,
116
383000
1000
06:36
but he was born in Transylvania
117
384000
2000
06:38
and I think it affected him a little bit.
118
386000
2000
06:40
At any rate, at one point my brother-in-law, Leonard,
119
388000
4000
06:44
decided to write a book about a serial killer.
120
392000
2000
06:46
This is a man who terrorized the very vicinity we're in
121
394000
3000
06:50
many years ago. He was known as the Santa Cruz strangler.
122
398000
2000
06:53
And before he was arrested, he had murdered his grandparents,
123
401000
4000
06:57
his mother and five co-eds at UC Santa Cruz.
124
405000
3000
07:01
So my brother-in-law goes to interview this killer
125
409000
2000
07:04
and he realizes when he meets him
126
412000
2000
07:06
that this guy is absolutely terrifying.
127
414000
1000
07:08
For one thing, he's almost seven feet tall.
128
416000
2000
07:10
But that's not the most terrifying thing about him.
129
418000
3000
07:13
The scariest thing is that his IQ is 160: a certified genius.
130
421000
5000
07:19
But there is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy,
131
427000
4000
07:23
feeling with the other person.
132
431000
1000
07:25
They're controlled by different parts of the brain.
133
433000
2000
07:28
So at one point, my brother-in-law gets up the courage
134
436000
2000
07:31
to ask the one question he really wants to know the answer to,
135
439000
2000
07:33
and that is: how could you have done it?
136
441000
3000
07:36
Didn't you feel any pity for your victims?
137
444000
2000
07:38
These were very intimate murders -- he strangled his victims.
138
446000
3000
07:42
And the strangler says very matter-of-factly,
139
450000
2000
07:44
"Oh no. If I'd felt the distress, I could not have done it.
140
452000
5000
07:49
I had to turn that part of me off. I had to turn that part of me off."
141
457000
6000
07:55
And I think that that is very troubling,
142
463000
5000
08:01
and in a sense, I've been reflecting on turning that part of us off.
143
469000
4000
08:05
When we focus on ourselves in any activity,
144
473000
2000
08:08
we do turn that part of ourselves off if there's another person.
145
476000
3000
08:12
Think about going shopping and think about the possibilities
146
480000
5000
08:17
of a compassionate consumerism.
147
485000
2000
08:20
Right now, as Bill McDonough has pointed out,
148
488000
2000
08:24
the objects that we buy and use have hidden consequences.
149
492000
4000
08:28
We're all unwitting victims of a collective blind spot.
150
496000
3000
08:32
We don't notice and don't notice that we don't notice
151
500000
2000
08:35
the toxic molecules emitted by a carpet or by the fabric on the seats.
152
503000
6000
08:42
Or we don't know if that fabric is a technological
153
510000
5000
08:47
or manufacturing nutrient; it can be reused
154
515000
4000
08:51
or does it just end up at landfill? In other words,
155
519000
2000
08:53
we're oblivious to the ecological and public health
156
521000
5000
08:59
and social and economic justice consequences
157
527000
3000
09:02
of the things we buy and use.
158
530000
2000
09:06
In a sense, the room itself is the elephant in the room,
159
534000
4000
09:10
but we don't see it. And we've become victims
160
538000
4000
09:14
of a system that points us elsewhere. Consider this.
161
542000
3000
09:18
There's a wonderful book called
162
546000
3000
09:22
Stuff: The Hidden Life of Everyday Objects.
163
550000
2000
09:25
And it talks about the back story of something like a t-shirt.
164
553000
3000
09:28
And it talks about where the cotton was grown
165
556000
3000
09:31
and the fertilizers that were used and the consequences
166
559000
2000
09:33
for soil of that fertilizer. And it mentions, for instance,
167
561000
4000
09:37
that cotton is very resistant to textile dye;
168
565000
3000
09:40
about 60 percent washes off into wastewater.
169
568000
3000
09:43
And it's well known by epidemiologists that kids
170
571000
3000
09:46
who live near textile works tend to have high rates of leukemia.
171
574000
5000
09:52
There's a company, Bennett and Company, that supplies Polo.com,
172
580000
4000
09:57
Victoria's Secret -- they, because of their CEO, who's aware of this,
173
585000
5000
10:03
in China formed a joint venture with their dye works
174
591000
4000
10:07
to make sure that the wastewater
175
595000
2000
10:09
would be properly taken care of before it returned to the groundwater.
176
597000
4000
10:13
Right now, we don't have the option to choose the virtuous t-shirt
177
601000
4000
10:18
over the non-virtuous one. So what would it take to do that?
178
606000
4000
10:25
Well, I've been thinking. For one thing,
179
613000
3000
10:28
there's a new electronic tagging technology that allows any store
180
616000
5000
10:33
to know the entire history of any item on the shelves in that store.
181
621000
4000
10:38
You can track it back to the factory. Once you can track it
182
626000
2000
10:40
back to the factory, you can look at the manufacturing processes
183
628000
4000
10:44
that were used to make it, and if it's virtuous,
184
632000
4000
10:48
you can label it that way. Or if it's not so virtuous,
185
636000
4000
10:52
you can go into -- today, go into any store,
186
640000
4000
10:56
put your scanner on a palm onto a barcode,
187
644000
3000
10:59
which will take you to a website.
188
647000
2000
11:01
They have it for people with allergies to peanuts.
189
649000
2000
11:04
That website could tell you things about that object.
190
652000
2000
11:07
In other words, at point of purchase,
191
655000
1000
11:08
we might be able to make a compassionate choice.
192
656000
4000
11:12
There's a saying in the world of information science:
193
660000
6000
11:18
ultimately everybody will know everything.
194
666000
3000
11:21
And the question is: will it make a difference?
195
669000
2000
11:25
Some time ago when I was working for The New York Times,
196
673000
3000
11:29
it was in the '80s, I did an article
197
677000
2000
11:31
on what was then a new problem in New York --
198
679000
2000
11:33
it was homeless people on the streets.
199
681000
2000
11:35
And I spent a couple of weeks going around with a social work agency
200
683000
4000
11:39
that ministered to the homeless. And I realized seeing the homeless
201
687000
3000
11:42
through their eyes that almost all of them were psychiatric patients
202
690000
5000
11:47
that had nowhere to go. They had a diagnosis. It made me --
203
695000
4000
11:52
what it did was to shake me out of the urban trance where,
204
700000
3000
11:56
when we see, when we're passing someone who's homeless
205
704000
3000
11:59
in the periphery of our vision, it stays on the periphery.
206
707000
3000
12:04
We don't notice and therefore we don't act.
207
712000
2000
12:09
One day soon after that -- it was a Friday -- at the end of the day,
208
717000
5000
12:14
I went down -- I was going down to the subway. It was rush hour
209
722000
3000
12:17
and thousands of people were streaming down the stairs.
210
725000
2000
12:19
And all of a sudden as I was going down the stairs
211
727000
2000
12:21
I noticed that there was a man slumped to the side,
212
729000
3000
12:24
shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him --
213
732000
4000
12:29
hundreds and hundreds of people.
214
737000
1000
12:31
And because my urban trance had been somehow weakened,
215
739000
3000
12:35
I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong.
216
743000
3000
12:39
The moment I stopped, half a dozen other people
217
747000
2000
12:42
immediately ringed the same guy.
218
750000
1000
12:44
And we found out that he was Hispanic, he didn't speak any English,
219
752000
2000
12:46
he had no money, he'd been wandering the streets for days, starving,
220
754000
5000
12:51
and he'd fainted from hunger.
221
759000
1000
12:52
Immediately someone went to get orange juice,
222
760000
2000
12:54
someone brought a hotdog, someone brought a subway cop.
223
762000
2000
12:57
This guy was back on his feet immediately.
224
765000
3000
13:00
But all it took was that simple act of noticing,
225
768000
4000
13:05
and so I'm optimistic.
226
773000
1000
13:06
Thank you very much.
227
774000
1000
13:07
(Applause)
228
775000
2000
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Daniel Goleman - PsychologistDaniel Goleman, psychologist and award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence and other books on EI, challenges traditional measures of intelligence as a predictor of life success.
Why you should listen
Daniel Goleman brought the notion of "EI" to prominence as an alternative to more traditional measures of IQ with his 1995 mega-best-seller Emotional Intelligence.
Since the publication of that book, conferences and academic institutes have sprung up dedicated to the idea. EI is taught in public schools, and corporate leaders have adopted it as a new way of thinking about success and leadership. EI, and one's "EIQ," can be an explanation of why some "average" people are incredibly successful, while "geniuses" sometimes fail to live up to their promise.
Daniel Goleman | Speaker | TED.com