The Research
Research & Strategy
Our strategy is built on two key areas of scientific research – that empathy is a learnable skill and that
reading builds real-life empathy.
What is Empathy?
Empathy is our ability to imagine and share someone else’s feelings and perspectives. Research shows it is:
- a pivotal social/emotional competence: influential frameworks include empathy as a key factor
- an essential ingredient in education: it builds the relationships pupils need to learn/feel safe (Settling Children to Learn, Bomber & Hughes, 2013)
- a key factor in moral behaviour: Empathy, Justice, and Moral Behavior, Decety & Cowell, 2015
Empathy is made up of 3 elements:
- FEELING: where we resonate with other people’s feelings
- THINKING: where we use reason and imagination to work out how someone else feels
- ACTING: where we are inspired to help others, having experienced what they are feeling
‘If you are interested in how you can foster children’s well-being and resilience, there is good evidence that empathy should be a key priority.'
Dr Robin Banerjee, Head of Psychology, University of Sussex
Key external research
Empathy
- Empathic people are made, not born. Only 10% of our empathic capacity is genetic (Warrier et al 2018).
- 98% of us can improve our empathy skills at any point in our lives. (Simon Baron-Cohen, Zero Degrees of Empathy, 2011, University of Cambridge)
- Empathy is a vital social and emotional skill. Research shows these skills are more significant for young people’s academic attainment than IQ (Public Health England, 2014)
- 94% of employers say that in the workplace, social and emotional skills are as important as academic qualifications (Sutton Trust, 2018)
- Hate crimes increased by 10% in 2018/19 (England and Wales), the highest level since Home Office records began. Hate crimes have more than doubled since 2012/13. (Home Office, 2019)
Empathy & reading
- Scientific evidence shows that immersion in literature is an effective way to build our understanding of other people (see here)
- 'The empathy we feel for book characters wires our brains to have the same sensitivity towards real people' (Raymond Marr, York University, Toronto)
- University of Sussex research shows that children’s emotional responses to texts builds cognitive empathy
Our own action research
- 2014: Literature review & major cross-disciplinary Think-In at the Royal Festival Hall. All consulted encouraged us to develop strategies using stories much more deliberately to develop empathy.
- 2015-18: Iterative testing of ideas/impact with eleven schools, supported by academics Professors Robin Banerjee (Psychology, Sussex University) & Teresa Cremin (Education, Open University) between 2016-18. Our evaluation report can be found here.
'In reading, you get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals'
Neil Gaiman
Our current reading
Here are three of the books currently informing our thinking:
