Research shows today's college students are 40-per-cent less caring Than ...

Greetings! I'm Nico Trimoff, manager of transcription and accessibility
services at www.sterlingcreations.ca.
Well, as the students head back to school, I thought that I would present
you with a reader's contribution that focuses on a recent survey that shows
how much students care these days and it is compared to students of two
decades ago. I hope you find this article interesting as I did.
I'd like to thank Carrie Jenesac for sending this along to us. A great
contribution!
Have a great day!

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A reader's contribution

Research shows today's college students are 40-per-cent less caring Than
those of 20 years ago. Facebook is one factor in the rise of narcissism,
Zosia

Zosia Bielski
Globe and Mail, June 1/, 2010

Today's college students are 40-per-cent less empathetic than those of the
1980s and 1990s, says a University of Michigan study that analyzed the
personality tests of 13,737 students over 30 years.

The influx of callous reality TV shows and the astronomical growth of social
networking and texting - technologies that allow people to tune others out
when they don't feel like engaging - may be to blame, the authors
hypothesize.

They examined 72 studies of American college students, mean age 20, from
1979 to 2009. All of them had taken the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity
Index, which looks at empathic concern, an emotional response to the
distress of others, and "perspective-taking," or the ability to imagine
another person's perspective.

In previous studies, people who scored higher on empathic concern were more
likely to have returned incorrect change, carried a stranger's belongings,
let somebody ahead of them in line, given money to a homeless person or
looked after a friend's plant or pet. Crisis volunteers had significantly
higher scores for perspective-taking and empathic concern than a control
group.

The researchers found a 48-per-cent decrease in empathic concern and a
34-per-cent decrease in perspective-taking between 1979 and 2009. In
particular, post-millennial students were far less likely to agree with
statements such as, "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less
fortunate than me" and "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by
imagining how things look from their perspective."

"Young adults today comprise one of the most self-concerned, competitive,
confident, and individualistic cohorts in recent history," the researchers
write, referring to the "Me Generation."

They note that the most sizable empathy drop came after 2000 as social
networks such as Facebook and MySpace began to flourish. These "physically
distant online environments" allowed people to "lionize their own lives" and
"functionally create a buffer between individuals, which makes it easier to
ignore others' pain, or even at times, inflict pain upon others."

The authors cite a 2005 study that found significant decreases in empathic
concern and perspective-taking among a longitudinal sample of medical
interns from the start of their internships in 2000 to completion three
years later. They also point to the recent case of a New York medical
student who posed smiling, giving a thumbs-up, with a cadaver, a photo that
later circulated on Facebook.

Other cited studies reveal that more young adults are living alone, and more
are materialistic.

Both conditions are linked to lower empathy, the authors argue. Also on the
rise is narcissism, a trait that has people viewing others in terms of their
utility.

"Not surprisingly, this growing emphasis on the self has also come with a
decreased emphasis on others," the authors write.

In the case of students who were attending college after the year 2000,
developmental factors may be at play, says lead author Sara Konrath, an
assistant professor at the university's Institute for Social Research.

"These kids were born around 1980. It could be a change in parenting style.
... Kids are getting the implicit message from parents that success is what
really matters. It's hard to spend your life pursuing success and at the
same time pursue empathy, because empathy takes work."

Mary Gordon, the Toronto founder and president of Roots of Empathy, also
blames a "poverty of time" in families.

"You have to experience empathy to continue to develop it. If children don't
have enough opportunity and parents don't have enough time to be with their
children, it's really difficult," she said.

The non-profit organization offers an experiential learning program to
students from kindergarten to Grade 8 to help beef up children's "emotional
literacy." School officials typically call the organization after they've
seen a spike in bullying. (The program was offered in 13,000 Canadian
classrooms this year.)

"When you have social change, the children are always the canaries in the
mine shaft," Ms. Gordon said.

The program invites a neighbourhood parent and infant to visit a classroom
27 times over the school year, along with a special instructor.

"They are coached in observing the baby, understanding its feelings and
what's going between the baby and the parent, which is the attachment
relationship, the template for every other relationship in life. The baby is
a launch pad."

Although psychiatrists still squabble over the definition of empathy, Ms.
Gordon puts it simply as "understanding how another person feels." She said
the younger children who partake in the program quickly come to realize that
"the baby has feelings, and that we're all grown-up babies."

Although Prof. Konrath is concerned about the empathy gap, not least of all
because it's a key symptom of autism and sociopathy, she says programs such
as Roots of Empathy make her optimistic.

"Empathy is kind of like exercise: People who are low in empathy are a
little bit out of shape, and people who are high in empathy are practicing
it a lot. The hopeful part of me wants people going to the empathy gym."

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