Merry Christmas!

The more I research on empathy, the more I think about the upcoming holiday season. Many times when you walk into a grocery store between November and December you see a person standing outside ringing a bell next to a kettle. Many people give money, while others do not. 

I have personally rang the bell for the salvation army. It is a really fun experience. I did it in the past with my dad and sister. This one year my sister and I started doing it and my dad had not yet gotten there. Hardly anybody was giving us money. The minute my dad got there all the little old ladies started giving us money like crazy. That is a memory I will always cherish of my dad. This year my sister and I will be ringing the bell in honor of him since he passed away about three weeks ago.

Looking back on that memory, it is so nice to see how generous people are. Some people gave twenties, others gave fives. No matter how much people gave it was nice to see people helping their fellow community members. To me it seems as though people are very generous during the christmas season, which is obviously nice. However, I really this we should think of every month as Christmas and try to give to others not just during the Holiday season. 

Merry Christmas! (Many many days early)

This is the Salvation Army Red Kettle.

 

But how do we know...

How do we know that technology is the cause of one of the causes behind our empathy deficit and not something else? Could it possibly be that it was the way we were raised? As children we were raised to believe that having high self-esteem is a very important characteristic. 

Previous research had measured more of narcisissm than lack of empathy. On those particular questionaires, it included questions such as "I am a special person". This would be more connected to narcissicm. The survey on empathy used in recent studies obviously measures empathy. People can easily make themselves look like better, kinder people. However, they don't. Clearly it is measuring the truth. College students do not even care about seeming uncaring. This is a big issue. So what is the cause of this?

Technology & Narcissism

There are many stereotypes about my generation. The main one is that it is all about me, me, me. No one else matters. All we think about is ourselves. Like many others, when people say this to me I get very offended. You cannot generalize about a whole generation. Or can you?