Courtesy of Luis Ricardo Ramos, México/Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED).

The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective hopes. Ideally, the public square provides room to solve the problems we face. It is also where new, thorny issues often arise.

This “Up for Discussion” is part of Zócalo’s editorial and events series spotlighting the ideas, places, and questions that have shaped the public square Zócalo has created over the past 20 years.

For this fourth installment, our contributors think about how we might foster a public square that welcomes everyone—from its physical characteristics to its ethos. How does a flat, unobstructed surface exposed to the sun invite in more people? Can the public square in fact be a public triangle? Who are we empowering in our communities through public services? And might we be able to create a world that fits all worlds?

They answer these questions to tell us: What makes an inclusive public square?

The post What Makes an Inclusive Public Square? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I orginally got involved in studying empathy because I was raised by a single mother, with seven siblings, and felt grateful to the many people who offered their heartfelt assistance. One of these people, Ruth, a volunteer with a local nonprofit organization, became part of our lives—offering practical support like rides and babysitting, and also emotional support. She did so without judgment or expectation of anything in return. As I progressed in my education, I couldn’t help but wonder about what motivated people like Ruth.

However, I actually started my graduate student career by studying the opposite end of the spectrum—narcissism. We found that narcissism has been rising in American college students since the late 1970s. So I wondered whether empathy could also be declining across that same time period. Though I wasn’t really old enough to notice generational changes, more seasoned professors gave countless examples of the changes that they had seen in college students over the previous decades. I was skeptical: Didn’t the older generation always say this about the younger? But data suggested that this time there was evidence to back up their claims.

That data came from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the most commonly used tool that psychologists use to measure empathy. It asks people to what extent certain statements describe them. The statements include: “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,” and “When I’m upset at someone, I usually try to ‘put myself in his shoes’ for a while.” Participants’ responses are calculated on a 1 to 5 scale.

A family in Korea, one of the ten most empathetic countries in the world, according to reseach. Photo courtesy of raYmon/Flickr.

In 2010 we published a research paper finding declines in empathy among American college students over time. It got a lot of press—perhaps because of those stereotypes about younger generations. A clever marketing person at my university suggested that we post the empathy survey along with the press release so that people could find out their own scores. Over 100,000 people took the quiz!

That’s when I and my colleagues Bill Chopik and Ed O’Brien thought about using the data to better understand how empathy varies across cultures.

There were limitations to our data. As you can imagine, our surveys were only posted in English, since we never expected people from all over the world to be interested in the topic. So, only English speakers would have taken the survey, and among those, we can’t be sure whether these people were orginally from that country or just temporarily living there.

Yet we had reason to believe that the data was roughly accurate. For example, lots of research demonstrates that across a wide variety of ages, higher empathy scores are associated with more giving, helping, and sharing behaviors. Using data from high quality surveys (like the Gallup World Poll), we found that higher empathy countries had higher rates of volunteering and helping. So it seemed that our data captured empathy reasonably well.

Here are the ten countries with the highest empathy scores.

When showing these results to American friends, no one seemed to be surprised to see Denmark, a Northern European country, at No. 4. Nor was anyone surprised to see the United States at No. 7. I was a bit disappointed to see that my home country, Canada, trailed behind at No. 12.

The clearer patterns, though, are the clustering of countries from the Middle East (three countries), South/Central America (three countries), and East Asia (two countries) in the top 10. My friends seemed surprised to see the Middle Eastern ones at the top. That could have something to do general lack of knowledge about these cultures, since even college educated Americans find it difficult to point out Middle Eastern cultures on the map. Or it could be owing to stereotypes that Americans may hold about people from Middle Eastern cultures.

However, there are other possible implications beyond stereotypes. Our study suggests that certain types of social structures can make people super-empathizers. In our study, we found that cultures that tend to be more collectivistic also tend to have higher empathy scores. Collectivism involves seeing oneself as being part of a larger, interconnected group of familial and other close relationships, with a priority on fitting in with others and maintaining harmony. So it’s not surprising that empathy would be higher in such cultures.

On the flip side, our study found that on average, more individualistic cultures scored lower on empathy. Individualism involves seeing oneself as distinct and separate from others, with a priority on showcasing one’s uniqueness and valuing self-expression. It is possible that when people are focused on being separate and unique, this can sometimes obscure the commonalities that we share, which could impair our willingness or ability to feel compassion for others and to imagine what it is like to be them.

The countries with low empathy scores were also a surprise. Finland, a Northern European country like Denmark, is No. 58. This doesn’t quite fit with the stereotype of Northern Europeans as places with a strong sense of social welfare. A similar result was found with Venezuela (No. 62), which doesn’t fit in with other South/Central American countries in the top 10.

A lonely bench in Finland, one of the least empathetic countries in the world, according to research. Photo courtesy of Alexander Kosolov/Flickr.

We don’t have enough information to explain these variations. Perhaps there’s something in the history of Finland and Venezuela that make them different from their neighbors, or perhaps people in the cultures that appeared less empathetic feel uncomfortable overtly saying that they are kind and caring people, which would affect responses to our measure of empathy.

Which brings us to the bigger question of what respondents to our survey, around the world, thought they were doing. Empathy is a morally laden topic. In some cultures it might be important to demonstrate that one is morally good. In others it might be more important to measure one’s “real” nature—regardless of how “good” that nature is. So, when they answered questions about their own empathy, some respondents may have been demonstrating, while others were measuring. This could lead to biased responses.

There’s also the question of the recipient of empathy. Unfortunately the measure of empathy that we used doesn’t separately ask questions about empathy directed toward family and close friends, versus empathy directed toward strangers or people from different backgrounds. We don’t know whether people from the most empathetic regions of the world are mainly thinking about their loved ones when answering the questions, or if their empathy is more universally applied.

Perhaps the biggest take-home point from our data is this: Deep cultural knowledge of specific countries is likely to be more important, in further research, than applying a broad brush across many cultures. Most of the quantitative social science research on empathy so far has been conducted in what psychologists call “W.E.I.R.D.” cultures: Western, Educated, Individualistic, Rich, and Democratic. This is a problem because we don’t know how empathy operates within cultures that have different assumptions about the world, views of the self, and values. And cross-cultural psychology research mainly focuses on differences between Western countries and East Asian countries, with very limited research on Eastern Europe, South America, or the Middle East. Overall, we have a fragmented picture of the complex contextual factors at play.

We need to do a lot more research. In particular, we need culturally sensitive measures that are designed by people from other geographic regions to better capture what empathy means to them. We need to distinguish different recipients of empathy, such as close others versus strangers. For now, our study remains the largest study on empathy that exists, but hopefully future researchers will help us to paint a more careful picture of the world’s mosaic of empathy.

The post No, Empathy Isn’t a Universal Value appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In 2012, in the first Breivik v. State, he was convicted of mass murder and terrorism and sent to prison for the maximum sentence allowed under Norwegian law—21 years. But Norway is not done with him. Or, more accurately, he is not done with Norway. This time, Breivik came to court to sue the state for “violations of his human rights.”

For our own sanity, those of us living in Scandinavian countries with generally trustful relations between people and well-functioning economies and welfare states have wanted to move on from the brutality of attacks like Breivik’s. But every so often there comes an event—the bombings in Brussels this week, for example—that punctures our sense of security. For me, the return of the devil was one of them.

It is ironic that Breivik sued the Norwegian government, when families of the victims and survivors of the terrorist attacks have long considered filing their own suits against the state for failing to protect the children and more generally failing to protect its own citizens. The families of the victims have not had the energy to follow up before the courts, and they’ve been trying to get back to the lives they led before the July 22 attacks.

But certainly so many things changed with Breivik’s appearance on that clear and sunny summer day in 2011 in this otherwise fortunate corner of the world. Many people described it as a horror movie because it felt so surreal—the sight of Breivik dressed in a police uniform he tailored himself, contradicting the good intentions and camaraderie most Norwegians put their faith in, massacring the brightest of the next generation. This is why he has come to embody the devil himself here.

His actions made us realize how ill-prepared we were to deal with this type of evil. When Breivik set off the car bomb in Oslo, only four police officers—out of thousands—were on duty. In downtown Oslo, no obstacles prevented the terrorist from parking his car at the unguarded entry door to the government headquarters. He had plenty of time to drive to Utøya Island and conduct a manhunt against the children attending the Norwegian Labor Party summer camp. Neither a helicopter nor a boat could be organized in advance to stop Breivik’s massacre.

At the time of the attack, I myself was celebrating my daughter’s 13th birthday in the Swedish countryside. This peaceful scene was interrupted by a call from my editor at the Swiss Broadcasting Company, where I am the northern European correspondent. “Something strange is happening in Oslo,” she said. And then, for many weeks, I was plunged into a disturbing underworld seething with anti-government, anti-immigrant anger and violence that we hadn’t seen until it boiled over.

During the first iteration of Breivik v. State in 2012, I sat through the 10-week-long criminal proceedings at the Oslo Court. To me, his propaganda was as ridiculous as his frightening actions. Breivik said he was fighting to prevent the downfall of Western civilization at the hands of a Muslim takeover. “This country is my prison,” he said. His only regret, stated before the sentencing, was, “I did not succeed in killing even more of those people.” When Breivik got his life sentence on August 24, 2012, I felt relieved. But I did not feel relaxed; I knew that at some point he—or another kind of Breivik—would be back.

Breivik himself came back earlier than expected. His challenge against the state interested me because I think all of us, in the aftermath of his actions and sentencing, have wondered whether we have treated him according to the values we hold dear, even if his actions went beyond the limits of reason. Is it possible to deal fairly with a monster?

During the last four years, Breivik has basically been in his own prison, as he is deemed to be a danger to others and others are seen as a danger to him. A team of 49 people (including a doctor, a priest and gym coach) is taking care of him. He occupies three rooms: a sleeping room with ensuite shower, a study room with books and a typewriter (Breivik is an accredited student at Oslo University), and a private gym. Breiviks receives about 2,500 letters a year, many of them very long and requiring translation from Russian and other languages. Norwegian taxpayers have picked up the bills for damaged government ministries, new prison construction, lawyers, and translation, which have cost them more than a billion dollars so far.

To get to Skien, the former industrial hotspot that houses Breivik’s prison and the site of his most recent trial, I took a three-hour train ride from Oslo across beautiful fjords, along lakes, and through deep forests At the lower end of the famous Telemark Canal, I caught a taxi for the half-hour trip to the Skien High Security Prison. The distance from the original location of his crime felt like an important symbol to the people of Oslo: ”We keep him away from you.”

Skien Prison certainly felt like a prison: It had high walls, barbed wire, and control towers. However, there was a certain human touch to it, as all the guards I met were very friendly and welcoming. The sign outside the prison door noted it was a kriminalomsorgen, a ”care center” for criminals. After having suffered from and contributed to the extensive inhumanties of World War II, Norway developed a humane penal code, based on the idea that all wrongdoings can be corrected and every person should have a second chance for a decent life.

The prison’s sports hall had been turned into a courtroom for the four-day-proceeding. I could tell that when Breivik walked in, neatly dressed and with a fully shaved skull, he was enjoying being back in the spotlight. I found myself just a few meters behind this man, who by appearance and voice could be any person you might meet on the streets of the wealthy western parts of Oslo, where Breivik grew up. However, it soon became clear how different Breivik was from those people. He started by offering a Hitler greeting to the auditorium and then said to judge Helen Andenæs Sekulic,”I am the secretary general of the Nordic State Party.” A political party that exists only in his shaven head.

Skien Prison—a Norwegian kriminalomsorgen—converted its sports hall into a makeshift courtroom for the most recent proceedings of Breivik v. State.

In his three-hour long statement, Breivik compared himself to Hitler, Nelson Mandela, and Abraham Lincoln as “leaders who were ready for violent action when deemed necessary.” He asked the court to relax his prison regimen so he could more easily interact with fascist supporters around the world. The horror movie that unfolded after the attacks was taking a turn towards a farce. Here was a 37-year old terrorist, asking for compassion from a world he had savaged, turning the goodwill of the Norwegian people against them. And he didn’t see the irony.

But I understood more of what was at stake when I talked to the father of one of the girls killed on Utöya during a break in the trial. He, and other relatives and survivors, came because they wanted to know that they would be safe from this man.

Breivik proved to be worst witness for his own case against the Norwegian state. He verified the shocking fact that yes, there are human beings who are so inhuman that they never ever should be released again. So, when the devil himself got back into his handcuffs on day four of this trial, I was again relieved—the rule of law in Norway was working as it was supposed to. But I was also depressed because I couldn’t recognize anything familiar in this fellow human being.

I lost my way after I passed one of the exit checkpoints, ending up in the prison kitchen. There, a smiling cook offered me some fresh coffee and directions for how to get out of the prison. I was so glad to find my way back to a society where there is enough humanity and the ability to learn how to deal with the worst among us.

The post A Mass Murderer Is Testing the Limits of Scandinavian Goodwill appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I studied medicine at Howard University, and he got an MBA from General Motors Institute. My career moved me around the country. He settled in Detroit, then Oakland. Throughout it all, we stayed in touch. As technology evolved, so did our communications: telephone, mobile phone, email, Facebook. I knew that he was gay long before he admitted it to our parents. I came to know and appreciate his boyfriends, the last of whom he married.

My brother’s widow is a good man. He did not deserve to experience the events surrounding my brother’s last moments. They took place on July 25. My brother, age 56, was having breakfast. During the meal, he told his husband that he did not feel well and left the table to return to his bed. Thirty minutes later, my brother’s husband walked in to find my brother dead. Hysterical, the husband dialed 911. A series of professionals arrive on the scene—the ambulance workers (couldn’t save him), the police (couldn’t help him), and finally the coroner. After determining there was no evidence of foul play, the coroner left. My brother’s husband was now alone in the home with his dead partner. All the professionals had abandoned him.

I am also writing this piece as someone who has spent the past 25 years thinking about aging, particularly among minority populations. I live in the world of public health research and move in research circles. I hear many public-policy discussions that focus on advance care planning, with phrases like “making your wishes known” and “patient choice” and “do not resuscitate” dominating the conversation. What I don’t hear enough is the simple word “compassion.”

In my professional life, my colleagues and I have a thousand variables in our statistical models to explain deaths that happen too soon. Compassion is generally viewed as beside the point—a view that isn’t a problem in the world of statistics. But the cold language of public health research—with terms like “explanatory risk factors”—has also crept into our day-to-day discourse. Engage in high-risk behaviors—smoking, heavy drinking, eating junk food—and the numbers show you’ll die sooner. You should have known better.

The distress of sickness or bereavement is not diminished by a recitation of bad habits. Anyone living in the space of grief and loss needs the kindness of others. Neuroscientists have begun to assess the physiology of emotions by examining the brain in different states. In an MRI of the brain, a blue color indicates serenity. When someone is in deep meditation, whole regions of the brain turn a deep blue. Can we not conduct analogous research into the effects of compassion on a grieving brain?

In my professional life, my colleagues and I also see numbers relating to geography and end-of-life care. Live in certain parts of the country and you’re much more likely to die in a hospital than at home. Where you live affects how you die; but how does it affect compassion? Do resources missing from the community where my brother lived determine how my brother’s husband was treated? I think so. If you live in the wrong place, if you die under certain circumstances, then neither you nor those who mourn your death can expect too much sympathy. My brother’s house was in a poor and crime-plagued neighborhood in Oakland. There was no compassion.

Using research, I can confidently say that many Americans, black Americans especially, refuse to engage in end-of-life planning or discuss treatment limits. Some researchers link such refusal to some specific historical grievance, such as the Tuskegee syphilis study conducted between 1932 and 1972. But there’s not much evidence for the link. I see something simpler. In kitchen-table conversations with my female physician friends, we share stories about our experiences with patients at the end of life. Abandonment is a central theme: the experience of having had a professional make a fateful pronouncement and then walk away, without compassion. Maybe some of us request fruitless treatment and intrusion because it’s the closest we can get to human sympathy—because the alternative, being alone and uncared for, frightens us even more.

For better or worse, I have never had a family member die after a prolonged decline. There was never any fighting over whether a machine should be disconnected. There was no selection from a menu of treatment options. During a 30-year period, I’ve had 10 relatives die from a variety of causes. Some of the deaths were “natural,” while others were the result of violent crime. But in all cases, death came suddenly. No wonder that the idea of “advance care planning” has felt remote and the idea of abandonment has felt acute.

Compassion shouldn’t be confined to the patient, either. The loved ones we leave behind when we die, people like my brother’s husband, deserve a more compassionate system. I was moved when, a short time after my brother died, I got a call from his physician. She expressed her sympathy and her puzzlement. His death came as a surprise, she told me. She had seen him a few weeks before and found nothing remarkable. This didn’t give me answers, but it gave me a lot of comfort. After the nonviolent deaths of family members, I’d encountered indifference. After the violent deaths, I’d encountered silence. This physician cared, and I was grateful.

Fortunately, I am part of a large, noisy family. Like most American families, we live scattered across the country. But in times of bereavement, we gather. Most of us have private sources of comfort and support, and no healthcare system can ever supplant that. But neither should any healthcare system leave a grieving widow alone with the body of a spouse and no one to call for help.

Before my brother died, I happened to be studying the health effects of bereavement. I call it The Mortality Project. Other researchers and I are developing ways to measure the injury associated with loss. Time does not heal all wounds. We are finding evidence that, when an adult loses a parent, there is a 10 to 20 percent increased risk for illness during the next 10 years. Grief can cause body changes that are indistinguishable from diabetes. Seeing a loved one die in the ICU and hospital is strongly associated with prolonged grief and post-traumatic stress disorder. We know that parents whose children die before them live in a perpetual state of mourning. Loss is an understudied and under-recognized public health threat, and a cruel system makes it even worse.

Should patients have more control over their final days? Yes. Does where you live determine how likely you are to have intrusive end-of-life care? Yes. We should try to have everyone live in a “patient-centered” neighborhood. But it’s also time to have everyone live in a compassionate neighborhood.

The post When We Die, Who Is Kind? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.