In January, Greenwall Faculty Scholar Alum Jodi
Lauren Halpern, MD, PhD, traveled to Santiago, Chile to give a keynote
address to the Congreso Futuro titled, “The Power of Empathic Curiosity in a
Divided World.”
Congreso Futuro
is a preeminent South American science communication event—an initiative of
state, academic, media, and industry partners to explore the intersection of
technology, science, and ethics. The audience, according to estimates provided
by event organizers, numbered in the millions across various media platforms, and comprised scientists, policymakers, and members of the public with an
interest in the implications of scientific research and discovery on politics
and culture. This audience included Chilean president Gabriel Boric, with whom
Prof. Halpern met to discuss early-career ethics training for scientists and
physicians.
Bookending the event were two keynote speeches, the first by
filmmaker Werner Herzog, and the second by Prof. Halpern. The talk was on the
concept of empathic curiosity, which Prof. Halpern describes as a “cognitive
pathway…that is resilient during conflict” and calls upon people—particularly
those in conflict when “sympathy and compassion evaporate”—to bridge divides by
becoming genuinely interested in the origin of another’s emotional position. According
to Prof. Halpern, this “cognitive interdependence” is a natural impulse: “When
people make no sense to us, we are built to become curious.”
In her talk, Prof. Halpern described the application of
empathic curiosity principles in navigating post-conflict reconstruction in war-torn
former Yugoslavia in 2003, when she studied social reconciliation among hostile
groups. The concept also has ample application in bioethics, as empathic
curiosity, for example, can break down the sometimes-fraught relationship
between healthcare providers and patients. Prof. Halpern first recognized this
potential, she said, describing a violent encounter between a nurse and a
patient’s caretaker that was defused in part by an effort to meaningfully
understand the emotional position of the caretaker. In The Washington Post last
year, Prof. Halpern and co-author Juli Fraga argued
that empathic curiosity can reduce stress for healthcare workers by “trying to
understand another person’s world from the inside out…. Exercising this type of
empathy creates space for the patient and doctor to think together and discover
novel ways to improve care.”
Prof. Halpern describes the exploration of empathic
curiosity as her “life’s work” at the intersection of psychiatry and philosophy. During her time as a Greenwall Faculty
Scholar (Class of 2008), she was able to deepen her research by immersing
herself in the field of behavioral economics/affective forecasting. Since then, she has brought her focus on emotions and ethics to fields including AI and
gene editing with ongoing inspiration from “the courageous community” of other
Faculty Scholars. She is currently working on political divides, including advising the Mayor of Los Angeles on a COVID-19 memorial listening process, appearing on CBS to discuss how empathy can help “heal a divided nation,” and speaking with Canadian media to address empathy and the social division that arose over the course of the pandemic.
Prof. Halpern’s related work includes: