ICL: EMPATHY: A FIRST STEP TO KINDNESS

Description

EMPATHY: A FIRST STEP TO KINDNESS by Scotty Hargrove 

Cost: $20

Empathy for others is significant for having positive relationships with other people and leads to human relationships characterized by kindness. Appreciating the feeling, thinking, and communication improves our relationships with strangers, friends, intimate partners, or family members. However, there are strong forces that impede the ability to have empathy for others. Those forces have to do with our own perceptions of other people and events and our own experiences in similar circumstances. This series of meetings will focus on an understanding of empathy, how it affects our relationships with others, and how it influences our own expressions of kindness. Each person will have the opportunity to develop and practice empathic responses within the context of the group and to discuss the ways that greater levels of empathy influence broader relationships. The work of the group will be substantiated from research in social, personality, and clinical psychology that demonstrates that kindness in one's behavior spreads to others and eventually to larger communities.  

Scotty Hargrove, BD, Columbia Theological Seminary; PhD,  University of Georgia; founding director Pine Belt Regional Mental Health and Retardation Center, Hattiesburg MS, faculty department of Psychology and director clinical psychology training program, University of Nebraska; chairman, Department of Psychology, University of Mississippi: interim chairperson Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi; interim chairperson, Department of Exercise Science, University of Mississippi. Faculty member, Georgetown Family Center, Washington DC.