Dear Leonel,
I’ve met some naughty cats. I’ve also known some misunderstood ones.
I asked my friend Chris Barry why humans are sometimes like that, too. He’s a psychologist at Washington State University.
He told me we’re talking about behaviors that don’t align with social norms. They give most people bad feelings. That’s like feeling uncomfortable when someone does something violent or mean.
Sometimes those behaviors come from the person’s nature, or temperament. Sometimes they happen because the person enjoys taking risks. Or maybe they struggle to think before they act.
It could be all those things, even within the same person. Plus, temperament, thrill-seeking and impulse control all have to do with how someone’s brain works.
One big factor is how old the person is when the behavior starts. If they’re super young, that’s a clue it might be related to temperament. It may continue when they grow up.
If the behavior starts during adolescence, it might be temporary. People sometimes take more risks during those years. They usually stop as they mature.
Sometimes “bad” behaviors tell us something else. Maybe the person is unhappy, afraid or hurt. Maybe they don’t know how to say that. So, it comes out in their behavior.
It’s complicated because humans are complex animals.
The public television celebrity Fred Rogers taught empathy in his tv show—for other people and for the kids watching. That’s a form of social-emotional learning. Rogers worked with child psychologist Margaret McFarland to make sure each episode connected with kids and did that job. Rogers even convinced the U.S. Senate to protect public television when it was being cut in 1969. That’s how we got PBS, the free television nonprofit that provides the most educational programming for kids in the nation.
Barry told me empathy is a big part of human behavior. That’s the ability to understand and share someone else’s feelings.
“We start to demonstrate empathy from a very young age, even within the first two years of life,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be full-blown empathy, like how adults empathize with friends who are going through a tough time. It’s just being responsive to the distress of other people.”
Empathy is seeing someone cry and feeling bad for them. Or watching someone get hurt and understanding how bad they feel.
How much empathy a person feels is a spectrum. Some people respond strongly to other people’s feelings. Some people have a hard time connecting with other people’s emotions. Most people are somewhere in between.
People with low empathy may not connect their behavior with how it makes other people feel.
But feeling empathy isn’t the only option. People can also think empathetically. They can learn to imagine another person’s perspective—even if they don’t connect with their emotions.
People can also learn to maximize their executive function. That’s how we manage our time and goals. It’s also how we check our impulses and think through decisions. That’s easy for some people and harder for others. But everyone can get better at it with practice.
That’s why we need caregivers and experts to teach us those empathy and social-emotional skills. It works best if that learning starts when we’re small. That gives us a long time to practice being thoughtful humans—or cats.
Sincerely,
Dr. Universe