Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom
Paul Bloomis a Canadian American professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on language, morality, religion, fiction, and art...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth24 December 1963
CountryCanada
interesting people psychology
The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.
compassion people empathy
It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent.
jobs children pain
I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.
teenage son media
I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.
compassion animal differences
People differ in where they direct their empathy and their compassion. Many people are intensely concerned about the suffering of non-human animals, and some do not care at all. There are cultural differences.
hands people hammers
Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care.
use email snapchat
Nobody uses email anymore. I'm this old fogie with my email. I don't know what I'm supposed to communicate with now - SnapChat?
baby pain children
I think there's some evidence that we're empathic by nature. There is some evidence from studies of babies and young children that they resonate with the pain of others, and there's some work by Frans de Waal that other primates also resonate with the pain of others.
nice interesting people
It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way... Sometimes people are just really nasty.
people empathy way
It has been a period where people have been far nicer to one another in every possible way. I'm not saying it's because we're dropping our empathy that we're nicer to each other, just that the drop doesn't seem to be causing any harm.
country empathy groups
Because of empathy, we care more for, and devote far more resources to, someone who is familiar, from our country or our group, than a stranger.
empathy be-kind arguing
I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.
war people empathy
Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.
empathy zoom racist
Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.