The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World

The brief Epilogue concludes the book by having readers think about future generations. Today, most people focus on short-time horizons when making decisions. Yet, the most pressing global issues—such as climate change, overpopulation, and water and food shortages—have long-time horizons. These issues do not appear overnight but slowly build over many years. For this reason, these issues might not impact people living today, but they will impact future generations. Zaki encourages readers to “widen their circle of care to encompass all of humanity” (169), including those living in the future. As he has discussed throughout the book, empathy is a form of self-preservation; caring about others ensures that an individual’s genes survive. While future generations might not know about the sacrifices made by the people of today—which “runs counter to our Darwinian impulses” (173)—Zaki argues that it is a moral imperative that people actively choose empathy. Doing so means there will be a future for humankind.

While many readers think they know the definition of empathy, Zaki underscores that “we often mean different things when we use it” (179). Empathy researchers have been debating the meaning of this term for decades. Despite these debates, there are multiple forms of empathy. Zaki details three categories of empathy.

The first category refers to sharing other peoples’ feelings. The most famous sharing category is experience sharing, which is when an individual takes on the emotions of other people. Zaki notes that “our brains respond to each other’s pain and pleasure as though we were experiencing those states ourselves” (179). Experience sharing occurs in other animals as well and begins early in life.

The second category is thinking about other peoples’ feelings. Mentalizing, which is when people consider another’s perspective, is one subcategory. Humans are the only animal that can mentalize at a high level because it requires great cognitive power. It takes longer to learn than to engage in experience sharing.

The third and final category is caring about other peoples’ feelings. One caring category is emphatic concern, “or a motivation to improve someone else’s well-being” (180). Of the three categories of empathy, the caring category elicits the most kindness.

These empathetic categories activate at different moments but are also intertwined with one another. Zaki argues that “pinpointing different pieces of empathy helps researchers diagnose what has gone wrong and find the most effective solution” (182). He firmly believes this is the only way to rebuild empathy.

Zaki believes the “process of predicting, testing, and rethinking” (183) gives science its power. Throughout his book, he provides scientific evidence from the field of psychology to discuss human empathy and kindness. Several high-profile scandals in psychology research have psychologists and researchers in other social science fields concerned about the replicability of their research. These scandals have pushed psychology researchers, including Zaki, to be more transparent about their experiments, findings, and claims.

Appendix B, which Zaki cowrote with his colleague Kari Leibowitz, allows readers to evaluate the main claims in the book. Zaki and Leibowitz summarize the key claims made in each chapter. They then rate the strength of each claim on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the strongest and 1 being the weakest. Claims given a rating between 1-3 are accompanied by brief explanations. Zaki acknowledges that “the ratings in this appendix are meant to be bite-sized summaries of the strength of evidence for claims in this book” (186). He points readers to The War for Kindness website for additional information on the research used to vet each claim.

In this final section of The War for Kindness, Zaki answers a series of questions. Many of these questions point to the book’s key themes, such as the obstacles to empathy, strategies for building more empathy, and the importance of getting input from people trying to build empathy. Zaki also discusses the title of the book, the supposed fixed nature of empathy, how his parents’ divorce sparked his interest in empathy research, and more. Throughout this section, he reiterates the importance of “spreading our care across not only space but time” (269). Human survival depends on the collective ability to rebuild empathy.