The Power of Empathy: A Quick Animated Lesson from Brené Brown

Sev­er­al years back, the RSA (Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts) cre­at­ed a series of dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed shorts where well-known intel­lec­tu­als pre­sent­ed big ideas, and a tal­ent­ed artist rapid­ly illus­trat­ed them on a white­board. Some of those talks fea­tured the likes of Slavoj Zizek, Car­ol Dweck, Steven Pinker and Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich. Now RSA presents a video series cre­at­ed in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic. Above, you can watch the first of many “espres­so shots for the mind.” This clip fea­tures Dr. Brené Brown, a well-known research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Grad­u­ate Col­lege of Social Work, pro­vid­ing some quick insights into the dif­fer­ence between sym­pa­thy and empa­thy, and explain­ing why empa­thy is much more mean­ing­ful. To learn more about The Pow­er of Empa­thy, you can watch Brown’s com­plete RSA lec­ture below . You can also watch her very pop­u­lar TED Talk on The Pow­er of Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2013.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of Free Online Cours­es)

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