Despite the ruthlessness and competitive behavior that capitalist economics rewards—unexpectedly the Texan sage Rick Perry comes to mind, in the form of the phrase “vulture capitalism”—employees have been encouraged to develop and display empathy in their work relations since Dale Carnegie’s 1937 How to Win Friends and Influence People. The sociologist Eva Illouz has looked at Carnegie’s claim that "[developing empathy] may easily prove to be one of the milestones of your career." Illouz suggests that the management theory that underlies corporate labor relations (and, indeed, has replaced that term with the less contentious "human resources") has consistently relied on techniques of emotional management. Management psychology's interest in emotions and affect tends to lean toward advice on how to marshal them for strategic deployment. In this context, it seems signal that empathy should be universally encouraged. I think that's partly why the CNBC headline sounds funny.

This leads us back to your question about what exactly is meant by the term “empathy.” In the case of workplace relations it seems to denote something that is, in fact, quite self-centered: the ability to accurately gauge how one appears to others. Given that the general understanding of empathy assumes a positive valence—that empathy is linked to altruism, sympathy, and compassion, affects people usually congratulate themselves for possessing—it's interesting to consider it as a morally neutral force. The understanding of empathy that seems at use in the workplace is one that explicitly regards the individual self to be a kind of citadel and takes other people—one's co-workers, boss and subordinate alike—to be pawns, nuisances, or even threats outside its gates.

As Smith noted, our highly developed imagination is a powerful adjunct to these responses. Recently, J. K. Rowling echoed Smith when she said that imagination is the “power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared . . . Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places." Neural circuits drive the apparent altruism of the rat and the apparent concern of the autistic, but neither is likely to imagine standing “in the shoes of another” as Adam Smith would have had it.

For millennia, stories have put us in those shoes. Today books, movies, television, and the Internet all feed our hunger to learn about others, to share their experiences, to empathize with them. We so enjoy stories, we gossip about people we don’t know, inventing stories of their lives for our own pleasure. Every day we see the interplay of empathy, imagination, and storytelling in our families, our neighborhoods, at work, anywhere people gather.

The extent to which ordinary individuals empathize with their compatriots, however, may vary markedly. For each person who seems naturally sensitive to the feelings, experiences, and stories of others, another may appear almost indifferent. Then, too, the extent to which we have been taught to adopt the perspectives of others—to make their concerns our own and to react as they do—affects our reactions to their circumstances. Those who claim that novels can edify their readers argue that fiction can teach us to care for the orphan and rejoice in the triumphs of the once downtrodden. On the other hand, impediments to action—the feeling, for example, that one can do nothing for the person in need—can stifle empathetic response.

Digital technology increasingly mediates our interactions with others. Life on the screen is reshaping storytelling and thus affecting the way in which the experiences of others, real and imagined, stir the empathetic centers that lie deep within us.

As defined above, empathy is a neutral term. Responding to another’s affective state, mood, or emotion does not constrain the actions taken, if any, as a result. Hopefully, seeing another individual in distress induces most to offer comfort or help. However, recognizing another’s emotional state can be used for nefarious purposes, for example to take advantage of emotionally vulnerable people. What we all want to see is empathic concern, an other-oriented emotional response elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of an individual in distress. By adding in the response that is congruent with the welfare of the other, this definition precludes antisocial actions; the action taken by an individual feeling empathic concern is pro-social in nature.

The path to empathic helping is difficult. A potential helper must recognize the distress of another individual while suppressing personal distress in order to act rather than freeze in panic. Finally, the individual motivated to help must figure out what to do. Empathic helping is sufficiently beneficial to survival that mammals have evolved this capacity.

Most humans, like most rats, show empathy, whereas a minority of humans and rats do not display empathic helping. For rats, figuring out how to release a trapped rat is difficult, meaning the motor know-how is a major hurdle that some rats do not get over. Other rats appear unable to suppress their own distress enough to act. I do not know at which point some individuals with autism get stuck. Perhaps some autistic people can’t recognize another’s distress, while others become too overwhelmed by it to act, or have a language impairment that prevents a response. Maybe some individuals with autism are in fact empathic; certainly the actions of DJ reflect great empathy, albeit oddly expressed.

Although rats and mammals share the capacity for empathy with humans, the experiences are surely not the same. Even among humans, internal experiences are spectacularly individual, defining unique. The uniqueness of experience holds true for perceptions, thoughts and emotions. So if all of us humans live our own unique experiences, what are the chances that a rat experiences empathy the same as does a human? Nil. No chance.