What if Trump is actually a master of empathy?
如果特朗普的确是位共情大师会怎样?
Richard A Friedman/卫报
陈明 编译
‘Trump made a strong empathic connection with his supporters.’ Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
特朗普和他的支持者建立了非常强的共情链接。”
摄影:Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images
Many Americans see President Trump’s preoccupation with the protesting NFL athletes – and his near silence on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico – as evidence that Trump has no empathy. Wrong.
许多美国人认为特朗普总统念念不忘于橄榄球运动员的抗议,而且他沉默于最近在波多黎各展开的人道主义危机,人们以这些为依据来证明特朗普不具同理心。这是错误的。
科林·凯普尼克在去年NFL一场联赛开始前奏美国国歌的环节中并没有起立,而是单膝下跪且拒唱美国国歌,他说:“我不会起立对这个压迫黑人和有色人种的国家表达尊敬。”特朗普在上月26日在记者会上指出,NFL奏国歌下跪抗议是对为这个国家奋斗的老兵的一种藐视,是十分可耻的。
Actually, Trump is a master of empathy. Most people confuse empathy with sympathy and don’t understand the nature – or power – of empathy. There is nothing necessarily nice about empathy, which is essentially the ability to imagine and intuit how other people think and feel.
事实上,特朗普是一位共情大师。大多数人混淆了共情和同情,不理解共情的本质或力量。共情不一定是好的,本质上,共情是想象和凭直觉知道他人所思所感的能力。
It has nothing to do with genuinely identifying with others or actually feeling their pain; that would be sympathy. Instead, empathy is really about having an accurate theory of mind of other people – and getting under their skin.
这与真正认同于他人或真实的体会到他们的痛苦都无关,那是同情。相反,共情是对他人真正准确的心理理论——并且钻到他们的皮肤下面。
Trump has lots of empathy. What he doesn’t have is sympathy – he doesn’t really feel badly for other people. He is not using his considerable empathy skills for Puerto Rico for a simple reason: they are not his base and he has little interest in them.
特朗普很有共情心。他没有同情心——他并不觉得对不起别人。在波多黎各飓风灾害上,他并没有利用他可观的共情技能,其原因很简单:波多黎各不是他们的根据地,他对他们没有什么兴趣。
All successful politicians have unusually high levels of empathy. That is what makes their supporters feel and believe that they are understood, regardless of the true motives of the political figure.
所有成功政治家的共情水平都非常高。这让他们的支持者觉得自己被理解,并且相信自己被理解,而不管政治人物的真正动机是什么。