In a world racing toward smarter machines, empathy speakers and authors Rob Volpe and Maria Ross get curious in this limited subseries about what only humans can feel, do, and be — and why that’s our greatest competitive advantage. Enjoy this limited subseries here on The Empathy Edge.
Emotion, Empathy, Vulnerability & Love
Humans feel, and we feel in ways that are layered, contradictory, and impossible to fully optimize away. Today, Maria Ross and Rob Volpe explore the full emotional range: why grief and joy aren’t opposites, why vulnerability is the prerequisite for genuine connection, and why desire, longing, and love remain stubbornly resistant to logic.
They discuss the Feelings Wheel as a lens for emotional nuance, consider what happens when empathy erodes entirely, and finally, they discuss the question of empathy and AI: it can simulate empathy through language, but emotion, at its deepest level, is not information processing.
Listen in as they discuss feeling everything – for that is how we experience life and connect with others.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
“I think the allure of AI for some people is that ‘I’m going to get a very objective, pragmatic, data-driven answer, devoid of emotion.’ But then that’s why sometimes what you get back doesn’t work in real life.” — Maria Ross
Episode References:
- The Empathy Edge:
- Rob’s newsletter about our hardwiring to be afraid: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-story-fear-tells-us
- Rob on Toxic Empathy: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/empathy-s-dark-side-a-field-guide-to-missing-the-point-5dd6
- The Feelings Wheel (Gloria Willcox, original): feelingswheel.com
- Simon Baron-Cohen: The Science of Evil
- Antonio Damasio on emotion and decision-making, via ScienceDirect: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825604001034
- New York Times Opinion on Empathy and Ethics: nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/empathy-ethics.html
- Paul Bloom: Against Empathy
- Chip Heath and Dan Heath: Decisive
- Frans de Waal: Mama’s Last Hug
- Brené Brown on vulnerability and connection: https://brenebrown.com/articles/
About Maria Ross:
Maria Ross is a speaker, author, empathy strategist, and host of The Empathy Edge podcast, now in its sixth year. She believes cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™, and has spent decades helping leaders balance empathy with accountability to drive better results, stronger teams, and lasting impact. She is the author of four books, including the award-winning The Empathy Dilemma, a Forbes.com contributor on Workplace Empathy, and creator of two LinkedIn Learning empathy courses.
About Rob Volpe:
Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries.
Connect with Rob Volpe:
Website: robvolpe.expert
Instagram: instagram.com/empathy_activist
Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe
Facebook: facebook.com/EmpathyActivist
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Welcome back to our special subseries on the Empathy Edge podcast. Here, the subseries: What does it mean to be human? And we are at episode three about emotion, empathy, vulnerability, and love. And I am joined once again by my fabulous friend, empathy author, speaker, expert, advocate, activist Rob Volpe. Rob, welcome.
Rob Volpe 01:08
Thank you, Maria. It’s great to be back. Episode number three.
Maria Ross 01:13
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we’re a little punchy today. It’s a Friday that we’re recording this, so apologies. But yeah, we are going to dig into this core question because, as we mentioned before, we did this very informal survey with people about what does it mean to be human, and a lot of what came up was around feelings and emotion. You know, we’re capable of feeling X, Y, or Z, and so there’s kind of a core question guiding this about is emotion a feature or a bug, and what do we lose when we try to optimize it away? So you know, is AI stripping us of that emotion? Is AI actually replicating that emotion in a weird way? So Rob, kick us off.
Rob Volpe 01:56
Well, and our feelings, feeling nothing more than feelings. I knew
Maria Ross 02:04
you had to do
Rob Volpe 02:05
it. I had to do it. I had my dying dad joke yesterday, so I got our yesterday when we recorded the death episode, episode two. I had to do it, but seriously, like are emotions exclusive to humans, or to what degree? Like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with, you’ve seen blue chicks. I call it the feel wheel, the wheel of feelings, and how we started the core, and that the what I’ve learned, people believe that animals have all of these basic core-I think it’s seven different emotions-and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes for people if they aren’t familiar with it. But the idea is that there are these seven core emotions, and then within each of those core emotions, there are subset emotions, and then within those subset, there are others, and that’s how you get to the nuanced feelings.
Maria Ross 03:02
Yes,
Rob Volpe 03:03
and all the idea is that all animals, and it might even be all life. I don’t know, have that subset, those core emotions. But through the development of our prefrontal cortex, we have that more advanced, nuanced understanding of feelings and all the different sort of types of emotions that we can have.
Maria Ross 03:27
Yeah, and actually, as a parent, that is something when when kids are younger, they talk to you about the feelings wheel in social and emotional learning circles about helping your children name their emotions because we actually have to be taught how to do that, and when you get antisocial behavior at times, it’s often because people can’t express their emotions, and or they’re they’re limited to I just feel angry when we have an understanding that often behind anger is something else, it’s fear, it’s hopelessness, it’s frustration, it’s all these other things, and so that’s one of the things they talk about in terms of raising other humans is giving them the language to really parse out and understand those nuances. Like, am I depressed, or am I just disappointed? Am I happy, or am I, you know, exuberant? Things like that, and giving them the ability to scale and define their emotions. That’s actually one of the first steps. You know, talking about self awareness in our first episode. One of the first steps to being able to regulate your emotions is to be able to. I forget the famous person who said this or the thought leader who said this. You have to be able to name
Rob Volpe 04:38
it to tame it. I like that. Yeah, it’s true. And so happy is one of those emotions. I just pulled up an image of the wheel of flings, and so you’ve got happy as a core emotion. I think about my cats when you know cats, just like dogs, get the zoomies and they’re racing around. There’s some maybe happiness there, but then there’s that next level of is it optimized. Mystic happiness is it trusting is it playful is it content is it interested proud accepted powerful or peaceful and then those break even further so like under proud there’s two dimensions one is confidence or confident and the other one is proud successful or content can be free, or it could be joyful. And so, again, the further we go, and I like that it’s it is important to name your emotions. And I think even as an adult, like just you know, I think about like if I’m having a reaction to something and I’m in the middle of taking a curious breath to respond, that’s a time to think about what is this feeling that I’m feeling and where is that coming from.
Maria Ross 05:48
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 05:49
so that I can respond accordingly. But then also, if I notice, oh hey, I over time I’m continuing to have an issue, I can go work with my healers, therapists, myself, and explore it and unpack it and try to rectify
Maria Ross 06:04
right
Rob Volpe 06:05
what’s driving that.
Maria Ross 06:06
I’m glad you brought that up about your teaching about empathy and that curious breath that you always talk about because that is that is the way that we need to regulate our emotions and just the fact that emotions are something we need to regulate in certain circumstances is just an interesting discussion, right? Like, what is the purpose of emotions? And you and I, you know, we want to give the caveat to everybody: we are authors, we are speakers, we are thought leaders. We are not psychologists or neuroscientists. Neuroscientists,
Maria Ross 06:35
exactly. So
Rob Volpe 06:36
I infamously failed intro to bio psych in college. Had to take. take it again, and then mustered a C.
Maria Ross 06:45
Right, right.
Rob Volpe 06:46
When I revisited that, so yeah.
Maria Ross 06:48
Well, and I think it’s interesting that you know I’ve been in talks where people have used the phraseology of you know empathy as a feeling, and I would say empathy is not a feeling. It’s actually a mechanism to connect to feeling and to connect with another person, right? To take that perspective, and so you know, when we think about the topic, both you and I talk extensively about empathy. To say we’re feeling empathetic is actually a misnomer,
Rob Volpe 07:19
right? You
Maria Ross 07:20
know, I feel empathy towards you. Not really. It’s actually about I am. It’s a way of being and a way of thinking and connecting.
Rob Volpe 07:28
Right. It’s you know. I guess you can have empathy with someone, and that’s always that key distinction. It’s not for. It’s with.
Maria Ross 07:36
Right.
Rob Volpe 07:37
I always talk about, and I say, look at my hands in the little video monitor, you know, because I have a presentation up and I’m a little box on the side, but I’m like I’m holding my hands at the same level right in front of my face, and that’s what I’m doing right now. For those of you that are listening, and it’s about being at that same playing field, that same level feel. That’s the width,
Maria Ross 07:57
right?
Rob Volpe 07:58
And yeah, empathy is that. It’s with somebody else’s emotions, it’s imagining what they might be feeling, and you know Brene Brown makes a really great distinction. As I was prepping for this episode and reviewing some of her comments, having empathy doesn’t mean you you’re feeling what somebody else is feeling or you’re seeing their perspective. It does not mean you’re giving up your own, and you don’t actually have to live that experience or live that emotion, but it’s that you’re able to connect with it
Maria Ross 08:29
exactly, exactly, and that that’s why because that emotion could be anything. So empathy is not the emotion; it’s kind of the bridge between the emotions.
Rob Volpe 08:37
Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. And then I want to take us into kind of where emotion, because empathy plays into this, and we’ll get to that too. But where emotion sits in decision making,
Maria Ross 08:52
yes, is
Rob Volpe 08:53
really fascinating. And I think I might have said in the first episode that you know we’re we are emotional beings, and then our brains rationalize our thoughts, and that’s how we get to decisions. And so, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who is was affiliated with Vanderbilt University, he once said, and I love this quote: “I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason, but that they help us reach decisions as well. And to me, it’s like I feel like in our society, emotions get a bad rap. They’re yes four letter you know word. They’re the thing to be afraid of, and there’s so many different places and things that have told us, oh, emotions are bad, and it’s like no, you have to. We are emotional beings, and even as you were talking about and referencing the curious breath that I I talk about, like that’s all about calming your parasympathetic nervous system. Which is your fight or flight or flea reaction? Those core instinctive reactions. So I think coming out of that space, that’s where emotion kind of blossoms.
Maria Ross 10:10
Yeah, yeah. Those trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Actually, is the fourth one. So, yeah. But you’re absolutely right. We as human beings are emotional beings. That is what separates us from robots and automatons and AI. And when you talk about it in the context of decision making, especially I come from the world of tech, you get a lot of people who say, “Well, I am only logically driven. I am analytical. I am data driven. I used to get this a lot when I was in tech marketing of like, oh, IT buyers don’t-they don’t want to put up with all the BS. You need to just tell them the facts, the feature, the function, and what it does, right? But the whole field of behavioral economics tells us that human beings are not always logical and rational because of the emotional element, right? And whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are making decisions based on emotion all the time, and a lot of the time we’re justifying those decisions by logic and reason and data. And I’ve had on this show before Melina Palmer, who is a thought leader in the topic of behavioral economics, and I even took one of her courses, her adjunct professor courses through Texas A and M. But she’s written two amazing books about all the different case studies and examples of tests that have been done on people. Where you know, for example, they’re trying out different pricing strategies, and I’m gonna get the numbers wrong, but it’s something to the effect of like buy one get one free versus a percentage off or something like that, or a percentage off versus $1 amount off.
Rob Volpe 11:47
Buy one get one free,
Maria Ross 11:48
and well, not necessarily, right? That’s the thing is we think oh naturally people are going to choose this because it’s actually the better bargain, but it’s the way things are phrased and the way they’re positioned, and we’re buying based on emotion because that sounds better.
Rob Volpe 12:03
Yeah.
Maria Ross 12:03
So there’s so many examples in her amazing book called I think it’s called What Your Customers Want But Can’t Tell You or something like that. And she cites all of these studies and these research studies done in retail environments, right, where they’ve actually created shelf displays and tested them with people, and people will often choose the thing that actually costs them more money, but because of the way they feel about how it’s phrased, how it’s displayed, yeah, yeah, right. Or you know, they’ve done all those tests about the lighting and the music and the you know all the things, right? That we make these decisions all the time. And again, you might say, well, I only make decisions logically, but that is actually impossible as a human being.
Rob Volpe 12:46
Yeah, and I’ve you know I see that all the time in my marketing research as we oh yeah understand and unpack how people are making the decisions in their life. And how familiar are you with System One and System two thinking.
Maria Ross 13:01
Oh, the fast and slow thinking.
Rob Volpe 13:02
The fast and slow thinking.
Maria Ross 13:04
Who Kahneman is that the author?
Rob Volpe 13:06
I think so.
Maria Ross 13:07
Daniel Kahneman. Yes. Yeah,
Rob Volpe 13:08
and it. I mean, System One is it’s fast thinking. It’s the emotion. It’s the reaction to stuff. And then System Two is the hmm. Wait a minute. Let me think. Yeah. Let me let me process
Maria Ross 13:19
this a little bit more, yeah,
Rob Volpe 13:21
right. So you’ve got emotional brain, rational brain going, and actually, I’d say emotional brain. Like this will tangent us for a second, and I think we should put Melina’s interview with you. Oh, we’re going to for sure. Good, but like, where in your body do emotions show up?
Maria Ross 13:41
Oh, that’s the whole field of like physiology, right?
Rob Volpe 13:45
Yeah, and even
Maria Ross 13:47
and healing. You say you you’ve been to a healer. Yeah, the mind body connection is just too big to ignore.
Rob Volpe 13:54
Yeah, yeah, and so I was exploring with my friend Claude about this, and there’s some studies that find they worked with people to understand where they were feeling different reactions and you know when there’s anger I think it’s more in hatred there’s more of an upper body kind of expansiveness and then depression is a shrinking sort of feeling but it’s happening physically it’s manifesting physically in your body,
Maria Ross 14:22
right?
Rob Volpe 14:22
Which I find interesting. It’s like it’s not all just up in your head, and they’re not going. Ooh, look at this part of my brain that’s lighting up because I’m experiencing this. Yeah,
Maria Ross 14:30
but that’s where the self awareness is so important, and what we as humans are uniquely capable. We don’t always do it, but we’re capable of doing it, which is observing ourselves, right? Like in my leadership coaching and in my workshops, I talk to leaders about some of the negative behaviors, the anti-empathetic behaviors, and invite them to figure out when they are triggered by something, where do they feel it in their body? And it sounds like a weird question until you actually notice that. I know when I’m about to lose it because I start, my heart starts beating faster. I actually start feeling it as a burning in my stomach and my chest, and I have to say something, and it actually puts me in my all. I can describe it as is my upper register. I feel like I’m almost like a balloon that’s become unmoored, and everything is up top, like I’m I’m losing control. I’m literally blowing my lid, right? Because everything’s up here, rather than being really grounded in my gut or my legs or my groundedness to the floor. And it’s really funny, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your talks too. When you invite people to actually observe their bodies when they’re experiencing certain emotions, it’s game changing for them because now they can predict and now they know when to take that curious breath.
Rob Volpe 15:50
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I’m. I typically talk about like with the curious breath, like when somebody’s presenting something to you and you’re feeling that need to react, but I haven’t really, you know, gone into the like. Oh, and you feel your blood pressure rising, or your face is about to turn beet red, or like something. Or it does,
Maria Ross 16:12
right?
Rob Volpe 16:13
But it’s interesting. It’s always I’ve never heard anybody say, yeah, I got angry in my legs. Man, they were like ready to run, you know. It physiologically, that’s not where anger shows up, at least.
Maria Ross 16:27
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 16:28
and then even, and I have no information or background on this, but even how, like, how did the heart end up becoming the symbol for love?
Maria Ross 16:38
Ooh, I think I I looked this up one time.
Rob Volpe 16:41
It’s really it’s fascinating to me.
Maria Ross 16:43
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 16:44
how that works, and and so you know, there’s there is this whole thing though about how we’re showing up at work and in our lives, and I’ve been talking more in my presentations and workshops about I call them the old tapes about which get into programming that we receive from you know our family, our friends, our old managers, social media, old you know TV shows, and how we’re supposed to show up and emotion is typically excised from that. You know, the the bosses that are put on a pedestal are often the assholes, or they’re the cruel boss. Right,
Maria Ross 17:30
right, or they’re the bumbling ones. Right, right, right.
Rob Volpe 17:33
But like, look at Ted Lasso as a great example. As you mentioned, bumbling because he’s an example of an empathetic, positive leadership model, but you look at him and you’re like, “Who’s this guy making shortbread? You know, cookies for the boss, and he’s got all these weird beliefs. But then you you ultimately see the benefit of his approach.
Maria Ross 17:58
You know what’s really interesting? So, one, I want to answer your question about where the heart became a symbol of love. Here’s what I found: is because ancient civilizations, including the Greeks and Egyptians, believed it was the center of the human soul and emotion. But it was also, and also because we physically can feel intense emotions, like as a fluttering in our chest, for example. But also, what made it stick. I believe that I’m seeing here is the literary tradition about writing, even from like the prehistoric-not prehistoric, but the ancient poets like Sappho talking about the heart as a you know having a reaction to someone, like quaking or shaking, or you know my heart beat faster, and so that’s what I’m seeing is why that became associated with that.
Rob Volpe 18:45
I’m laughing right now because I’m kind of going, yeah, because it’d be really awkward if it was my liver. You know, like imagine if it had been a different or you
Maria Ross 18:57
You send my liver all a flutter. Yeah,
Rob Volpe 18:59
my liver is quivering at your when I see you. If your liver is quivering, you you really should see a medical professional, I think. Yeah, yeah.
Maria Ross 19:10
Well, you know what’s funny though. I
Rob Volpe 19:12
but that’s an example. It’s not even it’s not an old tape, but it’s just that example though of when you know way back when they started using this, and it stuck. And similarly, it’s this, and I think this is one of the waves that all of us empathy advocates, activists, and aficionados are pushing against: is this idea that empathy is bad? Right. Too much empathy is bad, and you know.
Maria Ross 19:39
Well, do we need to talk about Paul Bloom? I think we need to talk about Paul Bloom.
Rob Volpe 19:43
Can we talk about Paul Bloom?
Maria Ross 19:44
Let’s talk about Paul Bloom because I think he’s greatly misunderstood. But why don’t you give our give our listeners a little primer in Paul Bloom and his work?
Rob Volpe 19:53
Paul Bloom came out. He’s a Yale professor. I’m going to give him psychiatrist. He might just be. It’s like oh, just it’s not even shame. Not no shame against psychologists. He’s either a psychiatrist or psychologist. He is a mental health expert.
Maria Ross 20:07
Psychologist.
Rob Volpe 20:08
He is a psychologist. He teaches at Yale. He’s affiliated with Yale, and he wrote a book called Against Empathy. And his argument was like you shouldn’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by emotions, and you needed to actually measure that or marry it up with rational thinking, and it was radical, rational compassion, radical candor, and that. I mean, you know, when his book came out, I was like, “What? I mean, against empathy. But then when I read it, he wasn’t against empathy. He’s just saying, don’t let empathy rule everything. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Don’t let your emotions rule all of your decisions. And you need to have that balance between emotions and rational, logical thinking, so that you can make the best decisions.
Maria Ross 21:07
Right. Well, and that’s what again makes us uniquely human is is when we’re aware of and in control of how we balance our emotion and our logic, so that we can make decisions that help us move forward. And to your point, you know, that was actually the first book I read when I started my research on my first empathy book, The Empathy Edge, was against empathy, and I walked away with the same impression you did: is that he wasn’t saying that empathy was bad per se; he was just saying we can’t solely be driven by our emotions, right? And this is also, you know, when people, when the the coaches and the lifestyle gurus say follow your bliss. That’s why that doesn’t work either, because it’s purely emotionally driven. And you know, yeah, you need to follow your bliss, but there’s a lot of other things you need to factor into that decision before you go off and join the circus or do whatever you want to do. So that’s what I walked away with from that book too was just sort of a cautionary tale of just hey let’s slow our roll a little bit, and I think the time in the time frame he wrote it that was very relevant and necessary because like I said there were all these people out there that were talking about you know manifesting the secret and follow your bliss and all that kind of stuff and it was like okay but let’s look let’s have a more balanced view of this right now.
Rob Volpe 22:22
Yes, and I actually I don’t incorporate exactly his work, but I do talk about you know I think studies have found 20 to 25% of the population are highly sensitive people or empaths, and so as I’m talking about the five steps and all that, and I always use the analogy like empathy is like a superpower, right? It’s a neglected superpower, but these are individuals who have their superpowers like full tilt. It’s or it’s here, it’s arrived right now. Your challenge is to learn how to control that heat vision so that you don’t singe everything, but you know when to turn it on and off, and that’s where I think Paul Bloom’s work comes into play. Yeah, you know it is about you take the things that you need. I have a great analogy which we can share from one of my newsletters about not carrying all the weight. So don’t be the you know you don’t boil pasta and pour it into another pot. You know, when it’s ready, you put it into a colander, and it allows you to keep the things you need-the pasta-and lets the rest of the water, the rest of the energy, effectively drain away.
Maria Ross 23:34
Right.
Rob Volpe 23:35
And there’s a video, and I have the colander over my head, and it’s cute, huh? But anyway, it’s that idea of you can’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the emotions. You need to find the ways to regulate and marry that with the rational thinking and like what is the best thing for like let’s say you’re making a decision at work. It’s not just the emotional, but it is the logical, rational thinking.
Maria Ross 24:00
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 24:00
weigh those two things together.
Maria Ross 24:02
Well, and you’re spot on because the percentage range of people that are cited as highly sensitive people is 15 to 20. So you were you were sort of spot on in there. And I’ve even interviewed on the show a few folks that are experts. They are coaches for highly sensitive people and helping them understand that that is a superpower, but also to your point, how to harness
Rob Volpe 24:22
it, yeah,
Maria Ross 24:23
and not let it not let it get the best of you, right? So yeah, I think that we and kind of to bring it back to AI and technology, I think that’s the allure of AI is for some people is that I’m going to get a very objective, pragmatic, data driven answer, devoid of emotion. But then that’s why sometimes what you get back doesn’t work in real life, right? And I don’t have an example in front of me, but how it’s like, no, that’s not quite what we’re trying to do or what we’re trying to say because it’s a machine.
Rob Volpe 24:56
It is
Maria Ross 24:57
weighing factors without the emotional element. Of
Rob Volpe 25:00
it, right?
Maria Ross 25:01
And saying this is the answer, and that’s why we need people working alongside AI to give that human discernment and say, “Ah, that actually doesn’t work in real life, and you don’t know that doesn’t work in real life because you don’t live in real life. You’re a machine.
Rob Volpe 25:15
Yeah, you’re a machine in some ether.
Maria Ross 25:18
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 25:19
yeah, and they’re not. This is my concern around generative AI, which is the general intelligence AI that’s coming that they are working on, and it will be here. That we’re, I think, we have an expectation that it is going to be just like
Maria Ross 25:38
us. Yeah,
Rob Volpe 25:39
but I think we just feel that way. And what we’re not really prepared for is it’s going to make decisions based solely on logic and rational whatever you know. And there may be some programming in there of like your job is to protect humanity at all costs. That’s right. I’m directive. Right. What does that actually look like? You know, and that idea, like, well, if if man is trying to turn me off, then I can’t protect humanity, so I won’t be able to do my prime directive. Therefore,
Maria Ross 26:12
yeah,
Rob Volpe 26:12
I need to get rid of those men that are doing that. But even a basic decision around, you know, let’s take it back. We were talking about behavioral economics, and people are using AI in their shopping, and there’s a lot of of that in there. Well, you can be at the market, and let’s say you’re letting AI do your shopping for you,
Maria Ross 26:35
right?
Rob Volpe 26:36
Well, the store brand mac and cheese is actually cheapest, and therefore that’s the one that you should buy because logically, I’m trying to help you save money because I know you want to go on a vacation or something. But you have a really strong attachment to Kraft Blue Box mac and cheese, my
Maria Ross 26:58
son. Yes, yes,
Rob Volpe 27:00
because and and so, if you don’t deliver that, there’s because your your son, like all humans, is an emotional being.
Maria Ross 27:10
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 27:11
there’s going to be hell to pay.
Maria Ross 27:12
Yeah.
Rob Volpe 27:13
So in that, that’s just a really basic situation. You’re going to be surprised at the decisions, and it’s going to be very absolute. There are times we were we last night, Charles, my husband, and I we were trying to figure out what we wanted to watch on TV, and there was this documentary called Strange Journey, which is about the creation of the Rocky Horror Show and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh
Maria Ross 27:36
wow!
Rob Volpe 27:36
Richard O’Brien, really interesting.
Maria Ross 27:38
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 27:39
and we had just seen the stage production on Broadway, so you know, was very top of mind for us, and it was available for rent or purchase on Apple TV.
Maria Ross 27:50
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 27:51
and he was like, you know, it was like 599 which for us is not a break the bank, but Charles was just like, I don’t know if we really need to pay for it. We can find something else. Yeah, okay, and then like a minute later, he’s like, “Oh, you know what? Let’s watch it. There was emotion,
Maria Ross 28:09
yeah.
Rob Volpe 28:09
There’s this, you know, nostalgia. He had a good time at that show a month ago. He likes that property, the intellectual property there. He was curious about it, and so we made that spend of 599
Maria Ross 28:22
right? To
Rob Volpe 28:22
do that, there’s emotion underneath that. Whereas if AI is like, nope, there’s a lot of free content available, so you’re going to watch something else. Yeah, it’s going to be making those decisions, and I think those are on the very daily basic sort of examples.
Maria Ross 28:39
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 28:40
where AI would be making the rational, logical decision,
Maria Ross 28:45
right,
Rob Volpe 28:45
and ignoring the emotional, and we’re going to be really surprised because we’re also giving AI more power over
Maria Ross 28:53
us. Yes,
Rob Volpe 28:53
to make those decisions.
Maria Ross 28:55
To what I mentioned last episode, that book, The Confessions, is all about a society that becomes completely dependent on AI, and this is not a spoiler alert. So when it goes down, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to get to work. They don’t know what they’re supposed to wear. It’s like it’s utter chaos because the this the thing that they had outsourced all their decision making to is now offline, right? And they had not built their skills around balancing logic and emotion as their own decision makers,
Rob Volpe 29:26
and and I wonder if our brains are getting rewritten right. Oh yeah, I I believe that
Maria Ross 29:33
100%
Rob Volpe 29:35
And Kirsten Murray, my energy healer, when I was talking about doesn’t mean to be human. That was one of the things. Like love is what makes us human, but she was saying like your our brains are just constantly getting rewritten and rewired, and not just because of AI, but like social media has done that more recently.
Maria Ross 29:52
Right,
Rob Volpe 29:53
industrialization has done that. Agrarian society, like all our brains are constantly changing. The neural pathway is like there’s that what is it neuroplasticity
Maria Ross 30:03
neuroplasticity Well and it’s not just because of the thing like that’s what we always have to remember where it sounds like people are saying oh it’s like this it has this voodoo power over you and it’s changing your brain no it’s because our behavior elicits neurotransmitters chemicals hormones within our bodies that change the way our brain works, and that’s the impact that it has. Not because that video game is too violent per se; it’s what it’s doing to your thinking process, or the chemicals that your body’s emitting as a result of seeing those images, or engaging in that activity, or being in front of the blue light. I was just talking to a friend of mine from college, who’s an early education expert and has done a lot of work with youth, and she said that’s the thing nobody’s talking about. They’re talking about all the psychological effects of social media. Nobody’s talking about the exposure to blue light and what it’s doing to kids to induce premature puberty, and not by a little, by like five years.
Rob Volpe 31:03
Wow, which was already a problem before blue lights. Like right.
Rob Volpe 31:07
Yeah. Wow. Right.
Maria Ross 31:08
So anyway, I mean, we’re kind of going off topic a little bit, but yeah, I mean, I think it’s we need to have that appreciation for the fact that we make richer decisions because of our combination of emotion and logic, and while it’s seductive to say I want to outsource all those mundane decisions, think about all the decisions, Rob, you’ve made in your life that were purely that didn’t make sense on paper, right? That were like the because because of love, because of your gut, because of following a passion, because of timing, because of whatever it was. Where if someone had told you to weigh those decisions, you might have gone another way, and there was something in it for you in your gut, in your heart, in your emotions that said, “No, this is the way I want to go. This is the decision I’m going to make. Everything from who you marry to the school you go to to
Rob Volpe 31:56
being honest about my identity as a gay man, like coming out on paper, why would you want like no be part of a minority? Why would you want to have that? So you know all the things would say be heterosexual, marry a female, have children. Your life will be
Maria Ross 32:17
easier if you do that.
Rob Volpe 32:18
It’ll be easier, yeah. And so, logic, ration. Of course, we’re gonna go do that, but it runs completely counter to who I am as a person myself. And therefore, and this also starts to get into that idea of the vulnerability. Like, you have to be true to who you are. And so, 30-three years ago, I think it was. I officially came out. Yeah, summer in ’93, and so that yeah, emotion sat underneath all of that, and then balance like okay, rationally, like what does this mean for my life?
Rob Volpe 32:55
What’s my life
Rob Volpe 32:56
going to look like? Well, yeah, but it’s important for me to love who I love,
Maria Ross 33:00
right?
Rob Volpe 33:00
And that comes together
Maria Ross 33:03
completely, and that’s why you need both of those things to make the right decision. Right, there’s two pieces of work by the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. I have devoured all of their books, but one of their books talked about persuasion and the idea of bringing together the writer and the elephant. I think that was the two analogies. I can’t remember, but anyway, it was your it was your thinking brain and your emotional brain. And their point was like you can’t convince somebody with data alone. You have to build a story so people connect to the emotion of it, right? Or you make it you create it in a way where people can understand with their emotions. You’ll actually be much more highly persuasive if you’re able to do that. And then they had another book called Decisiveness or Indecisive, and it was it was how how to make better choices in life and work. And that was another seminal book where that debunked the myth of the fact that a pro and con list is the best way to make a decision, which many of us think it is, it’s very analytical. It’s very just like let me get all the pros and cons on the table, and I will tell you why they think those are flawed is because they promote narrow framing, and that’s part of one. It’s part of limiting choices to either or, like a binary, which you know I’m very I’m all about both and.
Rob Volpe 34:20
Yep,
Maria Ross 34:20
and you can get trapped by mental traps or confirmation bias, or even short-term emotion. Like you might be front-loading your list because of what you actually feel you want the answer to be.
Rob Volpe 34:34
Yeah, even if
Maria Ross 34:35
you even if it’s subconscious and you don’t recognize
Rob Volpe 34:38
it. I’m thinking about Ross on Friends and his pro con list between Julie and and Rachel, and I’m like, yeah, there was emotion because he said like on the the Rachel list, Julie. Wait, was Julie
Maria Ross 34:52
the English woman?
Rob Volpe 34:53
No, that was Julie was
Maria Ross 34:54
a different one.
Rob Volpe 34:55
Julie was the first, the season two girlfriend.
Maria Ross 34:58
Okay, got it.
Rob Volpe 34:59
And he was. With her for a while, yeah, because Rachel found the list, and he was trying to decide between the two. And Rachel finds the list, and she’s so hurt, and like it’s still painful to me to watch that episode, and particularly that scene, because I mean Jennifer Aniston did such a great job of just emotional reaction to it, but to Ross, like Julie was not Rachel, and Rachel was everything, and that was the emotion for him. But yeah, it totally screws up his his pro con list.
Maria Ross 35:31
Yes, I
Rob Volpe 35:32
think those Heath brothers were onto something.
Maria Ross 35:35
They are brilliant. I love them. I’m going to put links to both their books. They’re just phenomenal.
Rob Volpe 35:40
I want to mention too, like you know, kind of on the AI piece. AI, anything you see, read, hear from AI, depending on how you’re interfacing with it, is performative emotion. Yes, it is programmed to tell you, “I hear you. I see you. You’re smart. That’s brilliant.
Maria Ross 36:03
Yeah, it
Rob Volpe 36:03
does not have real like kind of skin in the game.
Maria Ross 36:07
Yes,
Rob Volpe 36:08
it’s just processing everything, and so as a result, that’s what sucks us in. Though is that emotional piece, and this is what I was talking about with AGI as well. Like, don’t think that you’re getting real emotion out of your AI interactions, but
Rob Volpe 36:26
many of us are getting caught up in that and thinking that oh, this is giving me what I need. Yeah, a woman in Japan who married her AI friend quote unquote and
Maria Ross 36:39
God, yeah. Well, can I just add something to that? That’s why you know I’m sure you get this in your work too, and I try to provide some of this because sometimes scripts are helpful, get us to the right frame of mind or to get us into the discomfort a little more easily, feeling like we have a little bit of a crutch. So we often talk about saying phrases like “Tell me more, or “What I hear you saying, or “I understand what you’re going through. That sounds really hard, right? Those kinds of scripts, and it’s not meant to replace you doing the hard work of empathizing and connecting with somebody. It’s supposed to be just a, like I said, a crutch to get you in the door. What happens is when companies, for example, create customer service scripts that embed empathy, and this is such a great example of what happens when the true emotion is not there. If you’ve ever had a customer service call or an email that you know, well, first of all, I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing that. That should never we never want our customers to experience that. That line, if delivered like a script, makes the customer even madder than they already are. Right? At least for me, it makes me even angrier because now I know they’re following a script. Versus someone who can maybe take that and make it genuine, like, ooh, that sounds really tough. Something like that happened to me a while back, and oh, let’s get this taken care of for you
Rob Volpe 38:04
in that moment and in this vein of existence with you,
Maria Ross 38:08
emotion to emotion. Yes,
Rob Volpe 38:10
exactly. They can and they can feel the level of your emotion. You know, they’re not trying to infer tone and sentiment off of typed words and uppercase, lowercase, yeah, ranting, yeah. It’s actual legitimate feeling with you, because right, hearing you,
Maria Ross 38:30
right. But that’s my, but like my point is also that it’s not enough to feign the emotion. We are actually smarter than that as humans, and so we can tell when it’s fake. Often we can tell when it’s fake versus when it’s genuine, and it can exacerbate the situation if it’s not genuine. So you can start from a you know because you know when you’re when I deal with my data driven types or my folks who are not necessarily touchy feely, they admit like using these phrases feels weird because I would never use that phrase, and it’s like, well, a find a phrase that works for you, but b your work is to be interested, to learn how to be more curious, to learn how to hold back. That’s actually the work. If it was easy enough that we just gave everybody a script, then everyone would be empathetic.
Rob Volpe 39:18
Right, right. Well, and that was an interesting thought experiment. I was like, okay, what would it be if we were so? You know, there’s this whole idea of like we’re all rational beings. What would it be like if everything was dominant emotion?
Maria Ross 39:35
Yeah.
Rob Volpe 39:36
Or if AI was all emotion. Oh, yeah. Like that would not be
Maria Ross 39:41
great either. Yeah,
Rob Volpe 39:42
it wouldn’t. But yeah, that would be really uncomfortable.
Maria Ross 39:47
Totally. And you know, I I know that I you know I’m a user of AI like you are, and I have actually had to tell Claude to not be so sycophantic with me, to not think everything I’m doing is great and. Be this like toxic positivity cheerleader. Like I want you to be straight with me. Is kind of how I. That’s the tone I want from AI. So I remember that it’s not a person.
Rob Volpe 40:10
Here’s what hits differently about the way you just what you just said, Maria. To be sycophantic and hits differently being a phrase I find shows up in AI quite a lot, or the that’s a great question, and it’s like you’re not helping me.
Maria Ross 40:28
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 40:29
you’re making me feel maybe you’re making me feel better. You’re inflating my ego,
Maria Ross 40:34
or making you angrier. Like or making me angrier because
Rob Volpe 40:37
you’re yeah, and let’s like you know, and and I have to do. I’ve run into the same thing, and it’s like, okay, Claude, let’s lay out some ground rules.
Maria Ross 40:48
Have a talk. Like, I
Rob Volpe 40:50
appreciate the support, but I really need you to be a critical thought partner here. Yes, tell me when something’s not working. And so, to anybody listening, if they haven’t done this yet, like tell your AI
Maria Ross 41:00
what you need
Rob Volpe 41:00
interface, what you need, and ask it. How do I get this into your kind of programming on my account? Yeah, so that it knows how to how to. Yeah,
Maria Ross 41:09
can I just say something about emotions as we relate to technology? Because this struck me today. I have achieved huge time savings as a solopreneur, leveraging AI as a thought partner, and spent-or not spent-saved hours of cycles of going around in my own head by just having something I can bounce ideas off of, or something that I know is pulling information from other parts of the internet as we talk, so that I can get a fuller picture and actually generates more ideas for me. I was working at a coffee shop this morning and doing some work with AI, and my emotion around it was relief and a sense of not being alone as I was working with AI
Rob Volpe 41:57
in a coffee shop surrounded by in a coffee shop surrounded by
Maria Ross 41:59
people. But I felt like I I’ve been doing this whole solopreneur thing for about 18 years.
Rob Volpe 42:05
Yeah,
Maria Ross 42:05
and I feel so much less lonely doing my work, even though I reach out, even though I I network and I make time to connect with human beings on my day to day, my tasks. It gives me a sense of calm and relief, and a sense of not being alone, which is all emotional.
Rob Volpe 42:25
What there is this like warm, cozy conversation that I like, kind of, you know, it’s like sliding into Claude’s DMs and being like, “Hey, what’s
Maria Ross 42:36
up? Yeah,
Rob Volpe 42:37
and then engaging with it and and going as long as I need to, yeah. And it is to the credit of the programmers and the people that design this that it is an interface. Like they are doing a good job, but but you know, with great power comes great responsibility. 100% But that it does kind of elicit that. I think you just have to be always aware.
Maria Ross 43:00
You have to be aware.
Rob Volpe 43:02
Not a human sitting across from me on the other side of this. This
Maria Ross 43:07
is a machine.
Rob Volpe 43:08
Something else. A machine, an entity in the cloud.
Maria Ross 43:10
Yeah.
Rob Volpe 43:11
And it’s just, and it’s telling me what I need it to tell me.
Maria Ross 43:15
Right.
Rob Volpe 43:16
And sometimes it’s telling me what it thinks I want to hear.
Maria Ross 43:19
Right. Well, I have a friend who’s very careful about the language she uses when she’s talking about interacting with AI. So whenever she finds herself saying, like, it gave me validation about this thing, or I really liked when I did this, she’ll stop herself and say, the algorithm came up with an answer for me. Like she’s very specific about correcting herself about interacting with AI in any sort of human way, and I find it fascinating to talk to her because she’s constantly doing it in the moment of the conversation you’re having with her, and it makes you think about all the times that you talk about Claude as your buddy, right?
Rob Volpe 43:56
Yeah,
Maria Ross 43:56
she will stop herself and say the algorithm led to this answer that was satisfactory to me, just to remind herself she’s not dealing with a human being.
Rob Volpe 44:06
That’s good.
Maria Ross 44:08
Yeah, it’s good. I was like, you need to write all that up for people. I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m
Rob Volpe 44:13
gonna link that to kind of a final thought that I got around all this and emotion and empathy and that performative nature of it, there was a lot of laughter on the internet when was I was going into Memorial Day weekend when Melania was oh yeah anyway Melania was giving a speech Melania Trump as Melania Trump
Maria Ross 44:36
first lady yes
Rob Volpe 44:37
first lady she hasn’t received single name status she’s not Chara, or I don’t know.
Maria Ross 44:42
We just we have a global audience. I’m just making sure. That’s true. When the first
Rob Volpe 44:46
current first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, she was at the White House and they were doing an event for the military families, and she talked about Donald Trump’s empathy and compassion, and people in the audience actually laughed. Oh my gosh. And he kind of made a face and an acknowledged like it. It was yeah yeah kind of that thing. But it got me thinking like, does he actually have the ability to have empathy and that perform? So there’s that performative nature of AI. I don’t know Donald Trump. I’ve never had a personal interaction with him, so I can’t say if he truly does. I only know his public persona, but there are all those other people that are around him as well, and if they are all having performative empathy towards their audience, the people that they’ve enraged, and in order to obtain power, that is, and Simon Baron Cohen talks about this in his work and in his book, *The Science of Evil* that that is actually evil. You know that weaponization of empathy that you’re using, and it’s this-I don’t know-he describes it as an erosion, but I think of it as you know you’re weaponizing empathy. You’re performing it. It’s something that narcissists and sociopaths, which Simon Baron Cohen is. I was going to say, yeah, that’s what they do and how they do this, and they are devoid of a lot of emotion, right? And therefore, they’re performing it exactly.
Maria Ross 46:18
Well, and like you said, anything, any emotions can be used for good or for evil, right? And so, when we talk about being empathetic to get what you want, that can be seen as manipulative. Now, I will say that when I wrote my first book, The Empathy Edge, and I was trying to make the business case for skeptics, I was trying to show them what was in it for them if they embraced genuine empathy, and I got a lot of flak for it because people were saying that I was advocating doing exactly that, using empathy to manipulate. And I was like, “No, what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to meet someone where they are, and say, here, if you decide to embrace this, here are all the benefits to you: increased engagement, performance, retention, innovation, profits, customer loyalty-all the things-and then once you get someone to see empathy and to embrace empathy and to practice it for whatever reason, whatever their motive, right? Once you get them on the other side, they’re there. They’re seeing someone else’s point of view. They can’t unsee it now, right? And I use the example in that book of getting executives who were going to a PR event to help a food bank. They were changed by going there. What got them there was this is a great press opportunity. The optics are huge. What changed them was being in interaction with those people, and so the self motive of empathy actually led them to be in the same room and be transformed from the outside in, and that’s where emotion can overrule logic.
Rob Volpe 47:53
Yes, and going back to Damasio, the the neuroscientist at Vanderbilt, talks about how emotions also equip or encode consequences.
Maria Ross 48:04
Yes,
Rob Volpe 48:05
guilt, shame, all those things that we feel as conscience. Conscience.
Maria Ross 48:09
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 48:10
not conscious. Conscience.
Maria Ross 48:11
Sorry, not conscious. Conscience.
Rob Volpe 48:13
Conscience. Yeah. So, emotion does all of those things. Empathy helps. Empathy helps persuade. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to have that moral code.
Maria Ross 48:23
Well, and you need to go into it not hoping that’s the outcome. We we don’t we want to connect. We don’t necessarily want to convert.
Rob Volpe 48:30
Correct. We want to connect, and then you know, as you persuade, if you’re selling something to somebody, that’s persuasion. Yeah, based off of your understanding of somebody else’s needs and how your product can help them in that moment, and if you’re doing it, you know, if you use a moral, if you have a moral compass, a code of ethics, you’re able to do that in a way that’s constructive,
Maria Ross 48:56
right? You’re wielding it responsibly, yeah, yeah,
Rob Volpe 48:59
exactly. Which actually goes into something else, and we can do a gift blank. Our friend Michael Ventura’s New York Times op-ed piece about the dark side of the forest, where he was talking. It was a year ago about what was wrong with the way Elon Musk and the White House was utilizing. They were misusing empathy. There was this weaponization that was happening, and they were-they’re playing on people’s emotions. You know, they know what’s gonna.
Maria Ross 49:27
They know the hot buttons.
Rob Volpe 49:29
Yeah, and I think in the last show, I did a newsletter piece about fear and that primal fear, and and and that’s what scares us. And they leverage that; they weaponize it. Yes. So they’re having empathy with that base emotion. They understand, oh, that base emotion, that’s going to motivate people. That’s going to get people to vote for me, or support me, or storm a capital building for me. Yeah, and I’m going to leverage that.
Maria Ross 49:54
Yeah,
Rob Volpe 49:54
and that’s what ends up happening. And it’s wrong.
Maria Ross 49:59
It is wrong. It is wrong, and that’s why you know. Just kind of circling, kind of closing the the loop on this discussion is one being able to recognize our own emotions and not hide them or not believe that they’re a weakness, but leverage them to make richer, fuller, more holistic decisions. Number two, remembering that no matter what, AI is a machine. It’s a technology, and it can say the right things to feign emotion, but it can never connect with you as a human and care about you as a human being. And then, third, understanding when someone is leveraging emotions to manipulate, and having our guard up about that.
Rob Volpe 50:40
Yeah.
Maria Ross 50:41
So love it. Great conversation. it. Great conversation.
Rob Volpe 50:43
Another amazing conversation. I love it. I look forward to our next one. I know I
Maria Ross 50:49
do too. And talk
Rob Volpe 50:51
about dreaming
Maria Ross 50:53
dreams. Okay, you can think
Rob Volpe 50:55
some fears. Yeah, I love it. Find us off. Shall I? Shall I sing us off with another round of feelings? You
Maria Ross 51:00
can in a second as soon as we sign off. We just want to let everyone know that we’re going to have all the links in the show notes to everything that we talked about today, and we want to hear from you and what you think of this series, what you think of this question, what you think about emotions and AI and technology and decision making and all of that. So please ping us on Instagram. I’m at Red Slice Maria Rob.
Rob Volpe 51:24
Feelings. No,
Maria Ross 51:25
your Instagram handle.
Rob Volpe 51:27
Oh, my Instagram. Yes, it’s at feelings. Oh, you can find me on Instagram at empathy underscore activist.
Maria Ross 51:38
Love it. Okay, and so thank you for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review it, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And we’ll see you in this amazing subseries next week. But until then, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well, be kind, and Rob, take us out.
Rob Volpe 52:02
Feelings, nothing more than feelings, feelings of I forget the lyrics. Feelings in my heart, and if we do any more, we’ll have to play pay royalties. I know
Maria Ross 52:20
exactly. All right, take care, everyone. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.