Patrick Dolan: "It Is not that young people do not want to demonstrate empathy, it is that they do not have the opportunity to do it"
17/01/2025

Patrick Dolan is a professor at the National University of Ireland in Galway and Chair of his university's UNESCO partnership for Childhood, Youth, and Civic Engagement. We spoke with him on the occasion of his participation in the European Mentoring Summit, which took place in Paris, regarding empathy in mentoring relationships and the development of youth.
Professor Dolan, how would you say that mentoring impacts young people? What is the impact that mentoring can have if it works and it is well-designed, especially for teenagers?
The overwhelming evidence is that with mentoring, when it's effective, it is based on a relationship of trust, a relationship where there is active empathy between the mentor and the mentee, and that translates into social action on the part of the mentor that influences the young person. But more importantly, it is not about the mentor telling the young person what to do, it is about the mentor enabling the young person to do what he or she or they wish to do in their lives, and the power of one good mentor is phenomenal, and it is lifelong. And the evidence shows that.
So the mentoring relationship has the capacity to part the clouds for a young person, and by parting the clouds I mean give opportunity for resilience, opportunity for self efficacy, and opportunity to enlist social support in their lives.
The power of one good mentor is phenomenal, and it is lifelong. And the evidence shows that.
How would you describe this ability of social action, of enabling the other? What does this have to do with the actual skills and competencies that the mentor must have or has to develop during their mentoring journey?
The first skill is that the mentor has to have the capacity to connect. And by connecting, I mean engaging. If the mentor is boring, doesn't seem interested, doesn't know how to talk to young people, doesn't have good personal skills, basic social skills, the match won't work.
The second skill the mentor needs to have is the capacity to listen and not to jump in and offer solutions. There's this wonderful theory called “Presence Theory” by Andries Baart, and it's about being present for the person, your presence in itself is a value. It may not even be that the mentor tries to solve the problem or give advice on the problem, but by being there for the young person and caring actually with warmth.
Is it possible to develop these skills while you are a mentor? I mean, sometimes we are engaging very young and inexperienced people as mentors, which has a lot of potential, but they might not yet have reached that maturity.
The correlation between age and capacity to mentor is a complex one. There are some young people who make excellent mentors, and there are some older people who make terrible mentors. It doesn't just go with age. It is about a capacity to self -reflect, to think about yourself and how your intervention is with the young person, and to be willing to change, and obviously not to be judgmental.
With effective empathy, you don't just go into the shoes of the other person, but you actually take on a role that is active, helpful, demonstrable.
One of the risks with mentoring is that mentors see themselves as fixing young people, and I don't agree with that at all. And that is a big problem. I think mentoring is this capacity to cultivate demonstrable empathy. So you understand where the young person is coming from, you get into the shoes of the other person in order to understand. But do not try to over-interpret. Sometimes mentors try too hard and they have no effect.
I totally agree with you. But also I have witnessed people who have been mentors and they describe the process as a learning journey. Since they begin, they acquire lots of skills along the way.
Yes, you can learn to be a better mentor. Of course, the big advantage of mentoring when it works well is that if you are a good mentor, there is only one person that benefits more than the mentee in the relationship. And it is the mentor. It is yourself. If you think of anything that you did for somebody that was kind, how they felt about it, but think about how it makes you feel and which is why. So that is the whole kind of giving as part of wellbeing.
The good thing about being an effective mentor is that you build one good successful relationship with a mentee. And you know, if you are meeting on a week by week basis, that the relationship is good, safe, strong and effective, I think you know it and, instinctively, the young person knows it.
It is not that young people do not want to or cannot demonstrate empathy. They do not have the opportunity to do it.
Can you go a little bit deeper about empathy?
One person can have static or cognitive empathy. Static empathy is where you understand where the other person is coming from. But I am really interested in effective empathy. Effective empathy is about what you do about it. And the overwhelming evidence is that with effective empathy, you don't just go into the shoes of the other person, but you actually take on a role that is active, helpful, demonstrable. Now we have to be careful because you can get empathy fatigue or empathy distress. So we have to be conscious of self-care when talking about empathy.
If you think about your childhood, or think about teachers or think about adults who were good mentors or family members…You don't remember the person for what they did for you, you remember them for how they made you feel. And I think that is the effect of empathy.
We have completed a massive amount of research in the last eight years really exploring youth empathy. I think empathy challenges mentoring in a good way. In fact, you could argue that everybody is born with innate empathy. As adults, however, sometimes we take that away and we have to reprocess it. The good news is that we now know from neuroscience that you can learn empathy. It's like a muscle, particularly in the teenage years. Neurosciences shows us that there's plasticity in the brain, and that you actually can learn empathy and you can practice that muscle. And, in fact, adolescence is the key time to do it.
Empathy education is a global solution to, for instance, hate speech. And it should be compulsory in education in schools.
Do you think that modern adolescents are less empathetic than before?
Certainly, the increase in use of screens has had a bad effect on empathy because many young people put on social media what they would not say to a person's face. And that is a big part of the issue. As an example, I was bullied when I was at school but in those days there was no social media. And when I got home I was safe. Whereas now, even if you turn off your phone, you cannot cut it off. And then there is also some evidence that young people are more narcissistic. But we have to be careful with that because it is wrong to generalize.
The biggest factor, the positive factor, around empathy is that it is not that young people do not want to or cannot demonstrate empathy. They do not have the opportunity to do it. Thus, we need to provide much more engaged citizenship for young people. And you should be popular in school, not just because you are good at sports or because you are good at your academic learning, but actually we should make people famous in schools because they are good for the kind things they do. That would be a better approach in education. It is about what we value. I think empathy is about increasing prosocial behavior. It is about increasing values such as warmth and caring. If anybody thinks of experiencing a bereavement, the most thing you want at the time is warmth and caring. So why do we just think about it when somebody dies? Why don’t we think about that every day?
Then we could conclude that mentoring is a good context for practicing.
If we were able to say to a politician “We have to do something about people's empathy”, then we should promote more mentoring programs, which are absolutely evidence-based and effective. I actually think empathy education is a global solution to, for instance, hate speech. And it should be compulsory in education in schools.