PSYCHOLOGY
Think Your Best Sales Reps Have Empathy? Neuroscience Says You’re Wrong
NICOLAS VANDENBERGHE
Sales skills are among the most mysterious of hu- man abilities. Closers come in all types. Some are shy – even introverted. Some are extroverted. Some work day and night, while others are called “lazy.” Yet most people believe they have one thing in common – empathy. Recent findings in neuroscience, however, prove this wrong.
German social neuroscientists Tania Singer and Anita Tusche published a watershed article in the 2013 Neuro- economics reference textbook, where they established a difference between two capabilities: empathy and theory of mind (also called “mentalizing”). As they define the terms, “‘empa-
thy’ refers to the ability to share the feelings of others, whereas, ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) or ‘mentalizing’ describes the capacity to infer and to represent another person’s inten-
tions, desires, or beliefs.” “ToM differs from empathy in that the former does not denote a sharing of another person’s affective states, but rather a cognitive understanding of another person’s mental states... ToM enables a person to represent the mental states of others, including their affective states, based on knowl- edge alone and without becoming emotionally involved.”
It turns out that the latter is more criti- cal to the world of sales than the former.
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To understand why, it’s useful to
represent sales in the context of game theory, where two or more individuals interact to optimize their economic interest.
As the authors observe, “Gener-
ally, the study of economic decision making in the context of game theory is based on the assumption that people can predict other people’s actions when they understand their motivations, preferences, and be-
liefs...However, economists still know little about (and have been classically uninterested in) the mechanisms that enable people to put themselves into other people’s shoes. Social neuro- scientists and neuroeconomists have, thus, focused on clarifying the neural mechanisms underlying our capacity to represent others’ intentions, be- liefs, and desires (referred to variously as ‘theory of mind’) [
...as opposed to our capacity] to share others’ feelings (referred to as ‘empathy’).” This research has led to some stun-
ROMAN SAMBORSKYI /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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