The Psychology of Blame: Another Animated Lesson That Can Make You a Better Person

The last time we checked in with Dr. Brené Brown, a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Grad­u­ate Col­lege of Social Work, we learned all about the dif­fer­ence between sym­pa­thy and empa­thy, and why empa­thy is much more mean­ing­ful in the end. Now, in a sequel to that first video, we dis­cov­er an impor­tant bar­ri­er to empa­thy — blame. Can you relate? Both videos come from RSA (the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts), the same cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion that brought us those white­board ani­ma­tions illus­trat­ing lec­tures by Slavoj Zizek, Steven Pinker, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, and oth­ers. You can watch Brown’s com­plete (unan­i­mat­ed) lec­ture here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of 1100 Free Online Cours­es)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly