Ashoka’s Start Empathy Initiative is expanding and leveraging Ashoka’s network of social entrepreneurs and other changemakers to drive a movement to make empathy a priority skill for all children. We seek to accelerate society to a tipping point at which this idea becomes inevitable because a new framework has taken hold.

Although the coin flip would seem to offer the best chance of riches, only 22 percent of college students chose that option. More than half (54 percent) decided to trust a stranger to share fairly – even though they thought on average they would get money back only 37 percent of the time – whereas 24 percent kept the $5 for themselves.

Said Cornell’s David Dunning: “Trust is crucial not just for established relationships. It’s also especially vital between strangers with no responsibility toward each other outside of a single, transitory interaction.”

by H. Roger Segelken - Cornell University

Radiolab on the Golden Rule.

Learn about the Empathy Library.