Episode 32: Chris Jarvis – This is Your Brain on Volunteering

As part of REALTORS Care® Week 2022, we’re joined by Chris Jarvis, co-founder of Realized Worth. At Realized Worth, Chris designs volunteering strategies to help businesses drive engagement, retention, inclusivity, and stronger relationships with their communities.

On Episode 32 of REAL TIME, Chris helps us understand how we can reprogram our brains to feel empathy for groups with whom we don’t identify. By breaking down barriers, and adopting a transformative approach to volunteering, it can help us see the world with a fresh perspective.

Episode Resources

1. Realized Worth

2. Invisible People

3. The RW Institute

4. The Brain, Episode 5: Why Do I Need You?

Transcript

Erin Davis: Welcome to Real Time, Canada's best podcast for all things real estate. It's brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. As part of REALTORS Care Week 2022, we are joined today by Chris Jarvis, co-founder of Realized Worth. At Realized Worth, Chris designs volunteering strategies to help businesses drive engagement, retention, inclusivity, and stronger relationships with their communities. There is so much in this discussion for you, eye-opening facts, ideas, and yes, even a pat on the back for helping people outside your group.

I'm your host, Erin Davis, on Episode 32 of Real Time, Chris Jarvis defining the differences between transactional and transformative volunteering. Learn how each of us can approach volunteering from a place of empathy, purpose, people, and partnerships, and how we can personally benefit as a result, because it's okay if there's something in it for you too, just like this podcast, we hope. Here's our Real Time talk with Chris Jarvis. Chris, welcome to Real Time. It's a pleasure to have you here. Tell us a bit about you-- I know you're in the US, and born in Canada-- and the team, and what you do at Realized Worth, will you?

Chris Jarvis: Sure. Hey, Erin. Thanks for having me on the show. It's really great to be here with you. I was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. Six months later, I moved my family to Halifax-- ventured out. Now, I'm located down here in Baltimore, and I've been here for a few years. The company that we started, Realized Worth-- started that back in 2008, with my partner, Angela Parker, we focus on employee giving and volunteering, and helping companies do it better.

Erin: Okay. You started this in '08. What was the impetus for it? Where did you see a need?

Chris: Great question. We got it all wrong. So, 2008-- great time to start a business, right? Economic downturn. We went to the entirely wrong group, we went to nonprofits and said, "I have 18 years of experience with nonprofits. Angela Parker has over a decade. We were wondering if we could help you improve the experience for your volunteers?" Then the person said-- I made a whole pitch and that kind of thing-- had diagram, slides-- and as I was talking, you know, wrapped it up, I thought I-- she was nodding her head, she was great, and then she said, "That's great, nobody can do this. I don't have a budget. Nobody could oversee it. We don't have a volunteer manager; I am the custodian and the executive director. You know what you could do? You could help me with the bank down the street, they come here twice a year with a couple of 100 people, put up banners, flyers, spend $15,000 on promoting this, do about of an hour of work that I really don't need. If you could help them help me better, that'd be great. It's part of their CSR program." I said, "Wow, that's a great idea." I walked out and thought, "What in the world is CSR?"

I went to a bookstore, read a whole bunch of books on customer service relationships-- it's totally wrong topic-- so finally found corporate social responsibility, and that was the track. We just pivoted to work with companies on their employee giving and volunteering. Actually, up until that point, I didn't even know that existed.

Erin: She helped you to find your way by saying what you've got is great, here's where to put it to use.

Chris: Yes, exactly. Yes.

Erin: You have so much fascinating insight here. I'd like to start with you having said that human beings are hardwired to help. How so, Chris?

Chris: Neuroscience has come a long way in the past couple of decades. There's a series on PBS, where David Eagleman, who's wickedly smart and one of the world's leading neuroscientists-- it's called The Brain. In this series, Episode 5 is, Why Do I Need You, and I saw that. David Eagleman in that episode really explores the brain and how it connects with other people, and how human beings are weirdly connected to each other. In fact, he starts by beginning this episode by pointing out that putting people in solitary confinement is torture because we need to be around other people, so what's going on there?

As he goes through the neuroscience and whatnot, it is fascinating to discover-- now that we have these functional magnetic imaging machines, MRIs, and whatnot, it is amazing to see how when other people feel something, we feel something, and when other people are in a situation, we can empathize. He goes into this exploration. It is absolutely fascinating. The long and the short of it is all human beings have evolved this way and we are all hardwired. We can explore what that means exactly, but that was where that came from. It's based in some rigorous scientific data that is broadly available and accepted out there.

Erin: Some of it has to do with the rewards of giving, right?

Chris: Yes.

Erin: You have used in the past the example of, say, a runner's high.

Chris: Yes. Yes, exactly. There are these reward systems, and we've all experienced them-- maybe on a call. Not everybody's had a runner's high. I had once, just in my life by accident, and that's a long story.

Erin: I'd have to be chased. [crosstalk] "Hey. I survived a lion."

Chris: Exactly. That evolution over hundreds of thousands of years has meant that the people that survived are the brains that are triggered in a certain way and are rewarded in a certain way. Why do we eat food? Because it's pleasurable, it feels good. For most of us, it's not just the function, but that's instrumental to our survival as a species. It turns out a runner's high, strong reward system. A yoga high even. There's a strong reward system in these things.

The one we may all just point out and go, "Yes, no, dah," would be sexual activities. A strong reward system with that, even though it's a complicated, socially complex thing, human beings in every decade-- since we've been around, have figured it out, but that's because the reward is so strong, we're compelled to do it. They did this study. They put some folks-- they were observing folks, and they give them the opportunity to help other people with a donation. They found that if two elements are true in the experience, that the brain releases a concoction of endorphins that are almost indistinguishable from a runner's high, yoga high, and sexual activity. That puts helping other people at the same level as sexual activity and eating in terms of what evolution says is critical for our survival as species. We're all hardwired to help, except for maybe about 5% of the population that are dealing with what we would call a disorder, like psychopathy.

Erin: Okay, so you talked about two things there.

Chris: Well, yes, there are two drivers. The first one, it's called the helper's high. You can look it up online. We'll actually send some links and make them available in the show notes when this goes live.

Erin: Sure.

Chris: The helper's high is the pleasure we feel when we help somebody. Now, the two conditions are I have to understand the significance of the task, and I have to be able to see the person's face. Now, that presents an issue for nonprofits, right, if you're dealing with a population that cannot be present during a volunteering event, maybe for safety issues, how do you do that? Well, it turns out human beings are incredible at imagining. They call it mentalizing. If you tell me a story, or I watch a movie, I know it's not real, so why do I feel anything? Why do I feel something when I read a book? It's because we can imagine, we can mentalize, we can visualize what it would be like to be in that situation. Even if it's a story about who we're helping, if you paint that story well enough that I can think, "Oh, okay. I see what I would feel like in that situation," and I understand the significance of the past, that can trigger these endorphins, then I can feel good about volunteering. Which is why most people after volunteering, if you surveyed them, and you said, "Why do you volunteer?" They would say, "It feels good." That's what they're talking about, the helper's high. Okay, so that's number one.

The second one is a little bit darker. It has to do with how we understand empathy. Now, we have to start with the pain matrix. If you watch Episode 5 of David Eagleman's series, you'll see all this. Empathy is the ability to fluidly be einfühlung-- my German is not really good. It was invented at the turn of the last century by a couple of academics, one from Ge