Spend a few minutes online and you’ll find no shortage of warnings about the dangers of being “too empathic.” Headlines like “Are You an Empath? 5 Ways to Avoid Emotional Burnout” and “Why Empaths Experience Burnout Like No Other” paint a picture of empathy as a psychological liability—something that leaves caring people overwhelmed, depleted, and at special risk of exhaustion. Some articles offer nuance buried in the fine print, but many do not.

But this popular belief doesn’t match the scientific evidence. In fact, after more than a decade of research on physicians, nurses, teachers, and other human-service professionals, a striking consensus has emerged: most types of empathy actually protect against burnout, rather than cause it.

In my own meta-analysis on this topic, published this week in Psychology, Health & Medicine, we........

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