Lecture two for Engendering Compassion through Interactive Digital Media
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This document summarizes key points from a lecture on engendering compassion delivered on June 26, 2013 at Stanford University. The lecture discussed empathy and its bases, both proximate and ultimate. Empathy was defined as an ability and motivation to understand another's emotions. It was noted that facial expressions are key to empathy but emotions can also be expressed verbally and non-verbally. Computer-mediated communication can both eliminate real-world context clues and increase relational intimacy compared to face-to-face interactions. The biological and cognitive bases of empathy were explored, including theories of empathy increasing with familiarity, similarity, learning, past experience, and salience. Later, Batson's study on empathy and altruism versus
Lecture two for Engendering Compassion through Interactive Digital Media
- 1. COMM: 107S ENGENDERING COMPASSION LECTURE 2, JUNE 26TH, 2013 STANFORD UNIVERSITY, SUMMER QUARTER 1 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 2. EMPATHY IS.... AN ABILITY A MOTIVATION 2 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 3. READING EMOTIONS EMOTIONS ARE EXPRESSED VERBALLY AND NON- VERBALLY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE KEY TO EMPATHY WHAT OTHER WAYS DO WE EXPRESS EMOTION? 3 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 4. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE WHAT IS THIS FACE IS EXPRESSING? 4 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 5. ONLINE RAMIFICATIONS COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION ELIMINATES SOME REAL-WORLD CONTEXT CLUES FOR SHARING EMOTION HOWEVER, IT CAN ALSO BE HYPERPERSONAL (WALTHER) Hian, Chuan, Trevor, and Detenber's 2006 study found that “relational intimacy” increased at a faster rate in CMC than in Face-to-Face interactions 5 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 6. WHY DO WE HAVE EMPATHY? BIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS - TOM, MIRROR NEURONS (PROXIMATE BASES OF EMPATHY) MOTIVATIONS - EGO-CENTERED OR ALTRUISTIC COGNITION - IN-GROUP/OUT-GROUP PREFERENCE (EXAMPLE OF ULTIMATE BASE OF EMPATHY) 6 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 7. Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases Preston, de Waal (Optional Reading) ULTIMATE BASES: “Empathy increases with: Familiarity (subject's previous experience with object) 7 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 8. SIMILARITY Similarity can be manipulated (red team vs. blue team) (perceived overlap between subject and object e.g. species, personality, age, gender), 8 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 9. LEARNING Learning (explicit or implicit teaching) 9 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 10. PAST EXPERIENCE Past experience (with situation of distress) 10 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 11. SALIENCE (strength of perceptual signal e.g. louder, closer, more realistic etc.) 11 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 12. BATSON ET AL.’S ABSTRACT Three experiments tested whether empathy evokes egoistic motivation to share vicariously in the victim's joy at improvement (the empathic-joy hypothesis) instead of altruistic motivation to increase the victim's welfare (the empathy- altruism hypothesis). In Experiment 1, Ss induced to feel either low or high empathy for a young woman in need were given a chance to help her. Some believed that if they helped they would receive feedback about her improvement; others did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, Ss induced to feel either low or high empathy were given a choice of getting update information about a needy person's condition. Before choosing, they were told the likelihood of the person's condition having improved—and of their experiencing empathic joy—was 20%, was 50%, or was 80%. Results of none of the experiments patterned as predicted by the empathic-joy hypothesis; instead, results of each were consistent with the empathy-altruism hypothesis. 12 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 13. STUDY DESIGN (1) 2 X 3 DESIGN INDEPENDENT VARIABLES low empathy/ no info low empathy/ no feedback low empathy/ feedback high empathy/ no info high empathy/ no feedback high empathy/ feedback 13 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 14. PERSPECTIVE-TAKING “To manipulate empathy, some subjects were asked to adopt an objective perspective while watching (low-empathy condition), and others were asked to imagine how the young woman felt (high-empathy condition).” Perspective-taking as a method for increasing empathy IMAGE FROM PRESTON, DE WAAL HTTP://COGPRINTS.ORG/1042/1/PRESTON_DE_WAAL.HTML 14 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 15. EMPATHIC-JOY HYPOTHESIS “We reasoned that if empathically aroused individuals are egoistically motivated to gain empathic joy, then their desire to hear from the needy person again should be a direct function of the likelihood of obtaining empathic joy, which should in turn be a direct function of the likelihood that the needy person would be better.” Empathic-altruism: “altruistically motivated individuals should want to hear how the needy person is doing even when the chances of improvement are not great.” 15 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 16. DEPENDENT MEASURES Dependent measure: Volunteering to help KatieON, BATSON, SLINGSBY, HARRELL, PEEKNA, TODD uded that the empathy thy, distress, and sadness. s raised earlier and the stinguishability ofself- onse to the need situa- 9; Batson et al, 1988), a nses to the six empathy rmed, grieved, troubled, , and perturbed), and four ng low, heavyhearted, and perturbed, all of these nt. Omitting perturbed t solution (eigenvalue = gher on this component. that in response to the pathy, distress, and sad- gle underlying dimen- Table 1 Proportion ofSubjects Agreeing to Help Katie in Each Cell ofExperiment 1 Empathy condition Low Proportion M High Proportion M No information about feedback .42 0.67 .75 1.00 Information about feedback No feedback .33 0.33 .83 1.17 Feedback .67 0.92 .58 0.75 Note, n = 12 per cell. The means are those for the scaled measure of helping, ranging from no help (0), 3-5 hr (1), 6-8 hr (2), to 9-10 hr (3). by the empathy-altruism hypothesis in both the no-informa- tion (replication) condition (z = 1.69, p < .05, one-tailed) and the16 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 17. ANALYSIS An analysis of variance on the proportion of subjects volunteering to help Katie in each cell revealed a reliable empathy main effect, x2(l, N=12) = 5.04, p < .025. This main effect was, however, qualified by a marginally significant interaction, x2(2, N= 72) = 4.87, p <. 10. x2 - Chi-squared, ANOVA degrees of freedom, (d-1) p - significance, importance of .05 N - number of participants 17 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 18. SYMHEDONIA Sympathy for another’s good fortune 18 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 19. WHY THIS PAPER? 7 STUDIES WHY ARE WE COVERING THIS PAPER: “sympathy is a concept capable of dual affective tone, its dominant meaning remains that of a negative emotional state anchored in and tending toward the alleviation of another’s misfortune.” However, it can also be involved in positive affect. METHODS: QUESTIONNAIRES ABOUT ATTACHMENT, SYMPATHY, AND “FEELING GOOD FOR ANOTHER” 19 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 20. IVS, DVS, AND FINDINGS IVS? DVS? FINDINGS? 20 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 21. FINDINGS, STUDY 7 Not an experiment, “none of them manipulated attachment directly” FINDINGS: WHAT IS Y- AXIS? relationship between sympathy, symhedonia, and attachment level within the casual-acquaintance category. There were significant correlations between attachment and symhedonia, r(78) ϭ .63, p Ͻ .001, one-tailed; attachment and sympathy, r(78) ϭ .34, p ϭ .002, one-tailed; and sympathy and symhedonia, r(78) ϭ .55, p Ͻ .001, one-tailed. Applying a test of significance for nonindependent correlations (Howell, 1997, p. 265), the difference between the first two correlations proved statistically significant, t(75) ϭ 3.42, p Ͻ .01, one-tailed. Sympathy, though somewhat more intense than symhedonia, appears to be more independent of prior attachment. intense than sympathy. Consistent with the equal contingency hypothesis, the reported intensity of both sympathy and symhedonia was significantly higher when the target person was the best friend rather than a casual acquaintance (Study 7). Also, consistent with the equal contingency hypothesis, the likelihood of experiencing symhedo- nia seems biased toward high-attachment targets (Studies 1–3, 5). On the other hand, contrary to this hypothesis, the likelihood of experiencing sympathy did not seem to vary consistently as a function of prior attachment (Studies 1–3, 5). Moreover, the equal contingency hypothesis is not equipped to account for the findings of sympathy’s greater range, robustness, or the relatively weak tie Figure 2. Sympathy and symhedonia intensity as a function of relationship type. 21 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 22. QUICK GROUP WORK (3~PPL) WE’VE LOOKED AT BATSON’S WORK, ROYZMAN AND ROZIN, PRESTON AND DE WAAL.... USING SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AS A FRAME AND CONTEXT, COME UP WITH A GENERAL EXAMPLE OF WHERE/WHEN EMPATHY OR SYMHEDONIA ARE POSITIVELY OR NEGATIVELY AFFECTED AND WHY SPECULATE ON WAYS TO ENHANCE THE POSITIVE OR MITIGATE THE NEGATIVE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES INCLUDE: TWITTER, FACEBOOK, RENREN, GAIA ONLINE, LINKEDIN, ETC. YOU CAN APPROACH THIS FROM A PROXIMATE POSITION OR AN ULTIMATE BASE POSITION 22 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 23. 7-10 MINUTES 23 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 24. SHARE POSITIVE INSTANCES: MORE PEOPLE TO FEEL SYMHEDONIA WITH, NEGATIVE INSTANCES: NOT CENSORING SELF, VARIANCE OF SYMPATHY AND THEY MIGHT FEEL BAD THAT THEY CAN’T HELP FACEBOOK DEATH MINIMIZES IMPORTANCE EASIER TO SHARE (POS AND NEG) EXTERNAL VALIDATION (POS AND NEG) 24 Wednesday, June 26, 13
- 25. PROMPT FOR ONE-PAGER FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE, BUT UNDERPINNED BY WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT EMPATHY THIS WEEK, HAVE YOU WITNESSED SPECIFIC INSTANCES WHERE EMPATHY WAS UNDERMINED BY TECHNOLOGY OTHER THAN SOCIAL NETWORKING? PLEASE DESCRIBE TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY AND USE NEW TERMINOLOGY WHERE APPROPRIATE. 25 Wednesday, June 26, 13