BUILDING EMPATHYTHROUGH PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS
DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Erika Weisz June 2018
Abstract
Empathy—the ability to share and understand others’ emotions—is a social bridge that connects people to one another. It facilitates important outcomes including prosocial behavior, emotional wellbeing, and social centrality, and reduces harmful social forces like prejudice and bullying. Given these benefits, researchers have tried to increase empathy through intervention, often developing a person’s empathy-related skills like emotion recognition and empathic communication. But skills-related interventions overlook an essential determinant of empathy: people’s desire to empathize. I propose that increasing people’s motivation to empathize through psychological intervention can create enduring and generalizable changes in empathy that practically benefit people’s social and emotional lives.
In this dissertation, I design, administer, and evaluate novel, motivation-based empathy interventions within two populations undergoing significant life changes: college freshmen (chapter 2) and seventh graders (chapter 3).
I find that these interventions addressing people’s mindsets of empathy or their perceptions of the social normativity of empathy differentially elicit changes in empathy and social behavior in these two groups. These data suggest that shifting motivation related to empathy is a promising new tool for improving social and emotional outcomes during important developmental periods.
QUOTES
"Empathy—the ability to share and understand others’ emotions—is a social bridge that connects people to one another. It facilitates important outcomes including prosocial behavior, emotional wellbeing, and social centrality, and reduces harmful social forces like prejudice and bullying."
- Erika Weisz
Notes
Empathy Trainings
Skills-related
emotion recognition
Empathic communication
Motivations: people’s desire to empathize. their mindset [the Why]
this dissertation, I design, administer, and evaluate novel, motivation-based empathy interventions
Freshman
7th graders
Table of Contents
Abstract
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
“Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson
1.1 Leveraging motivation to increase empathy.
Defintion
Empathy—the ability for one person (a perceiver) to share and understand the internal states of someone else (a target) is a social bridge that allows people to connect to one another.
Benefits
promoting prosocial behavior and cooperation between parties (Batson, 2008; Batson & Ahmad, 2009; Brewer, 1979; Sherif, 1958),
it tracks important outcomes for individuals, like emotional well-being (Davis, 1983; Mehrabian, 1996)
social connectedness (Morelli, Ong, Makati, Jackson, & Zaki, 2017).
Teaching Increasing Empathy interventions
Although there is an abundance of research on empathy interventions, there is remarkably little consensus on what constitutes best practice for building empathy.
role-playing exercises (Webster, Bowers, Mann, Marshall, & E, 2005),
perspective-taking activities (Batson, Polycarpou, et al., 1997; Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002),
virtual reality simulations of others’ experiences (Bunn & Terpstra, 2009; Oh, Bailenson, Weisz, & Zaki, 2016),
multi-session compassion meditation courses (Jazaieri et al., 2013; Kok & Singer, 2017; Valk et al., 2017).
I will then propose a novel strategy for building empathy interventions based in a motivated framework of empathy, which aims to increase people’s desire to empathize instead of addressing their ability to empathize.
1.2 Looking back: a brief review of existing empathy interventions
Experience-based interventions feature tasks that encourage perceivers to attend to targets’ internal states
Expression-based interventions teach participants to recognize targets’ internal states and respond appropriately (Weisz & Zaki, 2017)
1.2.1 Experience-Based Interventions
Experience-based interventions feature tasks that encourage perceivers to attend to targets’ internal states.
increase empathy by creating a vivid and immersive experience for perceivers.
medical students stayed overnight in a hospital to better understand hospitalization from a patient’s perspective
hallucination simulation
travelling around campus in a wheelchair
imagining the thoughts and feelings of an individual struggling with drug addiction
[notes: issue of empathy and pain.. not all is pain]
1.2.2 Expression-Based Interventions
show more empathy to targets. These interventions often teach perceivers to recognize and respond appropriately to targets’ emotions.
participants learned to cultivate relationships with their patients, how to deliver bad news, and how to discuss difficult topics like the transition to palliative care
about the heath benefits of empathic communication in the doctor-patient relationship.
Couples were encouraged to rephrase statements their partner made, trying to accurately summarize what they thought their partner was trying to convey
1.2.3 Critical Shortcomings in Existing Interventions
have several weaknesses.
Rather than addressing a perceiver’s empathy in general, they aim to increase empathy within a specific context or within a specific perceiver-target dyad
interventions often produce changes related to the training itself that fail to generalize to novel contexts
interventions are not methodologically rigorous
“characterized by relatively poor research design"
may be restricted in their applicability due to limitations in their underlying theoretical assumptions.
1.3 Looking forward: improving interventions by incorporating motivation
positive motives
connected to someone else,
when they interact with high-powered people
interact with attractive people
want to behave in a socially desirable manner
negative motives
avoidance motives when empathy conflicts with their important goals, like during zero-sum competition
1.3.1 Mindsets of Empathy
malleable mindsets
findings suggest that people can increase their empathy when they’re motivated to do so
fixed mindset
1.3.2 Social Normativity and Desirability of Empathy
Group norms are powerful determinants of individual members’ behavior.
Norms convey information about which behaviors are typical within a group (Lewin, 1952; Miller, Brickman, & Bolen, 1975)
People regularly modify their beliefs and behavior to match those around them (Asch, 1956; 14 Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990; Sherif, 1936).
Normative influence has been demonstrated to impact behavioral markers of empathy, including measures of empathic accuracy (or how accurate a perceiver is in reading a target’s emotions
In a 2009 study, participants were led to believe that members of their in-group were especially empathic toward out-group members.
1.4 Translating theory to intervention .
We hypothesized that an empathy intervention would be most effective among people undergoing developmental transitions, before social and emotional experiences solidify into patterns or habits.
[Note: how to create a norm?]
CHAPTER 2: BUILDING EMPATHY IN COLLEGE FRESHMEN
2.1 Background
our aim was to design an empathy intervention that produced enduring changes in empathy and practical shifts in people’s social lives.
instead of developing empathy-related skills, we encourage empathy by shifting people’s empathic motives.
When people believe that others around them are empathic and prosocial, they are more empathic and prosocial themselves (Nook et al., 2016; Tarrant et al., 2009).
We developed and tested three novel motivation-based empathy interventions designed to improve social functioning and integration during an important time in development:
participants learned that empathy was normative and valued in their new college environment.
Participants learn the empathy is maliable.
[NOTE: how to apply this in the empathy circle?
An empathy circle about the motivations of empathy?
How has your empathy. discuss. ]
2.2 Methods
2.3 Results
2.4 Discussion
CHAPTER 3: BUILDING EMPATHY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
3.1 Background
3.2 Methods
empathy can grow with effort, and that practicing empathy makes brain regions that support empathy grow stronger).
They were the asked to describe a time they were able to overcome an “empathic challenge”, or difficulty empathizing with someone.
3.3 Results
3.4 Discussion
CHAPTER 4: GENERAL DISCUSSION
4.1 Population differences and intervention efficacy
4.2 Intervention style and delivery
4.3 Intervention climate
4.4 Limitations
4.4 Conclusion
References
Appendices
Appendix 1B: Study 1 Reading Materials
Appendix 1C: Study 1 Adolescent Letters
Appendix 2A: Study 2 Video Transcripts and Stills.
Appendix 2B: Study 2 Writing Prompts
Appendix 2C: Malleability and Normativity of Empathy Questionnaire