Empathic Accuracy: Pilot Study

EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING- 1

Running Head: EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING

Empathetic Fluency: Reducing Barriers to Accurate Articulatory Empathy in the Writing Classroom Rachael E. Burke College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Writing and Rhetoric George Mason University

2 Abstract Empathy’s complexity poses challenges for easy “one fits all” curricular integration, and currently divergent (and sparse) research about “empathy in text” leaves many educators confused and skeptical about the specific role of empathy in the writing classroom (Juric, 2011). Popular misconceptions and oversimplifications about empathy’s mechanisms mean students may be treated as “empathy deficient” when part of the problem may be the challenges students face in accurately “reading,” articulating, and, expressing empathy (Ickes, 2009). There is little research-based evidence suggesting empathy, as an emotional/cognitive process, is a lacking resource (Decety, 2004). However, our students are struggling to successfully articulate/express empathy in adaptive, constructive, and actionable ways. If we are to successfully reduce the “empathy deficit,” teachers and researchers need to explore new options for instructing students in empathetic literacy/fluency to reduce the communicative and social barriers that students may face— externally and internally—in displaying empathy in the classroom and beyond.

This study seeks to answer the following: 1) How can we help students learn to effectively read/articulate/express empathy? 2) How can we use writing to help students improve empathetic fluency/literacy? 3) (How) Can the writing process help students identify and reduce barriers to articulating/expressing empathy?

EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING- 3 “The Empathy Deficit” (Obama, 2007) “The empathy deficit is the biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now” (Obama, 2007). This catchphrase—the “empathy deficit”—from a 2007 speech in which President Obama addressed the synergistic relationship between literacy, empathy, and education, has been applied liberally to point toward a lack of pro-social response or an incapacity to take another’s perspective. As such, recent efforts in educational research have largely been aimed at better understanding empathy with the goal of helping make learners more empathetic. Yet, there is much we do not yet understand about empathy. Many popular misconceptions and oversimplifications about empathetic mechanisms mean that students may be treated as “empathy deficient” (Jones et. al) when part of the problem may be the challenges students face in accurately “reading,” articulating, and, expressing empathy (Ickes, 2009). There is little researchbased evidence to suggest that empathy, as an emotional and cognitive process, is a lacking resource: rather it is human nature (Decety, 2004; Jones et. al). However, our students are struggling to successfully articulate and express empathy in adaptive, constructive, and actionable ways. If we are to successfully reduce the “empathy deficit,” teachers and researchers need to explore new options for instructing students in empathetic literacy/fluency to reduce the communicative and social barriers that students may face—externally and internally—in displaying empathy in the classroom and beyond.

An inherent emotional and cognitive quality that defines the human condition (Batson, 1991), empathy is already built into the architecture of social interconnectivity and woven into our language (Preston and de Waal, 2002). While empathy is something most

4 of us can naturally “do,” we are only beginning to understand empathy as a process (Ickes and Decety, 2009, viii). Behavioral/social/developmental psychologists, clinical and health psychologists, cognitive-affective neuroscientists, and neuropsychologists continue to research and debate the spectra/degrees of empathetic capacity, motivation and exchange; however, research currently recognizes eight (8) distinct forms of empathy (Batson, 2009).

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Cognitive Empathy (Eslinger, 1998), (knowing a person’s internal state)

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Affective Empathy (Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, & Emde, 1992), (feeling as another person feels)

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Neural Empathy/Mimicry-Action Model (Preston and de Waal, 2002)

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Imagine Other (Batson 1991)/Perspective Taking (Decety, 2004)

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Intuiting/Situational Projecting/ Einfühlung1 (Lipps, 1903)

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Projective Empathy (Darwall, 1998)/Perspective Taking (Piaget, 1953)

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“Sympathy” (Preston and de Waal, 2002), (feeling in response to suffering)

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“Personal suffering” (Batson, 1991), (feeling distress in the presence of another person’s suffering)

Because empathy encompasses self-reflection, other-orientation, and reciprocal action, most researchers agree that empathetic proclivity generally leads to pro-social behavior and interpersonal closeness (Ickes and Decety, 2009). Students of all backgrounds who cultivate a broader sense of empathetic awareness stand to benefit substantially by being more socially involved, proactive, and self advocating (Ickes and Decety, 2009; Eisenberg and Miller, 1997) primarily because empathy requires the student to accept and evaluate the self-other condition. As Lee and Shemilit (2011) explain: “Empathetic

1 This term, originally applied to aesthetic imagination, birthed the English, “empathy.”

EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING- 5 explanation entails the elucidation of connections between goals, beliefs, and values so that we can see how a course of action or a social practice was 'reasonable' in its own terms even when judged unreasonable in ours.” However, though the popular perception of empathy might be this type of other-oriented perception-taking (frequently followed by action/relief), empathetic action/expression seems frequently to require mutual benefit and is not always an altogether altruistic social act (Eisenberg and Miller, 1997).

Furthermore, an often ignored and somewhat uncomfortable aspect of empathy is its tendency to place one in context with unpleasant, unpredictable, and sometimes overwhelming emotions. While one might feel great empathic impulse or reaction, a resistance to articulate or display empathy communally may be rooted in what Mikhail Bakhtin (1993) describes as our reluctance to experience “impoverishment of being.” It may indeed be the emotional and cognitive cost of empathy that makes students reluctant to invest their social resources in the empathy exchange if they perceive the personal risk to outweigh the reward.

When enacted successfully, however, empathy has been called the “social glue” that holds human interaction together (Dijksterhuis, 2005); nevertheless, feeling and thinking empathy, alone, does not lead to nearly the same successful, pro-social outcomes as possessing the ability to accurately percieve, articulate, and share empathy (Jurecic 2011; Rajecki, Ickes, and Tanford, 1981). For example, studying verbal empathy, specifically, Van Baaren, et al. (2003) found that effective verbal imitation yielded a >50% increase in tips in a real-world restaurant environment. Van Baaren et al.’s (2004) follow-up “CliniClown” study revealed how intentional displays of empathy induce substantially more helpful and charitable responses toward the individual who successfully expresses

6 empathetic discourse. In each of these trials, expressed and articulatory empathy led to both pro-social and economic payoff (Van Baaren, et al., 2004). Though empathy is often touted as being emotionally beneficial, this narrow view of empathy drastically undersells the value of teaching it as a tool toward a student’s social, intellectual, and economic mobility.

Empathy in the (Writing) Classroom Because empathy is inherently expressed through language (McLeod 1997) and may be its primary carrier (Ickes, 2009), English, Reading and Composition classrooms seem like natural environments for teachers to provide empathy instruction and for students to acquire empathetic fluency; however, this is not a formalized practice. Certainly, some teachers encourage empathy and engage empathetically with students (Keen, 2007; McLeod, 1997; Wender, 2014); however, empathy’s complexity poses challenges for easy “one fits all” curricular integration. Furthermore, currently divergent (and sparse) research about “empathy in text” leaves many educators confused and skeptical about the specific role of empathy in the writing classroom (Juric, 2011). A selection of these positions include: empathy experienced in the literary classroom can be nothing more than a passive or politicized sympathy (Ahmed 2004, Kulbaga 2008); empathy insinuates itself as “mind-reading” and is highly gender specific (Baron-Cohen, 2003); empathy may be reader-dependent, though we should not abandon our efforts to cultivate empathy (Juric, 2011). In actuality, much of what we think we know about empathy in the literary classroom is little more than “folk understanding” (Keen, 2007), and little methodologically consistent research exists for using writing as a tool for teaching empathetic articulation and expression to our students (Eisenberg and Miller, 1997).

EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING- 7 Clearly, empathy’s powers, limits, and representations need further exploration in order to be fully understood and implemented within the writing/literary classroom and as part of fuller pedagogical practice.

Goals/Questions This study seeks to answer the following: 1) How can we help students learn to effectively read/articulate/express empathy? 2) How can we use writing to help students improve empathetic fluency/literacy? 3) (How) Can the writing process help students identify and reduce barriers to articulating/expressing empathy?

Methodology: Descriptive Research and Analysis This study will conduct descriptive exploratory research for qualitative analysis in Washington D.C./Maryland/Virginia reading/writing/composition classrooms.

Population >6 classrooms (2 Elementary, 2 Middle Education, 2 High School): Self-Identifying “Change-Maker” Schools currently implementing a “Start Empathy” initiative (Ashoka.org, 2014; Jones, et. al 2013), varying public/private, varying income. >6 classrooms (3 Middle Education, 3 High School): Classrooms without self-identified, structured, or subsidized “empathy initiatives,” chosen to represent varied economic and popular demographics. >6 classrooms: (2 community college, 2 private university, 2 public university) Nonrandomly chosen. First-year writing classrooms with and without structured “empathy initiatives.”

Participant Observation

8 This study proposes extended, structured participant observation (>12 weeks) of the 14 designated writing/reading classrooms. The goal of the study is to compare pedagogical practices, classroom milieu, and student behavior and interaction in various academic environments, observing for empathetic expression, articulation, and repression. Through observation of both formal and informal writing and rhetorical exchanges, this study seeks to understand if/how writing currently operates as a carrier for empathy articulation and how it might better be utilized as such.

Data collection will consist of compiling a detailed narrative of observable empathetic activity2 and exchange (teacher directed or student-generated) during each classroom visit. Participant observation will be low-interference. However, if researcher interaction is encouraged or required (particularly as a matter of teacher-facilitated empathy activity), this researcher will engage with the classroom environment in a natural way.

Observations will rely primarily on observing and recording overt social acts of empathy articulation/expression or empathy deficit (denial). If appropriate, unstructured interviews may be conducted on-site to better understand enacted empathy process.

Semi-Structured Interviews Semi-structured, face-to-face, one-on-one recorded interviews will be conducted with teachers and students (with consent). Teacher interviews will be directed toward the established research questions and will be asked to provide insight on the direct role of empathy in the classroom. The primary goal of the teacher interview is to discover 1) how writing currently helps/represses empathy articulation and 2) barriers teachers see 2 This study will observe for all current known definitions of empathy. However, this researcher realizes both the complex and evolving nature of the research community’s understanding of empathy as well as her own limitations in recognizing all possible forms of intended, yet unsuccessfully displayed, empathy.

EMPATHETIC FLUENCY: ARTICULATORY WRITING- 9 students facing in expressing empathy, and 3) what recommendations teachers would make toward helping students express empathy and how writing might facilitate that process.

Students will be asked a series of questions designed to discover student perceived “empathy deficits” or “empathy successes” in the classroom and in their own lives. The goal of these interviews will be to discover how students 1) use writing naturally in their private lives to articulate empathy, 2) what personal/social barriers exist that might prevent empathetic expression, and 3) how teachers could help them feel more safe to use writing as a way to develop empathetic self/other awareness.

Collection of Pedagogical Materials This study will collect and analyze relevant and available pedagogical materials designed for directly implementing an empathy curriculum with the goal of understanding how these methodologies might be integrated into the writing/reading classroom. Materials will be evaluated to: analyze rhetorically reproducible content, understand how real world pedagogical practice intersects with emergent knowledge in empathy studies, and further explore empathy’s specific role in the writing process.

Extended Literature Review To better understand the relationship between empathy and writing pedagogy, this study will conduct an extensive, international, interdisciplinary literature review. Primary content areas to be considered: empathy studies; pedagogy; writing and rhetoric; cognitive and behavioral psychology; cognitive neuroscience; sociology; and conflict analysis and resolution.

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