The Limits of Empathy - UXLibs8

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the dangers of empathy · advancing research 3 1 AND WHAT DESIGNERS CAN DO ABOUT THEM the limits of empathy Cassini Nazir Assistant Professor, University of North Texas June 12 · UX for Libraries 2024

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the dangers of empathy · advancing research 2023 proposal 23 4 Conclusion In trying to contribute to informing the discussion about empathy in the design community, we have recruited insights from philosophy and cognitive science, and highlighted which aspects of these are particularly relevant in rela- tion to design. The outcome of our exercise suggests that research on empathy in design has taken a reflexive stance toward the positive side of empathy for end-users. Therefore, for those seeking a parsimonious explanation of the ef- fect of empathy on the quality of design outcomes, the answer is that it is only positive. The predominantly positive reports about empathy in design with a lack of emphasis on drawbacks raise the concern that empathy may have become a design ideology rather than a principle that is appropriate in some situations and inappropriate under other circumstances. From what started as an objective to ensure that designs meet user desires and needs (Jones, 1970; Kouprie & Visser, 2009; Moore & Conn, 1985) and an agenda to raise the prominence of user experience and emotions with regard to human interactions with designed objects (Mattelm€ aki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014), empathy in design has grown into an approach to the practice of design in which the objective is for the mental states and imagination of the designer to match those of end-users (Kouprie & Visser, 2009; Mattelm€ aki et al., 2014). In other words, empathy has become an end rather than a means, which is where the interest in empathy began. As such, empathy in design has opened itself to a type of quarantine failure (Goldman, 2013). This article advances the perspective that design scholars and designers tend to skip two important steps in the application of empathy to design. The first is an ethical step: the choice to apply methods to gain empathy with end-users is an ethical decision. The empathy a designer can or cannot gain for end-users and their situations will determine what solutions the designer will end up deeming valuable or not valuable on behalf of end-users (Lloyd, 2009). The presence or absence of the designer’s own values during the process of gaining empathy will determine trade-offs and therefore the social impact of the design (Le Dantec & Do, 2009). The second step is perspectival and relates to embodiment. In order to take the affective perspective of another, the designer must also take the bodily perspective of the other. The inclusion of embodiment in design means designers ‘should be aware of how they are being affected at a bodily level’ (Finlay, 2005, p. 277) and not just at a mental level. Our view is that there is much to be gained theoretically and practically from accounting for embodiment in the process of developing empathy. It would offer additional explanatory power in the suitability of empathy in design. The concept of embodiment rests on the hypothesis of the body and mind being closely related and influencing each other in various non-trivial ways (Glenberg, 2010; K€ orner & Strack, 2018). Embodiment in empathy 118 Design Studies Vol 65 No. C November 2019 To empathise or not to empathise? Empathy and its limits in design Ann Heylighen, KU Leuven, Dept. of Architecture, Research[x]Design, BE 3001, Leuven, Belgium Andy Dong, Oregon State University, School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Corvallis, OR, 97331-6001, USA In the 1980s, one of the values advanced to distinguish the field of design from the sciences and the humanities was empathy. Since then it has become an important theme in design practice, research, and education. Insights from philosophy and cognitive science, however, suggest that empathy has become a design ideology rather than a principle suitable for judging the value of design solutions in some situations e for some end-users and some aspects of their experience. When it is applied in design, two important steps tend to be skipped: an ethical and a perspectival one. Assessing its suitability, we hypothesise, has much to gain theoretically and practically from accounting for the role of embodiment in the process of developing empathy. Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: design cognition, empathy, ethics, psychology of design, user centred design Gaining empathy for end-users is generally considered a central task in design. In his 1982 article ‘Designerly ways of knowing’, Cross (1982) listed empathy as one of the ‘values’ that distinguish the e at that time e largely neglected ‘third culture’ of the field of design from the two already established ‘cultures’ of the sciences and the humanities, which had ‘long been recognised as dominating our social, cultural and educational systems’: ‘the values of each culture are. in the sciences: objectivity, rationality, neutrality, and a concern for “truth” in the humanities: subjectivity, imagination, commitment, and a concern for “justice” in design: practicality, ingenuity, empathy [emphasis added], and a concern for “appropriateness”.’ Corresponding author: Ann Heylighen ann.heylighen@ kuleuven.be www.elsevier.com/locate/destud 0142-694X Design Studies 65 (2019) 107e124 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2019.10.007 107 Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Heylighen, A., and Dong, A. (2019). To empathise or not to empathise? Empathy and its limits in design. Design Studies, 65, 107–124.

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the dangers of empathy · advancing research 3 28 1. “The tendency to vicariously experience other individuals’ emotional states ...an emotional response that is focused more on another person’s situation or emotion than on one’s one ... [which] can be either identical to or congruent with that of the other person involved.” Albiero et al. (2009, p. 393) 2. “The act of perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state and ideas of another person.” Barker (2008, p. 141) 3. “A cognitive and emotional understanding of another’s experience, resulting in an emotional response that is congruent with a view that others are worthy of compassion and respect and have intrinsic worth.” Barnett & Mann (2013, p. 230) 4. “The drive or ability to attribute mental states to another person/animal, and entails an appropriate affective response in the observer to the other person’s mental state.” Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright (2004, p. 168) 5. “An other oriented emotional response elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone else.” Batson et al. (2005, p. 486) 6. “The other-focused, congruent emotion produced by witnessing another person’s suffering involves such feelings as sympathy, compassion, softheartedness, and tenderness.” Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade (1987, p. 20) 7. “A way to grasp the feelings and meanings of the client.” Clark (2010, p. 95) 8. “The ability to understand and share in another’s emotional state or context.’’ Cohen & Strayer (1996, p. 988) 9. “The capacity to understand and enter into another person’s feelings and emotions or to experience something from the other person’s point of view.” Colman (2009, p. 248) 10. “A complex imaginative process through which an observer simulates another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other differentiation.” Coplan (2011, p. 40) 11. “A reaction to the observed experiences of another.” Davis (1983, p. 114) 12. “A set of constructs having to do with the responses of one individual to the experiences of another. These constructs specifically include the processes taking place within the observer and the affective and non-affective outcomes which result from those processes.” Davis (1996, p. 12) 13. “A sense of similarity between the feelings one experiences and those expressed by others.” Decety & Lamm (2006, p. 1146) 14. “The ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others.” Decety & Lamm (2006, p. 1146) 15. “The ability to appreciate the emotions of others with a minimal distinction between self and other.” Decety & Michalska (2010, p. 886) 16. “The capacity to share and understand emotional states of others in reference to oneself.” Decety & Moriguchi (2007, p. 22) 17. “The imaginative transposing of oneself into the thinking, feeling and acting of another and so structuring the world as he does.” Dymond (1949, p. 127) 18. “An affective response that stems from the comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition, which is identical or very similar to the other’s emotion, or what would be expected to feel.” Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad (2006, p. 647) 19. “A match between the affective responses of a perceiver and that of a stimulus person.... [definitions] must take into account both cognitive and affective factors.” Feshbach (1975, p. 26) 20. “The ability to perceive another person’s point-of-view, experience the emotions of another and behave compassionately.” Geer, Estupinan, & Manguno-Mire (2000, p. 101) 21. “A sort of ‘mimicking’ of one person’s affective state by that of another.” Goldman (1993, p. 351) 22. “An affective state, caused by sharing of the emotions or sensory states of another person.” Hein & Singer (2008, p. 154) 23. “An affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own.” Hoffman (2000, p. 4) 24. “The act of constructing for oneself another’s mental state.” Hogan (1969, p. 308) 25. “A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others.” Ickes (1997, p. 2) 26. “The tendency to apprehend another person’s condition or state of mind.” Johnson, Cheek, & Smither (1983, p. 1299) 27. “Sharing another’s feelings by placing oneself psychologically in that person’s circumstance.” Lazarus (1994, p. 287) 28. “The capacities to resonate with another person’s emotions, understand his/her thoughts and feelings, separate our own thoughts and emotions from those of the observed and responding with the appropriate prosocial and helpful behaviour.” Oliveira-Silva & Gonçalves (2011, p. 201) 29. “The experience of sympathetic emotions and concern for another person in distress.” Pavey, Greitemeyer, & Sparks (2012, p. 681) 30. “The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” Pease (1995, p. 202) 31. “The ability to anticipate and share others’ emotional states.” Pelligra (2011, p. 170) 32. “A shared emotional experience occurring when one person (the subject) comes to feel a similar emotion to another (the object) as a result of perceiving the other’s state.” Preston (2007, p. 428) 33. “Subject’s state results from the attended perception of the object’s state” Preston & de Waal (2002, p. 4) 34. “To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ condition.” Rogers (1975, p. 2) 35. “An affective response to the directly perceived, imagined, or inferred feeling state of another being.” Singer & Lamm (2009, p. 82) 36. “A distinction between oneself and others and an awareness that one is vicariously feeling with someone but that this is not one’s own emotion.” Singer & Steinbeis (2009, p. 43) 37. “An ability to understand another person’s perspective plus a visceral or emotional reaction.” Smith (1759, cited by Marshall et al., 1995, p. 100) 38. “A category of emotional responses that are felt on behalf of others.” Stocks et al. (2011, p. 3) 39. “An observer reacting emotionally because he perceives that another is experiencing or about to experience an emotion.” Stotland et al. (1978, p. 12) 40. “A process of humanizing objects, of reading or feeling ourselves into them.” Titchener (1909, cited by Duan & Hill, 1996, p. 261) 41. “A basically passive process of information gathering.” Van der Weele (2011, p. 586) 42. “The attempt by one self-aware self to comprehend unjudgmentally the positive and negative experiences of another self.” Wispé (1986, p. 318) 43. “A basic, irreducible, form of intentionality that is directed towards the experiences of others.” Zahavi (2008, p. 517) Cuff et al. (2014). Empathy: A Review of the Concept.   https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073914558466 There is no set definition of empathy. Cuff et al. identify 40+ definitions.

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the dangers of empathy · advancing research 3 Our modern mindset affords us empathy for only living beings. WHAT IS CURIOSITY? “We think of empathy as an intimate, feeling- based understanding of another’s inner life. We do not think of it as a way of understanding inanimate objects.” — Gregory Currie 6 Empathy for Objects1 Gregory Currie We think of empathy as an intimate, feeling-based understanding of another’s inner life. We do not think of it as a way of understanding inanimate objects. Yet a century ago, talk of empathy for objects would have seemed very natural; it was the theme of a group of thinkers whose writings helped to found the notion of empathy itself. They were particularly interested in empathy as a means of attending to the aesthetic properties of things. That earlier programme will be my starting point, and I’ll call the participants in it the Empathists. I will move on quickly to see what light can be shed on their idea of empathy for objects by current research in the sciences of mind. I identify a class of processes which, I claim, underlie empathy for objects as well as personal empathy; these processes are often called simulative in a special sense that I will try to explain. I then have two questions to which I seek answers of at least a preliminary sort. What sort of access to worldly things, including artworks, are we given by these simulative processes; is it, in particular, a perceptual form of access? Second, what role if any does conscious awareness of these processes play in our aesthetic encounters with things? 6.1 Einfühlung The work of the Empathists has now largely disappeared from view, and the contem- porary research which supports some of its claims owes little to it.2 In some respects it 1 Versions of this paper were read to the Claremont Philosophy Colloquium at Pitzer College, and at conferences and colloquia at the Universities of Barcelona, Durham, Geneva, Illinois Urbana-Champagne, Nottingham, and Otago. Aaron Meskin, Jerome Singer, and Kathleen Stock commented on the paper at Durham and I am grateful for their criticisms and suggestions. Thanks also to Noe ¨l Carroll, Paul Harris, Henry Kripps, Patrizia Lombardo, Michele Miozzo, Margaret Moore, Kevin Mulligan, Jenefer Robinson, and Kendall Walton. Comments from Rae Langton brought about some late changes to Section 2, while Matthew Kennedy and Murray Smith were especially helpful in formulating the claims of Section 3. Discussions with Michael Mack helped me to ﬁnd my way through some of the history. 2 Kevin Mulligan brought to my attention Melchior Pala ´gyi, an intriguing ﬁgure whose work, contem- porary with that of the Empathists but not so far as I know related to it, is suggestive of the direction empirical work has subsequently taken. William Boyce Gibson wrote an appreciative, two-part account of Pala ´gyi’s work, the second part of which describes his theory of the imagination (1928). 80

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the dangers of empathy · advancing research 3 103 : , of design decision-making well in mind. Because we now operate in a globalized state of culture, design needs to seek new territories to off- set the relentless uniformity derived from our current cycle of mass culture/consumption. As defined here, care cannot follow trends that become out-dated after a short time, and therefore reflects a profound evolution in our vision and perception of the world and our way of inhabiting it. Because our universe has become a territo- ry, all dimensions of which may be traveled both in time and space, it is only with care that design can make contributions towards the maintenance of a stable environment and sensible material situation worldwide. Further, design needs to take as much care as possible as it evolves its educational and professional practices because it can now only try to make sense from journeying through a chaotic and undisciplined ecology layered with non-essentials. It must be stressed that care is not a service product designed primarily to be served. Like design, the purpose of care is to affect the way we live. In our increas- ingly population-aging world, within which we are about to cross a demographic landmark of huge social and economic importance—the proportion of the global population aged 65 years and over is set to outnumber the population of children under five years of age for the first time—how we design and care for unprecedented numbers of pensioners and retirees will bring with it huge challenges for policy- makers, designers, healthcare providers, and families. ³⁴ There will be more than 1 billion people living in the world who will have effectively aged out of its workforce by 2040. With care, however, design can play a major role in transforming how health and social care looks and feels for many of these people. Working collaboratively, designers, to- 34 National Institute on Aging. Global Health and Aging, Washington D.C., USA: National Institute on Aging and National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011. 29 projects of the user and designer. The phenomenon of fashion points to new possibilities for the notion of usability, wherein people might now have to craft their own personalized and customized world. ³³ 08 Design with Care With the failure of the structural mega-programs of the twentieth century, there is a need to transgress frigid technological perfection into genial ecological possibilities, and this has to be done with care. In this context, care refers to designing with the macro and micro social, technological, economic, environmental and political effects 32 Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York, NY, USA: Ballantine Books, 1972. 33 Bremner, C. “Usability.” In Design Dictionary: Perspectives on Design Terminology, edited by T. Marshall & M. Erlhoff, pgs. 425-428. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser, 2008. Dialectic Volume I, Issue I: Theoretical Speculation The Concept Of The Design Discipline . ¹ ² 1. Imagination, Lancaster University, 2. Charles Sturt University, School of Creative Industries, Australia : Rodgers, P.A., & Bremner, C. “The Concept of the Design Discipline.” Dialectic, 1.1 (2016): pgs. 19-38. : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/dialectic.14932326.0001.104 Abstract In their previous work, the authors have demonstrated that the discipline of design has been superseded by a condition where conventionally set design disciplines have dissolved. ¹²³ In this age where design is typified by fluid, evolving patterns of practice that regularly traverse, transcend and transfigure historical disciplinary and conceptual boundaries, the authors have argued that globalization and the proliferation of the digital has resulted in connections that are no longer ‘amid,’ cannot be measured ‘across,’ nor encompass a ‘whole’ system. In short, this ‘disciplinary turn’ has generated an ‘other’ dimension—an alternative disciplinarity. ⁴ Moreover, this reliance on the ‘exhausted’ historic disciplines has become obsolete as the boundaries of our understanding have been superseded by a boundless space/time that we call ‘alterplinarity.’ ⁵ The fragmenta- tion of distinct disciplines has shifted creative practice from being ‘discipline-based’ to ‘issue- or project-based.’ ⁶ Consequently, this paper presents a manifesto for the future design discipline that emphasizes disposing carefully of what you know, teaching what you do not know whilst al- ways taking design seriously, protecting us from what we want, objecting to sustaining everything, designing without reproach, ensuring that objects are invisible but designed with care and within history whilst exploring design as an idea rather than an ideal. 1 Rodgers, P.A. & Bremner, C. “Alterplinarity—‘Alternative Disciplinarity,’ in Future Art and Design Research Pur- suits.” Studies in Material Thinking, 6 (2011). 2 Rodgers, P.A. & Bremner, C. “Exhausting Discipline: Undisciplined and Irresponsible Design.” Architecture and Culture, 1.1 (2013): pgs. 138-158. 3 Ibid. 4 Rodgers, P.A. & Bremner, C. “Alterplinarity—‘Alternative Disciplinarity,’ in Future Art and Design Research Pur- suits.” Studies in Material Thinking, 6 (2011). 5 Rodgers, P.A. & Bremner, C. “Exhausting Discipline: Undisciplined and Irresponsible Design.” Architecture and Culture, 1.1 (2013): pgs. 138-158. 6 Heppell, S. “RSA Lectures: Stephen Heppell: Learning 2016,”RSA Lectures, 30 June, 2006. Online. Available at: http://www.teachers.tv/video/4957 (Accessed December 22, 2010). Copyright © 2016, Dialectic and the Design Educators Community ( ).All rights reserved. Rodgers, P.A., & Bremner, C. “The Concept of the Design Discipline.” Dialectic, 1.1 (2016): pgs. 19-38. “ Care refers to designing with the macro and micro social, technological, economic, environmental and political effects of design decision-making well in mind.” — Rodgers and Bremner

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