The failure of empathy for the refugee cause
If data isn’t going to be our savior in creating social change then we can at least count on empathy, right?
When we look at buzzwords, empathy is probably one of the most overused. The call for more empathy is everywhere. If you review resources on innovation and design thinking, a key argument for success is empathising with your end users.
Grand communications strategies are built with the sole purpose of driving empathy for a specific group. Former US President Obama stated, “I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us.” I even have friends who have worn “Make empathy great again” t-shirts. Empathy, like data, is everywhere.
So when I stumbled upon the book “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion,” written by Paul Bloom, a Professor of Psychology at Yale University, I was obviously more than intrigued. After consuming the book, I had questions for Bloom — so I scheduled an interview to understand the limits of empathy in our societies better.
The humanitarian sector is obsessed with giving people the “refugee experience” — whether this is through virtual reality, an app, or taking them through what it’s like to be registered. When I questioned Bloom on what people have referred to as “empathy machines”, he was quick to argue the limits of technology as a means for understanding the “refugee experience”.
“Virtual reality is worse than useless. You put them in the shoes of the physical environment of these people, for example, a refugee camp, which could lead to the dangerous delusion that this is what it is all about,” he argues.
Bloom states that in the case of refugees, it is less about being in a rickety boat for a while, but the mental suffering one faces as a refugee, something that often spans decades, which cannot be appreciated or prompted by these tools. The emotions associated with their experience of becoming a refugee is not engendered by such simulations.
During our interview, Bloom also highlighted that he does not disagree entirely with using these simulations, if the singular goal is to attract individual donors at an event or to educate an audience about the physical environment of refugees. But he is also quick to caution that when deciding to donate to a cause, one should focus on the more altruistic idea of “what will do the most good” which then “automatically precludes the idea of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.” One of the critical arguments Bloom presents is understanding how empathy is being used on political discourse continuum. “Empathy has always been used, but now we’re worried because the other side is getting good at it,” he explains.
We discuss the case of newly arrived refugees in Germany, where in one sense the open border policy was driven by empathy for those who were forced to flee, and most Germans were eager to accommodate and welcome those who had newly arrived. This then shocked the other side to start using empathy for arguments such as “what is it like for Germans now losing their jobs” or false claims of refugees bringing terror into communities. Empathy can be used to exploit distinct groups of people, such as refugees or migrants, with the intention of discriminating against or hurting the respective group.
Regardless of which side you are on when it comes to social issues, empathy is a tool that can be used by all parties within a community to promote their viewpoint or opinion.
It is important to also note how Bloom defines empathy, which is feeling what another person feels or synonymously “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.” Therefore, if you are feeling lonely, I could pick up on this loneliness through empathy. This is distinct from compassion which he argues is more centred around the idea that “your life has value to me, I want to help you and improve you.”
In his book, Bloom presents a significant amount of scientific evidence that empathy and compassion activate different parts of the brain and while they may sound similar in theory, this verbal distinction is critical for understanding the risks of empathy in communications.
Bloom argues that there are the moral limits of empathy and there are biases we each have within ourselves that make it a poor moral guide for everyday life. In his book, he explains, “We are not psychologically constituted to feel toward a stranger as we feel toward someone we love. We are not capable of feeling a million times worse about the suffering of a million than about the suffering of one.”
Empathy may appear as an obvious source of compassion, but it can also be a tool that is exploited to harm others. The limits of empathy can be correlated with the innumeracy described by Paul Slovic; a person may act when they see one child in need that looks like them but inaction in the face of large-scale crises.
Design for bad and empathy
I think there are useful parallels in the arguments Bloom presents that can be mirrored in how we discuss the usefulness of design in our work. While design and new solutions can be used for good — they can also be utilised against our own mission and hurt the same people we are striving to protect. Sure, design can be used for social good, but it can also create new challenges in UNHCR’s work. That wall that has gone up, that policy that takes away rights or bans a specific group, that speech or bot on social media sparking hate — it is all product of a different type of careful design.
My final question for Bloom focused on what tools we can use if we aren’t smart enough to rely on empathy. He quickly answered, “I would like to see governments have objective triggers for action — regardless of who is in trouble. It would be good to have a triggering event that forces an investigation or a government to act in the case, for example, of possible genocide.” In an ideal world, Bloom also believes everyday citizens should hold politicians more accountable to their promises or lack of action around the issues that affect us. If we were able to bring rational compassion and rational arguments more effectively into these discussions he argues, the landscape would look very different.
And the best tool for actually driving empathy? Bloom suggests a small, simple resource: a book. “In general, we’re bad at imagining the lives of people very different from us. We’re better off with literature because they provide a more personal experience. The problem of being a refugee is not just sleeping in a tent — it’s not having a home. The hardship of their experiences you simply cannot simulate or begin to imagine.”
The bigger question here might be: how do we make people care if empathy also fails as a tool? How do we make people pay attention when each day presents a new tweet to be angry about, another distraction at the forefront of our newsfeeds, an additional frustration in believing we can’t change the status-quo? Again, this is not to say that there is no place for the role of empathy (or design) in UNHCR Innovation Service’s work — but in the same way, as we must recognise the limits of data, we need to recognise that empathy isn’t necessarily the end all to be all.
In an effort to move past communication strategies that simply “raise awareness” of an issue, the UN Refugee Agency and the University of Florida partnered to better understand how science can connect individuals with calls to actions that will result in lasting difference on the issues that matter most. To discover more from the publication and partnership — follow The Arc here.
