Phase Two: Exploratory Research
Weeks 2 through 5
After receiving feedback from our Microsoft liaisons, we set out almost immediately delving deeper into the research outlined by our hunt statements.
For the sake of our exploratory research, we’ve decided to focus specifically on the experience of refugees, because among immigrants, they seem to be particularly vulnerable, and are often subjected to particular scrutiny from immigration critics.
Throughout this phase, we’ve been grappling with the question of whether we hadn’t scoped down our territory enough, or whether it was too soon to set stronger boundaries. But each new piece of information contributed to the same picture, and we’re hoping that by next week, we’ll have a stronger idea of where our solution needs to be situated. In the meantime, here are the key insights from each piece of research we’ve done thus far.
Secondary Research on Empathy
Despite having spent considerable time defining empathy for the purposes of our project, we keep returning to it (and rightfully so!).
What works, and what doesn’t?
Aadya’s done tons of research on empathy, particularly about the effects of positive and negative empathy.
- The Emerging Study of Positive Empathy: Negative empathy is responding to another person’s distress or hardship, and positive empathy is sharing in their joy. Positive empathy (or event he prospect of postive empathy) is more effective in motivating people to help others than negative empathy.
- Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: More people are tending to become narcissists which makes empathy more difficult to generate. “Modern society glorified ‘me first’ motives…. may be inadvertently inviting these types to flourish.”
- Why Some People Seem to Lack Empathy: In a brain study, people watched highly emotional videos before and after receiving priming for empathy and compassion separately. What they found was that people primed to feel empathy had brain scans that showed distress, where people primed for compassion reacted positively.
How can it be made actionable?
- One study was about they way stories meant to generate empathy (and therefore donations) was particularly enlightening: If people are presented with both an identifiable victim with statistical data, their donations declined. The data overrides their emotions. In addition, if people are told about these inconsistencies in levels of sympathy, they decrease their giving towards identifiable victims. Money is often concentrated on a single victim rather than disbursing it. Most people don’t calculate the effect of their donation, but are based on spontaneous affective reactions. The human mind reacts more to proportions rather than absolute values. Feelings are easy to override with stats, but the reverse is difficult. Putting feelings over stats is hard when there weren’t feelings there to begin with.
- Palestinian And Israeli Teenagers MEET To Shape Their Future With Tech: What’s most effective is bringing people together for another reason than simply connecting. Some of these things take people to places other than their home town, to teach skills: things like creating music, tech, and social. The most effective seemed to be situations with some kind of proxy activity.
When *doesn’t* empathy work?
- Zadie Smith: We in the West romanticize empathy to the point where it becomes something else. We have this idea of empathy solving world problems, and it’s not necessarily the best way to see things.
The general consensus is that empathy alone isn’t enough, and sometimes isn’t appropriate at all. What matters most is the way things are framed, and that it’s done in a way that inspires action.
Conversations with helpers
Interview: Leslie Aizenman, Jewish Children and Family Services
We met with Leslie in her office in Squirrel Hill. She outlined the services they provide, and gave us an idea of what the experience for refugees is like when they first arrive.
Lucia LoTempio & Kelsey Robinson, City of Asylum
We visited the properties managed by City of Asylum, including their bookstore (Alphabet City), community garden, and homes for hosting writers in exile. Lucia introduced us to a lot of the program’s roots, stemming from a pair of “bad landlords” who were compassionate enough to delayed rent that they decided to donate their properties to a greater cause.
Kelsey is a new volunteer at City of Asylum, and in talking to her, we began to understand the motivations of people who decide to help. Kelsey has spent considerable time abroad in South America, and believes in the healing power of art. She’s interested in starting a similar artist-in-residence program there, and is looking to City of Asylum for inspiration. (She also just loves them.)
Elli, The ReDI School
Tilo’s friend Elli recently started working with the ReDI (Refugee Digital Integration) School, a non-profit in Germany that focuses on equipping refugees with digital literacy to allow them to thrive in a world of Western technology.
Being particularly sensitive to refugees’ cultural norms, they even offer classes exclusively for women. Their goal is not only to help refugees acclimate to their new home, but also to combat a lack of professional proficiency due to Germany
Lorenz, Flüchtlingspaten Syrien (Syrian Refugee Sponsors)
Another friend of Tilo’s helps run an organization that facilitates and raises funds to help Syrians relocate and get settled. The organization was started by his father, who kept the operation rather covert, speaking with refugees through WhatsApp. They were compelling and emotional, and often so graphic and desperate that they couldn’t help but do something. However, these stories would be overwhelming when presented to the general public.
So the stories they share out are ones of success—with refugees who have resettled successfully. The organization has to curate these stories carefully to get the public to empathize with their cause.
Conversations with refugees and experts
Interview: Silvia Mata Marin, PhD candidate in transition design
Silvia’s research focuses primarily on this particular wicked problem, and she was an invaluable resource for contextualizing the refugee experience.
She helped us distinguish the differences between a refugee, an asylum seeker, and other types of migrants. Though we decided to focus on refugees because of the particular challenges they face, Silvia actually informed us that they tend to have more protection and support resources than other migrants (which is interesting in retrospect, because it seems like they too have very little).
She also highlighted that from an outside perspective, “An economically sustainable refugee is a successful refugee.” This seems consistent with other attitudes we’ve seen (even from refugees themselves!), but it has us questioning where our priorities as humanity should lie—shouldn’t the right to life trump all that?
Guided Storytelling: a Bosnian Refugee who emigrated to Australia
We got to speak to a woman who fled Croatia/Bosnia after a war broke out. Her family’s journey first took them to Norway, and finally to Australia as students.
They were affluent in Croatia, residing as diplomats and scholars. When war forced them to flee to Norway,
Key takeaways: The first feeling upon escape is relief. Language and community matters a lot.
A Chinese Refugee who emigrated to the Canada
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Conversations with migrant-averse people
Web Eavesdropping
Reddit as a platform provides interesting perspectives—the anonymity can often bring out the worst in people, but the upvoting system keeps things in check by bringing high-quality commentary to the top.
By digging into a few threads, we were able to uncover trends in attitudes fairly consistent with our other conversations.
I’m split on this. I believe our country should have borders and don’t want Pittsburgh to be a safe haven for illegals, especially if it comes at the expense of the legal citizens of Pittsburgh via a cut in federal funding.
I dont understand why lots of other countries have very strict immigration laws (ex: canada) yet we’re expected to just accept everyone. We cant even help a lot of our own citizens why should we waste resources on these people?
It’s a security question. Odds are way too high a single male Syrian refugee will be dangerous. Meanwhile, I dont think child refugee with his mother is likely to be a security threat.
Conversation: A dual US-Canadian citizen who studied political science
We also reached out to our inner circle to gain perspectives from folks who are less-than-supportive of incoming refugees. One was a well-educated man with a background in political science who had thought about and researched this topic thoroughly; it was refreshing to see responses that were not stoked solely by fear.
As he understands it, nation-states are under no obligation to accept refugees, and if doing so is in conflict with their vision of their nation, then they should not have to abide by any international mandates, regardless of any compassionate motivation.
This was interesting to hear because it contributes to a spectrum of motivations: while some people had empathic considerations behind their concern about migrants, his seemed markedly less so.
Conversation: A social worker who is frustrated by a missing system of support
Another friend has been on the inside of the refugee support system and finds herself rather jaded by the government. She is unconvinced that the government is capable of allocating resources effectively as it is, and adding refugees into the mix puts strain everyone.
As a clinical social worker, I have viewed all of the previously mentioned populations (and more) suffer greatly. I have become both exhausted and jaded with the systems we have in place to help these individuals, and now own my own private practice instead. In my opinion, order to help refugees effectively, we would have to provide shelter, food, and medical care, at least temporarily. In order to get everyone some kind of legal status, we would have to send lawyers too. Also, in my opinion, we are already *not* providing shelter, food, health care, etc. adequately to our citizens that need the help.
So while I do feel the “us vs. them” mentality is misguided, I understand it.
Competitive Analysis
Be My Eyes (Actionable empathy)
This app allows seeing people to be called on demand to help visually impaired people in real time. Tilo on our team has signed up to be a helper, but has yet to be able to engage with the real-time interactions because the number of volunteers far exceeds the number of people who need help!
What’s intriguing about this is the generation of helper’s high just from anticipation—it makes people excited about the prospect of altruism! It also has a very low barrier for entry—the investment in the altruistic act is not burdensome, and there is a directly palpable feeling that you’ve made a difference.
Bury Me, My Love (A story about refugees)
This is a choose-your-own (or someone else’s)-adventure game intended to highlight the human commonalities between refugees and the countries they emigrate to. In the game, you take on the role of Majd, who is advising his wife, Nour, as she flees Syria with her sights on Germany. They joke and relate to one another like any young couple, in language relatable to a WEIRD audience.
BMML is a realistic journey, based on the experience of many migrants reaching out to home via WhatsApp. The text-based presentation allows for there to be some skirting of the worst of the experience, while still alluding to the hardship and the tension of gaps in communication.
Its biggest flaw, for our purposes, is that its audience is inherently empathetic to the refugee experience, otherwise it’s unlikely they’d consider playing it.
HiNative & Couchsurfing
These are two platforms dedicated to goodwill between cultures presented in very different ways.
Couchsurfing allows people to open their homes to travelers for a place to crash and cultural exchange. At least initially, they encouraged people to make requests based on mutual interests, and in this way, many felt intense gratification in learning about new people and places. On the flipside, though, people in heavily popular areas are inundated with requests, leaving them to have to sift through mountains of requests and make judgment calls about who to take in. The process often feels job-like and takes the joy out of the interaction.
HiNative operates on exchange as well, but with languages. Here, participants register their languages of expertise and languages of interest, and post for help answering communication questions. Some of the questions are very interesting, and spark deeper exchanges about differences in cultural interpretations of concepts. But in some language pairs, a few users dominate, asking too many questions and leaving little opportunity for diversity. Sometimes, even, it seems as if users exploit the platform for homework help.
The takeaway is that platforms for cultural exchange are great!…when they are balanced.
Humans of New York (Empathetic storytelling)
What’s remarkable about HONY is the nuance with which they pick up on the stories of others. More than stories that are extremely heavy or whimsical, the ones with oscillation in the narrative leave the strongest impression.
What does this all mean?
After a couple of intense synthesis sessions, we’ve landed on a handful of key insights, brought forward to Microsoft:
[slides will go here!]
