In Rawls’ thought experiment for his veil of ignorance philosophy, no one class of people is entitled to advantages over any other. Not knowing the demographic and cultural specifics of another should result in an attitude of mutual respect. Practically, the phrase “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” is a popular adaptation of this philosophy.
American songwriter Joe South introduced the phrase to a popular audience with his 1970 hit, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” later covered by such diverse singers as Bryan Ferry, Harry Belafonte, and Elvis Presley (Boyd, 2014). Although a simple sentiment plainly articulated, South’s song speaks to how most confrontations and ethical dilemmas should be resolved – by reducing the self and considering the other. Although never mentioned, the song was popular because it expressed a value necessary in private and public interactions – empathy.
As with the tune, Rawls’ work is considered an answer to prejudice and discrimination as it too is a call for empathy. Nevertheless, empathy is controversial. If you have too much of it, you might be patronizing toward those who need assistance and not regard another as an equal. But if you have too little, the stories told through the media regardless of production values and technologies may be viewed as merely objects for entertainment purposes. What is needed from visual producers are thoughtful and ethical productions so that presentations act as catalysts for empathetic understanding of complex social issues within a networked culture. If an ethic of empathy is considered, viewers and users will care about those they meet on the printed page or through head-mounted displays with the same level of concern as reporters and producers who research and make the presentations.
Empathy is a fairly new concept. It comes from the German, Einfühlung literally meaning “feeling in.” In 1908 the English word, empathy, came from the Greek pathos for feeling, and em for in. Initially, “feeling in” was not thought of as a way to imagine being in another person’s place. In the 1920s it was used to describe imagined feelings toward an inanimate object. A 1955 Reader’s Digest magazine article defined it for the public as the “ability to appreciate the other person’s feelings without yourself so emotionally involved that your judgment is affected” (Lanzoni, 2015).
Social psychologist Dan Batson (2011) identified eight aspects of empathy: “Knowing another’s thoughts and feelings, imagining another’s thoughts and feelings, adopting the posture of another, actually feeling as another does, imagining how one would feel or think in another’s place, feeling distress at another’s suffering, feeling for another’s suffering, and projecting oneself into another’s situation.” “Feeling in” is now legitimized.
Some social critics have noted that empathy has become the buzzword of the twenty-first century. It is the defining trait of our social and political evolution. Empathy may be to this century what “rights” was to the twentieth century, “equality” was to the nineteenth century, and common sense was to the eighteenth century.
As a word, a concept, and a goal, empathy is everywhere. New parents, college students, doctors in training, and employees of corporations learn of empathetic responses to produce personal, political, and social change. Organizations, such as the Roots of Empathy (n.d.) teach school children to have more of it. Much of this initiative for these programs is because of physical and cyber bullying. Political theory students study Franz de Waal’s, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2010). Author and political advisor, Jeremy Rifkin (2010) encourages empathy to improve our world through his writings and a TED talk. Empathy has entered the workplace with books such as Dev Patnaik’s Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Wide-spread Empathy (2009) that note how the value is good for business.
The link between fiction and empathy has been long established. In Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1988) Atticus Finch says “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that through motion pictures “We search for figures in the light whom we can anchor our empathy to, and swivel our lives accordingly” (Holmes, 2014). Quentin Tarantino explained the importance of empathy as a one-to-one, known personal experience (Ansen, 2003). “A beheading in a movie doesn’t make me wince. But when somebody gets a paper cut in a movie, you go, ‘Ooh!’” Mother Teresa put it in another, more thoughtful, way, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will” (Slovic, 2007). Anecdotes or personal stories are inherently more persuasive than statistics.
In 1982 the video game company Electronic Arts (n.d.) started a revolution in game culture with its debut magazine advertisement that asked the intriguing question, “Can a computer make you cry?” The ad included a promise for the production of “Software worthy of the minds that use it.” Thus began a quest to inculcate Rawls’ concept of empathy – one of the most important emotions humans possess – into the world of gaming. EA Founder Trip Hawkins subsequently raised about 10 million dollars for the organization, “Teach Empathy Through Games” for 10-year-olds (Wan, 2014). In the game, “IF … The Emotional IQ Game,” Hawkins explains,
IF … which was inspired by the Kipling poem of the same name, takes place in a game universe where everything is connected through The Energy Field (so you really need empathy) and where rival dogs and cats are fighting over control but really need to understand and accept each other.
Sounds highly evolved. However, the EA (2017) games that sell the most do not necessarily teach empathy as with such titles as “Madden NFL 17,” “EA Sports FIFA,” “Ultimate Fighting Challenge,” “Battlefield,” and “Titan Fall.” Nevertheless, Hawkins inspired others. Since 2004, “Games for Change” is an organization dedicated to promote social advancement through the use of video games. Its website lists numerous games that teach empathy and understanding. For example, in the newsgames category, players can imagine being Syrian refugees, help solve climate change, or be a reporter in Darfur.
In Nonny de la Peña’s immersive storytelling virtual reality productions such as “Hunger in LA,” “Project Syria,” “Out of Exile,” and “Kiya,” you suspend your disbelief and become a passive witness of people’s lives at a food bank, in Aleppo, intolerance that someone from the LGBTQ community faces, and a violent altercation between a woman and her ex-boyfriend, respectfully. But as well produced as these programs are, cartoon animations have a limited appeal. Some of the most powerful productions are live-action documentary portraits and stories. “After Solitary” is a man’s downward spiral after being subjected to solitary confinement while in prison. This kind of immersive journalism is the future for the profession. There are hundreds of 360-degree virtual reality stories produced by such news organizations as Riot, Frontline, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, ABC News, BBC One, the Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed. Plus, there are countless pieces produced by innovative amateurs and university students seen on YouTube.
As traditional print outlets gradually fade and become replaced by online media, many visual reporters and producers have found ways to tell insightful and moving stories through a combination of still and moving images, audio, and interactive features. Newspapers, magazines, and television stations throughout the world offer viewers a chance to test their level of empathy by the content presented. The National Press Photographers Association and other organizations reward creators with accolades for their efforts. One of the best showcases for high quality productions as well as offering opportunities to fine-tune the skills necessary to create work is the film, design, and educational studio MediaStorm founded by Brian Storm in 2005 (“MediaStorm,” 2017). In-depth, long-term, and classic photojournalistic documentary productions on serious social issues are the organization’s hallmark. Emmy, Edward R. Murrow, and Alfred Dupont awards and nominations have been given to Storm’s producers for such titles as “Marlboro Marine,” “The Sandwich Generation,” “Never Coming Home,” and “Crisis Guide: Darfur.”
In the end, do media productions, whether through traditional or emerging media, make a viewer and/or user more empathetic? When visual productions are most immersive, many think so. For example, as a tool in public relations, Cathe Neukum of the charity organization, International Rescue Committee believes virtual reality technology aids in education and leads to donations. “Four Walls: A Virtual Reality Experience” with Rashida Jones allows a user to be with a Syrian woman and her child in their refugee living space in Lebanon (“How virtual reality lets,” 2016). Neukum says,
We can’t bring donors or people to the field, but we bring the field to donors and our constituents and our supporters. That’s what’s so great about VR, that’s what makes it, I think, such an important tool for charities. The VR experience puts you in the shoes of someone who goes through a journey that ends in homelessness.
The description is the personification of the veil of ignorance philosophy.
Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab has been studying VR since its earliest iterations. He says there is increasing evidence that VR can be more effective than other media in evoking empathy (Novacic, 2015). But it has to be done right.
What we know how to do well is to create these experiences that really leverage what’s called embodied cognition, which is moving through a space, looking around, using your eyes, using your body to interact with the scene and that’s what makes VR special.
However, using VR to promote empathy has its skeptics. Paul Bloom (2016), a Yale psychology professor and author of Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, thinks that if these kinds of VR experiences become common they will be no more effective than any other media.
Feeling the suffering of other people is fatiguing. It leads to burnout. It leads to withdrawal. The best therapists, the best doctors, the best philanthropists are people who don’t feel the suffering of others. It’s just people who care about others and want to help, but do it joyously.
Bloom says he may be old school, but he thinks if you really want to get into the head of another human being and understand them, “try reading a good novel.” Many advocates of immersive storytelling disagree with Bloom as they equate a good novel with a well-produced experience.
As a counter argument to Bloom, Professor of Psychology Richard Beck (2007) believes that empathy is the greatest virtue for humans. He writes,
The only way to create a just and fair society is to imagine what it is like to be other people. What is it like to be poor with kids who need flu shots? What is it like to be born with a mental illness? Or prone to addiction? The list goes on and on. In the end our ability to create a just and fair society is directly tied to how fully we empathize with others. If we can’t empathize with the poor or the mentally ill how could we possibly begin to know what they fairly and justly need and require to thrive and flourish.
He argues that empathy is a complicated topic that should be considered carefully by producers. He writes, “You can’t just blandly say ‘empathy’ without some pragmatic considerations about how to implement it on a practical scale.”
Professor of law and ethics and philosopher, Martha Nussbaum at the University of Chicago argues that immersive stories – whether from books or through head-mounted displays – have the potential to invoke empathetic responses (Conde, 2016). For Nussbaum, schadenfreude, feeling joy at someone else’s pain – the opposite of empathy – is reduced by exemplary productions by those who understand that caring for others is a trait that needs to be carefully nurtured and practiced on a regular basis (Aviv, 2016).
Australian author Rachel Hennessy (2016) known for her novels, The Quakers and The Heaven I Swallowed, wrote,
Creating empathy allows a user to enter the mind of someone whose situation is dissimilar to their own. It is one of the primary functions of storytelling. Through the simple act of stepping into the shoes of another, you the user, can experience a fundamental change in yourself as a person.
(Carson, 2017)
Again, Rawls’ veil of ignorance is referenced.
But of course, virtual reality productions are not the only sources for teaching empathetic responses because whether through film, television, photographs, or augmented devices and whether for entertainment, persuasive, or educational purposes, when technology is combined with compelling stories and have empathy as a guiding principle, the result is a visual ethic that is based on mutual respect between creator and consumer.
In the end, and in conclusion, a study of visual ethics teaches you to care about what you do, what you experience, and what you produce. Demonstrate that concern within every project you undertake. And if you can, and it is no small task, you can say you are on a personal path that leads to more thoughtful communications among producers and better understanding among users.
Be empathetic.
Be ethical.
Bye for now.
See Appendix A for a professional’s approach to finding empathy.
References
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