In a similar manner to last week’s piece, we will start by discussing an impactful book. Prior to reading The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul, I read an equally significant book – Imaginable by Jane McGonigal. McGonigal is a world-renowned futurist and video game designer. The games she designs, however, are not ones played by overly caffeinated teenagers in their basements; they are social simulations of anticipated events within the next five to fifteen years. Furthermore, they are games designed to sharpen the skill of hard empathy.
Some of her notable simulations included events such as a global pandemic and misinformation campaign. These simulations were run in 2010 and 2008, respectively, and the results were impossibly close to what we experienced ten years after her simulations concluded. I won’t go into detail about the results, but they were eerie, and as a result I highly recommend you begin reading Imaginable after finishing this piece.
Defining Hard Empathy
One of the practices McGonigal emphasizes in Imaginable is hard empathy. In order to define that term, let’s first define the reverse – easy empathy. Easy empathy is when we share a common experience with another individual to show we understand their current state. As the name suggests, this practice is not hard to perform.
Hard empathy, on the other hand, is much more difficult. At the highest level, hard empathy is placing yourself in the same situation as the other person. You are not sharing your experience with him or her but rather imagining yourself in his or her situation within your environment.
It is also not “walking a mile in their shoes”, which is what I initially thought it was. What makes this practice challenging is the necessity to dig deeper into every element of that person’s situation then transpose it into your current situation, then extrapolate how you would behave differently or similarly.
The Neurobiology of Hard Empathy
In addition to the introspection required, hard empathy is a difficult practice because of our neurobiology. Specifically, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The mPFC is a subsection of our prefrontal cortex, the area of our brain responsible for executive functioning. Its primary role within the prefrontal cortex is the development of schematic memory.
When we think of memories, most likely we are thinking of episodic memories. Episodic memories are stories. Schematic memories, on the other hand, are rulebooks. These rulebooks trigger when certain sets of circumstances appear that mimic past circumstances. The mPFC then tells you to follow the rulebook such that the situation has an ideal outcome.
High Activity for Ourselves, but Not Others
It’s also critical to understand the mPFC’s activity levels. When we are thinking about ourselves, it is highly active. When we think about others, including our future selves, it is highly inactive. That dichotomy is what makes thinking about the future and hard empathy difficult. Without a common thread tying ourselves to another entity, our brain doesn’t know how to react. When it doesn’t know how to react, it defaults to its schematic memories, aka rulebooks. Replace the term “rulebooks” with the word “biases”, and you begin to see the underpinnings of many social conflicts in today’s world.
Developing Hard Empathy
Hard empathy shouldn’t only be employed to avoid social conflicts. We can and should employ it to increase our understanding of what’s possible. The process of hard empathy is one of many questions, some of which include:
· How would I react if X happened in my community?
· Would I take the same action as the other person if I was in X situation?
· What would be the first sacrifices I would make to combat X? How do they compare to the other person’s sacrifices?
· How would I prepare myself if X happened to me and my family in the future?
The more questions you ask, the more comprehensive of an understanding you’ll have about a particular situation. Included in this understanding, if done diligently, is a schematic of how you would react. Your brain will leverage this schematic generated from a hypothetical situation in the same way as a schematic of an experienced one. Additionally, schematic memories are stronger than episodic ones which means their impact will persist through time.
The Process of Expanding What’s Possible
Although I’ve portrayed it as a challenging process, hard empathy shouldn’t be misconstrued as a challenging process to start applying. The easiest way to begin practicing hard empathy is through conversation with your colleagues, family, and friends.
Rather than discussing the usual set of surface-level nonsense, dig deeper and ask appropriately provocative questions about what they’re currently experiencing. Then, instead of noting the answer, analyze it and determine if under the given circumstances you’d answer your question the way he or she did.
Iterate this process of questioning and reflecting enough times, and you’ll begin to form a clear understanding of both the entity with which you’re interacting and the situation that entity is experiencing. Furthermore, you’ll begin to develop related ideas which spark new interests. I don’t think I need to take this logic any further to illustrate the value of hard empathy.
There is no downside to expanding your understanding of what’s possible. You will generate more powerful ideas, have stronger social interactions, and obtain a perspective on the world only a handful of humans possess.
Be More.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “The easiest way I’ve found to practice the skill of hard empathy is to go to any news source, magazine, or social media, and look for a story about someone experiencing something radically different, almost unimaginably different, from my own life. And then I try to imagine that my life is more like theirs.” – Jane McGonigal