Digital empathy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Digital empathy is the application of the core principles of empathy – compassion, cognition, and emotion – into technical designs to enhance user experience. It involves both cognitive and affective components of empathy. This includes the ability to understand another person's perspective and share or respond to their emotions and experiences in a digital environment. Scholars have explained that it requires people to interpret emotion based on limited social cues, like emojis.[1] [2]According to Friesem (2016), digital empathy is the cognitive and emotional ability to be reflective and socially responsible while strategically using digital media.[3]
Digital empathy finds its roots in empathy, a human behaviour explained by cognitive and behavioral neuroscientists as, “a multifaceted construct used to account for the capacity to share and understand the thoughts and feelings of others." [4] The neurological basis for empathy lies in mirror neurons, where perception and imitation facilitate empathy.[5]
At the centre of empathy creation is communication.[6] As communication became increasingly online due to the rapid adoption of digital communications technology in the 1990s through the 2000s, society’s communication patterns altered rapidly, both positively and negatively.[7][8] Technology usage has transformed human interactions into digital conversations where people now have the ability to instantly share thoughts, feelings, and behaviors via digital channels in a few seconds. Digital empathy often lacks nonverbal cues that people use to determine context like tone, body language, and facial expression which makes the reader have a difficult time interpreting the message. It has been observed and researched that digital conversations threaten the appropriate expression of empathy, largely as a result of the “online disinhibition effect”.[9] Psychologist Dr. John Suler defines the online disinhibition effect as the tendency for “ people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world”.[9] Research has shown that the shift away from face-to-face communication has caused a decline in the social-emotional skills of youth and suggest that "generations raised on technology" are becoming less empathic.[10]
Digital Empathy
Increasingly online communication patterns, and the associated phenomenon of online disinhibition, have led to research on "digital empathy". Christopher Terry and Cain (2015) in their research paper “The Emerging Issue of Digital Empathy” define digital empathy as the “traditional empathic characteristics such as concern and caring for others expressed through computer-mediated communications.”[11] Yonty Friesem (2016) wrote that “digital empathy seeks to expand our thinking about traditional empathy phenomena into the digital arena."[3]
In the handbook of research on media literacy in the digital age, Friesem (2015) further elaborates on this concept by stating that, “digital empathy explores the ability to analyze and evaluate another’s internal state (empathy accuracy), have a sense of identity and agency (self-empathy), recognize, understand and predict other’s thoughts and emotions (cognitive empathy), feel what others feel (affective empathy), role play (imaginative empathy), and be compassionate to others (empathic concern) via digital media."[12]
The importance of digital empathy is the role it plays in maintaining our relationships in world of increasing communication through technology. As our communication becomes more digital, people may have less opportunities than before to interpret social cues which impacts understanding levels.[13][14]