Advocacy and Empathy Avoidance
One of the biggest impediments to changing society is getting people to care about our issues. Empathy avoidance is everywhere, the question is: how do we face the problem?
(This post is part of a series I’m doing on advocacy and psychology, bringing some basic psychological principles to the realm of politics and organizing. In my opinion, even the smartest political commentators and theorists are generally pretty miserable when it comes to interpersonal communication and persuasion, and it shows in how their followers interact with the broader world. I wish you success in whatever campaign you fight for, hope these tips can help.)
Have you ever worked on a campaign to change people’s behavior? Has anyone ever approached you about an issue, and asked for your help? If so, you’ve likely encountered the phenomenon of empathy avoidance, or as Daniel Batson put it: “forestalling feeling for another in order to escape the motivational consequences.” Contrary to what many people will tell you: caring is costly, and most of us are afraid to do it. Caring can provoke anxiety, it can involve personal distress, and it can cost us our blood and sweat. When people are asked to care, and more importantly, to act on that caring, many will find any off-ramp from that highway toward change. Here are some ways that empathy avoidance impacts our social movements, our audience, and our advocacy, perhaps you recognize a few:
Some people will instinctively disagree with us, or argue with us, because our statements provoke unpleasant feelings of caring within them. Rather than any flaw in our logic, our appeals present a costly idea, and some in our audience will turn away rather than face the cost.
Apathy can neutralize feelings of empathy and let a person off the hook for any obligation to change. Saying that one is helpless to make a difference will tamper down any feelings of care or responsibility to act.
Some people will agree with us when they are presented with an argument for empathy, but will move on from the campaign once the unpleasant feelings have subsided and/the activist has left the room/they’ve closed that tab on their browser.
People will do a small token gesture for a problem, and then exit the movement, convinced they’ve “done their part.”
Outright denialism. Some in our audience will deny that the problem exists.
People will limit their attention to the problem. They will block sources of information about the issue, or gravitate to sources that portray the issues in positive or glowing terms.
People will choose their own pleasure over helping others, and distract away from the sense of caring. Even though helping others has been proven to make people feel good, our instinctive response will often blind us to that possibility, and convince us that our own entertainment is a surer bet.
It’s pretty obvious: empathy avoidance is a huge issue! As Robert Bly put it: “The habit of not-seeing, and lying about life, has been attached like a limpet to the American soul,” but I would argue that the issue is global in scale. There are several good reasons, however, why there’s no use in railing against empathy avoidance, or criticizing people who do it: firstly, we all participate in empathy avoidance from time to time, it is a deeply-ingrained habit within all of our lives. It’s not even always a bad idea, as avoidance can be an important tool in self-preservation. Secondly, as any parent can attest, arguing with a person’s instincts is a losing battle, vastly inferior to artfully navigating a person’s instincts to persuade them of the necessary change. Thirdly, writing people off who avoid empathy as “selfish” or “ignorant” does nothing to help the causes we care about, and in fact undermines our effectiveness by making us scorn our audience (which, even if we think we can hide, people can still subconsciously detect).
Nick Cooney*, an animal rights activist, framed the challenge of advocacy well, and it’s a model that I’ve returned to again and again when working with a variety of campaigns. When we go out to appeal to people for change, the question we should ask is not “What feels right?” nor “what the other person deserves?” but rather “what is most effective for the cause?” As the people who often care the most deeply about a particular injustice and know most keenly the pain that is being perpetrated, activists are in a difficult position: they must bridge an immense gap between the caring and the uncaring. It can be personally satisfying to damn the world to hell for its uncaring, but that song has never been proven to draw an audience aside from the already converted.
Effective ways to combat empathy avoidance include:
Pointing out to a person that your suggested action is already in keeping with their values or beliefs
Showing that the action has a real positive impact on those in need
Making it clear that there’s always more to be done, and that every little bit helps
Encouraging people out of their learned helplessness and rewarding their small positive steps
Pointing out the similarities between the oppressed group and your audience, rather than pointing out the oppressed group’s innocence (more on this in another post).
Perhaps most importantly, and counterintuitively, humanity’s tendency to avoid empathy suggests that making a person feel bad about an issue is counterproductive, and making big appeals or demands before building empathy will doom a message’s reception. The goal is to get our audience to empathize with the oppressed, not to have the audience self-centeredly wince at their own feelings of pain or disillusionment. Having a harshly aggressive message, or one that is built on the idea of provoking negative emotions of discomfort and dissatisfaction, will ensure that only people with highly-refined empathy instincts and great moral courage will be in our rooms, and shut out the wider world.
It’s not an easy task, to fight through basic human impulses to achieve a more compassionate world, and the challenge asks for us as activists to demonstrate an enormous amount of grace and self-control. Effective advocacy can be exhausting, and often gives us short-term frustration, but I’ve found that it is far more satisfying in the long run, and has helped me and others avoid the burnout that comes from pushing for change.
*Cooney’s 2010 book “Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change” is must-read for any social justice activist, in my opinion.