Cultivating Empathy as a Researcher
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings another person is having, to offer them compassion and “step into their shoes”. Empathy can sometimes be confused with sympathy, which in contrast to empathy, is a feeling of concern or sorrow for another person and their circumstances.
Why is empathy important for a researcher?
As UX professionals, it is our duty to advocate for the users and audiences that we represent. While we may need to prioritize the bottom line when working with key stakeholders, we need to remember to keep users at the core of what we do. A user experience researcher or designer is (too often) the only voice of the user in a room when a team is working on a project.
There’s also a hidden benefit to strengthening your ability to empathize: your users will open up more. If you’re conducting an interview or a moderated test, and you’re genuinely able to express understanding for what another person is feeling and sharing, they will feel more at ease. As a result, they’ll be more inclined to be honest and open with you. The end result: better and more complete data for you to analyze, resulting in research insights that will be more impactful.
While empathy is a vital tool to have in your researcher toolbox, it also strengthens and deepens your personal relationships outside of work. Research across many domains has shown that empathy helps people strengthen relationships within their communities and makes them more inclined to help others and forgive others.
So, how can you cultivate empathy?
Start with yourself: work on self-compassion
You can’t give something to others that you’re in short supply of yourself. One thing that has really helped me get in touch with my feelings and reduce negative self-talk is reading poetry. Creative writing has the ability to remind you that you are not alone—that others have felt the same way and (metaphorically) stood where you’re standing now. By recognizing that others have been where you are, it may allow you to get more in touch with your ability to show compassion for others. Here are two books to get you started:
In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Pádraig Ó. Tuama
Small Stones from the River by Kat Lehmann
Writing exercises and meditation can also be very effective. This How would you treat a friend? exercise sounds incredibly corny. But, when I sat down and followed the steps, I was shocked to learn that it did allow me to get out of my head and in touch with my feelings about myself.
Seek out perspectives and experiences different from your own
Consider how you operate in your day-to-day life. Do you always visit the same websites, check the same news sources? Do your friends all share the same opinions that you do about politics, philosophy, religion, or other similarly juicy topics? Unfortunately, that puts you at risk of living in an echo chamber. Surrounding oneself with others who agree with you and avoiding or outcasting those who disagree creates increasingly polarized opinions over time. And, when we’ve distanced ourselves from others, it becomes much harder to place ourselves in their position and understand their feelings.
The good news is that seeking out diverse perspectives has never been easier. The explosion in user-generated content, both online through social media platforms, and in real life through self-publishing, has allowed people who have never had the opportunity to share their lived experiences.
Additionally, as researchers, we’re innately curious beings. We can use this to our advantage and remind ourselves to cast a broader net when recruiting participants, designing survey questions, or conducting a literature review.
Recap
Empathy is a skill that can be developed over time. It benefits you and your interpersonal relationships in both your work and personal life. In order to cultivate empathy, try starting with yourself and giving yourself more compassion. Then, look for ways to connect with people different from you. Seeking out diverse perspectives will enable you to avoid developing extremist opinions and “othering” those who disagree with you. Instead, you’ll be able to more deeply consider how others are feeling and why they may be feeling that way. And—as we all know, getting to the “why” is the crux of any good research endeavor.