Empathy, intelligence and imaginaton

Feb 21, 2007

Summary: Empathy may be a “human literacy”– one that may help us improve the way humans think about each other and relate to each other. (end summary)

Empathy seems to be an emergent thought process that arises from complex correlations between present and theoretical, linear and non-linear thinking processes. (e.g. how would it feel to be standing in that person’s shoes?; what lead this person to make this error? What lead someone to come up with this innovative design?)

Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Empathy may be a type of imagination paired up with theoretical scenario building, and a myriad of inquiry models.

Empathy seems to allow the practitioner to imagine him or herself super-imposed on someone’s place. It allows the practitioner to superimpose him or herself anywhere and under any conditions across time and space. It is a type of organized imagination that re-constructs variables and factors to discover what it must be like to “experience” that which is imagined. In other words empathy may be an “experience focused imagination“.

In order to think about risk we need empathy, in order to use lateral thinking you need to use related empathy, in order to strategize you need to use empathy, in order to use systems thinking you need systemic-empathy and in order to use multispective thinking you need to use constantly shifting multi-agent empathy

But even within empathy we may sub-divide empathy into many types and levels. Someone who practices empathy in a holistic sense may re-construct environmental variables, social variables, historical variables, emotional variables and physical variables. Other empathy practitioners may focus on a “narrow empathy”, this “reductive empathy” may give rise to more distorted re-constructions and theoretical conclusions.

Multispective empathy – complex, organized imagination?
Multispective empathy may be a multi-relationship-focused empathy. It is a way of thinking that may construct and re-construct scenarios from different perspectives. It calls for the constant shift of variables and factors in order to keep shifting perspectives. Like the other empathy-based thought systems multispective may be sub-divided to different levels and different scopes. I would propose that a more thorough multispective may include cultural factors, the re-construction of complex belief networks, philosophy networks, emotional experience networks, desire networks, goal networks, need networks, the complexity of the past with all its loaded variables, the relationship of linear factors and those based on non-linear correlations, etc. In other words multispective not only tries to imagine every factor and variable possible but it attempts to keep shifting perspectives to stage more complex correlations and possibilities. In short multispective empathy is aware of the complexities created by change and it attempts to understand the constantly changing dynamics.

Who uses holistic empathy?
(a couple of examples) (Some) Psychology counselors, human factors specialists, forensic specialists, designers, ergonomists, user experience designers, some doctors approaching medicine from a mind+body+environment perspective.

Who uses multispective empathy?
Some of the same as above…and writers, some artists, some art/social critics, some psychologists…etc (hopefully some day we can add on here “multispective thinkers” and we will all know what that means).

Humane systems design?
To summarize, I believe that empathy is a type of complex imagination that allows us to think from a much broader correlation-ready perspective. I believe that it is a type of emergent intelligence that may require a bottom-up study of human nature and or a multi-disciplinary/holistic academic learning (e.g. anthropology, history, consciousness, philosophy, archeology, architecture, politics, art, etc).

Related in this blog:

Empathy and T-shaped individuals >>

Do Animals Feel Empathy >>