Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand another person's situation and feelings. Our ability to empathize affects how well we communicate our thoughts and feelings with others, how well we understand others, and how comfortable people feel communicating with us. It is at the root of meaningful and deep communication.
Several authors have spoken of the emotionally supportive nature of many online relationships. As early as 1978, Hiltz and Turoff commented that:
Some participants have "come to feel that their very best and closest
friends are members of their electronic group, whom they seldom or never
see."
Hiltz and Turoff, 1978, p. 101.
However, very little work has focused explicitly on empathy online even though messages like the following are common in some communities.
"Whatever you do please don't give up, ... I have been in your spot and
gave up once but when I got help there was no stopping me and I finally
won. Keep your chin up and don't lose faith. Your friend. :)"
bit.listserv.ada.law
"We love and care for everyone in the *family*, and we want to share your
problems, if you want to share them. {{{Hugs}}} & Prayers."
MCLFA Forum (Lupus)
"I'm sorry for your losses. I know what it is to lose the most important
person in your life: I lost my mom in 1993 and still suffer".
TWA Memorial Message Board
"I've received so much support from family, friends and SU I'm not really
used to it, but I REALLY appreciate it."
Sans-Uteri Listserv
Everyone with a reasonable command of the English language has a general understanding of the word 'empathy'. What is less well known is that empathy is key concept in psychotherapy and a fundamental component of successful human communication. Empathy is a "complex psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others" (Ickes, 1997, p.2). The accuracy with which one person can interpret the feelings of another person is known as empathic accuracy. The ability to perceive the feelings of another person accurately is arguably the most fundamental and important aspect of empathy. Empathy is a key ingredient in human communication regardless of the medium used. So far empathy has received surprisingly little attention in computer mediated communication, probably because empathy is generally less obvious in work situations, including computer-supported co-operative work than in informal communication.
From a synthesis of many researchers' work on empathy, Levenson and Ruef (1992, p. 234) identify three different qualities of empathy: (a) knowing what another person is feeling; (b) feeling what another person is feeling; and (c) responding compassionately to another person's distress. This broad characterization provides the basis for our work on empathy in online communities. We refer to communities that exhibit high levels of empathy as 'empathic communities' (Preece, 1998)
Areas of research interest include:
- how to support different communication needs and particularly how to
support empathy as well as factual information exchange,
- understanding the role of moderators in different kinds of communities
and what kind of support tools they need for moderating large communities,
- finding out why and how people lurk and how to support effective
lurking, particularly in patient support groups.
References
Hiltz, S. R. and Turoff, M., (1978) The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
Ickes, W. (Ed.) (1997) Empathic Accuracy, New York: The Guilford Press.
Levenson, R. W. and Ruef, A. M. (1992) Empathy: A physiological substrate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 2, 234-246.
Preece, J. (1998) Empathic Communities: Reaching out across the Web, Interactions, March 1998, 2, 32-43.
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