Professional Issues in Creative Media Post 10 - Benefit of Empathy in Design

This blog post is in reference to the topic 'Perils of Empathy' as seen in the Wallstreet Journal article that was put up as part of our course. I had also researched the article on the Universal Mind website called 'The Power and Perils of Empathy'.

Empathy is a powerful innate ability to understand and even feel the pain of the person/character that you are either seeing or hearing about. It cannot be taught. Whether you are upset by a family member not getting the Christmas present that they wanted, or seeing a movie character get punched in the groin and it makes you wince, you are experiencing empathy.  It is well documented that diagnosed psychopaths have a lack of empathy, fear or remorse (as seen by the lack of activity in their cerebral cortex). However new studies have found that it isn't that they have a lack of empathy, as they do with fear & remorse, but rather they have the ability to switch it off and decide who to feel sorry for.

Empathy can be a powerful muse for design in the creative industry. It can be seen more-so in games and film/tv. We can create characters that make the audience feel connected to and make us feel like we are a part of their struggle. The audience would follow the character every step of the way and be emotionally driven when the character gets hurt or heartbroken when the character dies. In one of Alfred Hitchcock's film's, a boy character died in the film and Alfred once said "I should never have killed a character that the audience cared about". But nowadays, the biggest moments in some of the biggest shows in the world, (such as Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc), are when a fan favourite dies as it creates an overwhelming sense of loss and empathy, which in turn make the show all the more memorable.

But empathy can also be a restriction on ideas that you wish to put in as it is now important to fulfill the needs of the viewer to keep them watching. Also now as we are in a very 'PC' culture, it is important not to offend any viewer.

Most importantly, empathy can be a powerful source of inspiration for creation. There was a video that went viral across the internet, as well as the news, of a game developer that had a mother who had always wanted to own a beautiful villa in Spain. But a year before, she was no longer able to walk and was bed ridden from illness. The daughter bought a Oculus Rift developer kit and in the end was able to create a walking simulator which allowed her mother to walk around a photo-realistic spanish villa using the VR hedset.

There are plenty of times where we wish we could turn off our empathy but in fact, we need it for much more than we think.