Empathy Assignment

Background Details

What is empathy? Why is empathy important to professionals of all kinds? How is empathy associated with the writing process? In what ways and is empathy important to those seeking to address global challenges and foster social change?

While there are many definitions of empathy, the most common metaphor for empathy is “walking in another person’s shoes”. Some of the definitions of empathy include:

· Knowing another persons internal state, including thoughts and feelings

· Awareness and insight into the feelings, emotions, and behavior of another person, and their meaning and significance

· Adopting the posture or matching the neural responses of an observed other

· Coming to feel as another person feels

· Intuiting or projecting oneself into another's situation

· Imagining how another is thinking and feeling

· Imagining how one would think and feel in the other's place

· Feeling distress at witnessing another person's suffering

· Feeling for another person who is suffering, which includes feeling sympathy, compassion, tenderness and the like (feeling for the other, and not feeling as the other)

· The power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation

Simon Baron-Cohen (2003) wrote “empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be [...]There are two major elements to empathy. The first is the cognitive component: Understanding the others feelings and the ability to take their perspective [...] the second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer's appropriate emotional response to another person's emotional state. [1] While empathy is frequently associated with notions of altruism or compassion, it is important to note that empathy is a tool in warfare, criminal profiling, and intelligence analysis.

While old debates around empathy centered on whether empathy was a natural and instinctive trait or a learned phenomenon. New research from social-cognitive neuroscience and related fields indicates that like language or eye and hand coordination, empathy is an innate human capability that can be enhanced by purposeful and informed guidance.

One method that can assist in developing empathy is reading, listening to and analyzing nonfiction accounts of eyewitness. Given that there is a large body of literature written by those who suffer under the burden of major global challenges. Your next challenge is to come to a greater level of empathetic understanding of the people who have the most to lose if the status quo continues unchanged, or to gain if lasting systemic change takes place.

Task Description

Step 1: Write a vivid and compelling account that describes in as much detail as possible the experience of someone who has first hand experience with the global challenge you are investigating. Try to capture the many complexities of the issue that are made visible by the person's individual experience. Use quotes, images, and any other material you can find to allow the person's words and experience to take center stage for the reader.

Step 2: Give a short 5-minute in-class presentations relating to the material you have read.

Step 3: Bring excerpts from the eyewitness accounts you have used. In class we will compare and contrast the reactions of witnesses to different challenges.

Audience

Address this paper to a fellow George Mason student who has no knowledge of your topic.

Format

Your paper should be between 600 and 900 words. You should write in a narrative format. Use quotation marks and cite sources wher appropriate.

Process

You have one week to complete this assignment. Bring a rough draft to class and be prepared to read it aloud to the class. You may prepare a maximum of 8 powerpoint slides to accompany your reading.

Grading Criteria

The quality of your narrative (a concise and clear account of the person's experience highlighting the impact on their lives, rather than your impression or feelings about what they experienced.) 40%

Readability (clear sentences, no confusing passages, clear connection to the global challenge you are researching and the harms and causes of that challenge.) 40%

Creativity 10%

Grammar and Correctness 10%

[1] Baron Cohen, S. (2003). The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain, New York: Basic Books.