Situational determinants of cognitive, affective and compassionate empathy in naturalistic digital interactions.
The paper explains how empathy is apparent in digital, computer mediated spaces. The experiment was to see what grades of empathy were presented by students when engaging with computer based social interaction. The students responded to an digital interaction diary. The study found that computer mediated communication was effective in passing on the social emotion of empathy.
Roberts and Powell explain that little is known about the relationship between humans in the presence of technology and still much is yet to be found in the absence of the technology. They explain empathy as the ability to recognise, feel and/or react compassionately to others emotional states. They explain that prior to recent advances computer mediated communication was demonised for being a compassion barren, lack in the nonverbal channels nessicary for intimate, connected experiences with one another. They explain that there is a lack of evidence to prove this. This made me think of trolling and cyber bullying which is prominent as an issue in youths who are growing up in the age of virtual communication. However to critically assess this, it may be useful to research what emotions can be perceived in virtual spaces and what impacts of virtual spaces allow this kind of cyber bullying. They state that they have found through social media sites that people have developed meaningful, empathic relationships and that blog posts can often be emotive, often passing over emotive responses.
The paper explains that empathy is a complex phenomenon that often represents related but fundamentally separate emotions to the ones of the person with the felt experience. It is often spoken about beside emotions of compassion, concern and sympathy. The paper explains that empathy is not a felt experience but the reaction to anothers emotions. They explain that cognitive empathy is when we recognise the emotion being felt by another person. They explain emotional empathy as where a person can actually feel what another person is feeling. Compassionate empathy is when the people perceives another persons emotion and want to help the other person. They explain that these emotional empathy levels are firstly initiated by cognitive empathy, followed by emotional or compassionate empathy however emotional empathy does not have to be felt to acquire compassionate empathy. They explain that compassionate empathy has been evident of positive social outcomes such as the willingness to help.
The paper explains that these online spaces can produce empathic interpersonal relationships and further cross-cultural relationships that eliminate group prejudice. It is apparent in the research that they have produced that digital empathy exists in computer mediated communication and that emotions can be passed on through these devices. In the text they mainly respond to language and how people respond to written text.
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