3 Empathy

Chapter Contents
3.1 What do we mean by ‘empathy’
3.2 Empathy in Academic Libraries
3.3 Empathy as a Path, Not a Replacement
3.4 The Role of the Library
3.5 Historical Empathy and Archival Framework
3.6 The Limits and Critiques of Empathy
Reflective Questions

3.1 What do we mean by ‘empathy’

It is essential that we define empathy clearly, lest we confuse it for sympathy or pity. The word empathy was derived by German psychologist Theodore Lipps from the term ‘einfuhlun’, literally “in-feeling”.^[1] In “Some Thoughts on Empathy”, Szalita notes that “it is good to be able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes, but you have to remember that you don’t wear them.”^[2] Sympathy, however, requires wearing another’s shoes, feeling alongside and suffering with them. A sympathetic approach can quickly become laborious and draining, as the feeling is shared with the sufferer rather than the feeling being acknowledged and observed. In contrast, an empathetic approach requires “engaged detachment”, the ability to observe and understand feelings experienced by another without taking them on as one’s own.^[3]

Laws details a brief history of empathy and defines it as a mode by which we “understand and respond to other’s feelings and emotions.”^[4] Research in neuroscience and evolutionary biology demonstrates that empathy is a necessary tool for social engagement and “empathy is the mechanism through which we gather information to cooperate with others.”^[5]

In The Altruism Question: Towards a Social-Psychological Answer, Baston details the progression of the connotations of the term empathy, its definition having shifted from being a cognitively-based perspective-taking concept in clinical discussions in the 1950s to a more emotionally-based meaning in the 1960s. This emotional meaning became more specific in the late 1970s, being used to refer to emotions that are more focused on the other than on the self, virtually indistinguishable from what has been called pity, compassion or tenderness by many philosophers and early psychologists.^[6]

Empathy is vastly deliberated and debated throughout literature and across multiple disciplines that it is clear that “whatever empathy is, it’s important.”^[7] For the purpose of this handbook, we are using Coplan’s definition of empathy as “a complex imaginative process in which an observer situated another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining clear self-other differentiation.”^[8] It is a means to attempt to understand, value, and appreciate the feelings and perspectives of another without taking them on ourselves.

Empathy does not require an enormous outlay of emotional effort. Small statements or indications of understanding can prove to be effective means of building and maintaining a positive rapport with another.^[9] In Philosophical Explorations, Schramme maintains that one does not need to be in agreement with or endorse the perspective one is trying to understand, that it is enough merely to understand that the relevant experiences of the other are valid and worth understanding.^[10]  Even minimal understanding can enhance engagement.

As information professionals, we understand the current chaos and challenges in the information environment. We too face the difficulties of discerning truth and fact from the manipulated and out-of-context information presented to us as convincingly legitimate, and we understand how disinformation can be easily disseminated far and wide within minutes, churned out faster than one can effectively evaluate and dispel it. Add to this complex psychological, social, and emotional factors that can make learners more susceptible to disinformation, algorithms that create echo chambers preventing alternative and opposing views from being presented to people, and the commodification of content prioritizing controversy over fact and truth, and it is hard to feel anything but empathy for learners who have fallen victim to disinformation.

Exhibiting empathy towards learners who believe in and spread disinformation is not at the expense of teaching valuable information literacy skills or correcting false information beliefs, or with the goal of sparing ourselves potentially uncomfortable interactions. Empathy is being suggested as a tool to help us build connections and establish social capital, particularly with learners mistrustful of institutions and traditional media sources. Learners who feel defensive are unlikely to be open to new information, and “their threshold for understanding may be lowered as their mind and body is in a state of alertness that does not foster understanding and growth.”^[11] Empathetic interactions help to build trust, making it easier for a library worker to “insert logic, factchecking, verification techniques, or critical information literacy skills into their interactions with the patron.”^[12]

3.2 Empathy in Academic Libraries

After the 2016 US presidential election, there were a flurry of news items touting librarian ability, and potentially, their obligation to combat misinformation – they were described as “entering the fray, if not already on the front lines.”^[13] Unfortunately, traditional solutions, like access to information and traditional information literacy methods, have yet to bear fruit in this area.

The Failure of Traditional Frameworks

The evolution of information literacy (IL) frameworks has reached a critical impasse. While traditional models like the CRAAP test^[14] certainly serve a purpose, relevant literature and recent studies suggest these approaches “do not facilitate the identification of misinformation and disinformation”^[15] for our current moment. In fact, existing IL frameworks are often usable in their extant state by the misinformed; movements like “QAnon represent a perverted form of IL, weaponising the same values and principles that inform existing IL frameworks and models”^[16] – utilizing skills like skepticism and primary source verification that we have championed. While our existing conceptions of information literacy frameworks can operate sufficiently in most cases, they may now require new perspectives, or alternatives like an empathetic approach, to help people who are victims of disinformation. Information literacy, in its current academic library instantiation, “may be insufficient to intervene”^[17] because it can treat a psychological and social phenomenon as a simple lack of data or skills. Victims of the disinformation landscape and their beliefs have “proven remarkably resistant to fact-checking and IL efforts in large part because research is baked into”^[18] how these beliefs function and proliferate.

Mechanisms of Interaction with Others’ Beliefs

As human beings, when encountering someone with a belief we want to change, according to theorists, we typically operate within a “regard suite”:^[19]

1. We consider a belief “genuinely theirs.”
2. We hold the believer “responsible” for that belief.
3. We attempt to change that belief by “offering counterevidence or identifying weaknesses in their reasons for belief.^[20]

However, this assumes the learner, in our case, possesses “epistemic autonomy”^[21]—that they have come up with or judged these beliefs independently, including having reviewed “countervailing evidence.”^[22] More likely, as with most people, their “evaluation of evidence and arguments is driven largely by pre-existing beliefs, convictions or motivations, more so than critical evaluation of evidence.”^[23] Many people we encounter may be incapable of this rational behaviour, either temporarily or in the long-term, due to situational and material factors – “[p]eople feel threatened about events and circumstances that make them feel powerless, uncertain and unsafe, and turn to conspiracy theories in an attempt to feel better”^[24]; the university or college experience could be one such factor. For example, if a student has to work while in school and has less time to devote to assignments, they may be grasping for those easy-to-access conspiratorial shortcuts due to higher cognitive load – being busier or more stressed than others can limit one’s capacity to analyze incoming information.^[25] When a student approaches us with a reality-distorted belief, they require a different kind of engagement,^[26] one rooted in empathy rather than a purely adversarial presentation of facts.

Beyond the “Bubble” Myth

There is a common misconception that conspiratorial thinkers always exist in a bubble. In reality, learners in higher education are confronted with opposing viewpoints daily – in class and at their academic institutions in general. Those with conspiratorial views “are often exquisitely cognizant of the fact that others have different beliefs and have at least heard others express reasons for their competing convictions”^[27]: they have heard the arguments and simply rejected them. Access to the internet and university resources ensures they are not isolated from the truth, but rather tends towards self-inoculation against it, maintaining those beliefs. Additionally, even though a learner may not be in an information bubble, “conspiracist mistrust of authority figures and institutions goes hand-in-hand with an overreliance on first-hand observation and experience.”^[28] No matter how much contradictory information they are exposed to, they may not trust it over what they can experience themselves.

3.3 Empathy as a Path, Not a Replacement

Our goal is not to replace the encouragement of critical thinking, but to use empathy to understand why a student might be susceptible to rejecting it in the first place. We must acknowledge that education alone cannot bridge the gap created by conspiratorial thinking. As library workers, it is not necessarily our job to deradicalize or dissuade students of their beliefs, but we must recognize when those beliefs lead to unhelpful information behaviors, or why those beliefs have been put in place of a more objective or rational way of engaging with information.

Empathy is a powerful tactic because it does not require means-testing the learner in front of you. Whether they are struggling with a basic citation or deeply entrenched in an anti-truth ideology, empathy can be a useful universal baseline. We often underestimate the chasm between those who embrace logic and those with extremist views^[29]; empathy allows us to stand in that gap without judgment. We need not sort out which learners would need an empathetic approach – empathy, as a rising tide, lifts all boats.  In general, empathy in the academic library would include things like the following: clear goal setting for instruction, achievable learning objectives, relationship building by making an effort to know and be known by students, taking an interest in student work generally and how their work relates to their personal interests and background, and encouraging follow up or second appointments.^[30] It can also be helpful to use methods identified in deradicalization scholarship as ways to assist someone in turning away from those beliefs. Practical methods for the empathetic approach are discussed later in this handbook.

3.4 The Role of the Library

By pivoting toward empathy, the academic library goes beyond a repository of facts and becomes a place to build community. Community building is a dual-purpose tool: it fosters belonging while simultaneously creating a defense against the isolation that fuels disinformation. That belonging is important – you and the learner you are interacting with are two human beings who both look into things. As Eadon puts it: “We need not necessarily understand exactly where an individual is coming from, but if we as researchers ourselves and/or as reference personnel begin to understand some of the similarities between the kind of research we do and the kind that suspicious and conspiracy researchers do (the enjoyability of the hunt, the satisfaction of perceiving connections, a desire to subvert hegemonic paradigms within and outside of our discipline), then perhaps we can start to welcome this community of researchers as ‘researchers first.’”^[31] This may seem counterintuitive, but this mental shift can help library workers make a difference by framing our trustworthiness as similarity. We should strive, through empathetic practices, to foster human connection, care for learners, and learner support so that learners “feel safer exploring new concepts and displaying vulnerability by asking questions. Emotional needs must be met before new information can adequately be conveyed.”^[32] Academic libraries are in an advantageous position when it comes to empathy and the community building process – we often see learners regularly over longer periods of time, staying with them through their academic journey, or we develop long term relationships with other university workers such as faculty, creating community inside and outside the research sphere. While traditional views might say we are in an advantageous position because of our emphasis on critical thinking or fact checking abilities, the shift away from that hierarchical thinking towards community is where our strength may lie. While maintaining our core strengths of providing information and emphasizing critical thinking, it is important to remember the nature of social epistemology – that “knowing and believing are not simply individual cognitive processes but fundamentally based on participation in cultures, communities, and social practices.”^[33]

3.5 Historical Empathy and Archival Framework

Archival methods in critical thinking are also useful for librarians and archivists as ways to implement empathy with disinformation in the library and archives when thinking about the past. Karn defines this approach to historical inquiry as historical empathy, which she defines as “an approach to teaching history focused on understanding the thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, and actions of people from the past within specific historical contexts.”^[34] Karn goes on to identify five cognitive and affective elements that she posits should be taught in history education, which are “(1) evidence and contextualization, (2) informed historical imagination, (3) historical perspectives, (4) ethical judgements, and (5) caring” (Karn, 2022, p. 86).^[35] These elements of critical thinking map very well to primary source analysis questions and could be useful for librarians to point to when analyzing historical sources with library users.

Below is a list of sample primary source questions in archival critical theory as mapped to Karn’s suggested cognitive and affective methods for education. These questions can be used when analysing any source, whether during research or during the reference interview.

1. Evidence and contextualization
   • Who created the source?
   • What kind and type of source is it? What does the format say about the document?
   • When was the source created?
   • What historical events happened at this time that are important to the creation of this source?
   • Who was the intended audience of the source?
2. Informed historical imagination
   Karn describes that an informed historical imagination is both a cognitive and an affective approach to historical empathy, and is useful when there are gaps in evidence or when histories are incomplete.^[36] In thinking about information that has not been recorded, we might also ask questions to round out our perspective:
   • What other documents or information might give this further context? Where might you look for this information?
   • What further research is necessary to form conclusions?
3. Historical perspectives
   • From what point of view is the source created?
   • What was the creator’s situation or intention at the time of creation? What is the creator’s relationship to the document? What evidence shows this?
   • How do the language, tone, and structure of the source shape the way its message is conveyed?
4. Ethical judgements
   • Consider your initial impressions. What assumptions might you be bringing to your observations?
   • For what purpose was this source made? Are there any biases or limitations present?
   • What is the explicit/implicit meaning of the source?
   • How does this source corroborate/contradict the information from another source?
5. Caring
   Historical empathy teaches care about events in the past, and care for people in the past who have experienced those events, which allows “students to evaluate the consequences of past decisions and consider how they might act differently in the present.”^[37]
   • Whose voice is present or not present in the information?
   • Who is absent or silenced in the information, are there perspectives missing?
   • What aspects of identity (race, gender, class, nation, language) are at stake?
   • How does the information relate or not relate to your own background and experience?
   • How does the information impact the present and future?

3.6 The Limits and Critiques of Empathy

Empathy has not been without challenges and opponents, with criticism noting the ambiguity of what is meant when researchers and scholars refer to the term. As noted above, it has been described as a “conceptually squishy” idea;^[38] empathy is used differently across disciplines and inconsistently defined within library science scholarly research.^[39] It has been noted that there is no agreed-upon definition for empathy used within the field of education, indicating the “complexity of the concept, and raises the suspicion that those writing in the field of education may be using the same term to be referring to different things.”^[40] There is little consistency about what is actually being described or measured, with the word “empathy” encompassing a variety of meanings from emotional perception to affective resonance to perspective-taking to showing compassion. It is often used as a catch-all for the idea of someone simply being “a nice and decent person.”^[41] To operationalize empathy effectively, library workers need to have a clear definition of what exactly is expected of them when encountering patrons, and the boundaries of the empathy they are expended to extend when interacting with learners who have become susceptible to disinformation.

Approaches centred on the emotional and psychological needs of learners are core to library services. An empathetic approach is outlined in American Library Association’s Reference & User Services Association (RUSA) Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers. These guidelines call for “a high degree of nonjudgmental interest” when interacting with a learner, entering into an exchange that “includes communication, trust-building, mutual understanding, and intellectual empathy.”^[42] Within these guidelines, RUSA defines intellectual empathy as “imagining yourself in the place of another person, to try to understand how you would feel in their position.”^[43]

When interacting with learners who are victims of disinformation, the harnessing of empathy should never conflict with the library worker’s goal to share trusted, credible sources and assist learners in gaining the critical skills needed to navigate an increasingly complex information environment. Empathy should never be expected to cause a library worker to compromise their core values and the values of the profession, or tolerate behaviors that would make them, colleagues, or other learners feel diminished, discriminated against, or in danger. In the article “Inclusion and Empathy Are Not Enough: Cultivating Student Belonging in the Academic Library Through Compassion”, Reed notes that requiring such empathy in patron interactions with patrons could be “problematic since it requires emotional energy and potentially goes as far as giving up their perspective and values in the process,”^[44] and asks “what is the moral responsibility of the library to protect students from psychological or emotional harm, and where are the bounds?”^[45] It is essential that library organizations outline clear expectations and have support in place to ensure the library workers are safeguarded against such concerns, and for library workers to understand that having empathy for a learner’s experiences and emotions can exist without feeling like their disinformation beliefs are unable to be challenged and corrected.

The operationalization of empathy raises concern around the emotional labour costs of responding to learners who use and spread disinformation. Library workers note that emotional labour is a core component of their work, encompassing emotional display rules and regulation strategies that impact customer service perception.^[46] Joe notes that the suppression or modification of feelings is required of library workers during even the most quotidian of interaction in order to foster and preserve a caring, nonthreatening environment for learners. This encompasses “anything from the smile on the reference librarian’s face, even though he or she has a splitting headache, to acting pleasant despite the announcement of the latest round of budget cuts.”^[47]

It is therefore not surprising that many librarians specifically highlight their expenditure of emotional labour during patron interactions.^[48] If daily interactions with learners demand this extent of emotional labour, consider then engaging with a learner resistant to critically evaluating information that they feel ideologically invested in, such as conspiracy theories. Empathy plays a key role to help the library worker understand that the emotional appeal of conspiracy theories can outweigh a learner’s logical reasoning and verifiable facts, and can help the worker navigate emotionally fraught interactions. Library workers have been advised to “self-monitor for empathetic body language and facial expression as much as verbal cues, arm yourself with patience, and be ready for de-escalation strategies in case the conversation turns heated.”^[49] As useful as this monitoring might be, one must consider that this level of hypervigilance and the expectation that library workers must manage the reactions of a learner is an onerous ask of those who are already experiencing professional stress and burnout, and goes beyond the expectations of empathy laid out in the RUSA Guidelines.