I've been thinking about the web, the brain and compassion this week. I've been listening to the audiobook version of How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer's fascinating book on the neuroscience of decision making.
One of the sections that struck me was on empathy. Lehrer points out that facial expressions play a huge role in the brain's capacity to empathize with the feelings of others. Tell people the stats on poverty and child hunger and they'll make small contributions to fundraising efforts. Show them pictures of the faces of hungry children and they'll donate twice as much.
Here on the web, in our blogs, Twitters and other social networking activities, there is a distinct lack of facial expression. Sure there are profile pictures but they don't do a very good job of telling others what we are feeling at the moment. If you've spent any significant time on the web, you know that discussions can quickly go to flame. People say and do things you wouldn't do in face to face encounters. There's cruelty, name calling and much much worse. I've written about this before, but now I think I understand it a bit better.
Our brains need to see the emotion on the faces of others in order for us to understand their feelings. It's much easier to act without compassion when your brain isn't reminding you that the there is a breathing, thinking feeling human being on the receiving end of your comments.
Over on the Fast Company site, Jamais Cascio has a post that adds more pieces to the puzzle of social networking, the brain and empathy.
Jamais reports on Antonio Damasio's new report called "Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion" from the Brain and Creativity Institute .
...the human brain evolved to very quickly recognize and empathize with physical pain and fear in others, but is much slower to recognize and empathize with emotional pain, or to acknowledge and celebrate virtue or skill. What this means is that, in a media environment where our social encounters happen very quickly, we may not be giving our brains a chance to generate appropriate compassion or admiration. This is especially problematic with regards to compassion, as we may find ourselves building insufficient bonds of empathy, critical to communities undergoing stress (and we're seeing a lot of stressed-out communities right now!).
Enter the social networks, particularly Twitter:
...the real issue are the forms of media where rapid-fire messaging overwhelms the brain's capacity to see consequences. Any kind of rapid interaction, where we absorb a message and then move on to a new one in a very brief amount of time, can result in this social numbness.
To some extent, the rise in the use of video on the web is going to help deal with the need for facial expressions. Already, kids are abandoning IM for video-chat. How long can it be before all web-based interactions will be via video? But that still leaves the question of length of interaction. I'd love to know what Damasio et al think of 12seconds, a video version of Twitter. Does the fact that you can see the person's face make up for the fact that the encounter is only 12 seconds long?
Either way, I don't think we're doomed to a social networking future of cruelty, social numbness and flaming. There's more recent neuro-scientific research, much of it reviewed in Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself that points out the plasticity of the human brain. We will adapt to online communication -- even if it's rapid, transient and faceless. We're still neanderthals when it comes to communicating on the web, but our brains will catch up. Empathy will prevail.
