We live in an age where a high level of science literacy is necessary. Science comes in many of our decisions, from the everyday to the life-or-death. Should we vaccinate our children, and how should our answer change after the Dengvaxia controversy? Will “conscientious consumption” contribute anything meaningful in addressing climate change, and how are we to prepare for the incoming new normal?
It is, therefore, our responsibility to become well-informed members of society. Likewise, it is also the responsibility of scientists and those in power to make the necessary scientific information readily available.
Information, however, does not always lead to action. Many scientists have noted that simply putting the information out there is not enough to push people into action.
So, what pushes people to act on an important piece of information?
Scientists have found several factors that push people to act. One very important factor is relevance. In climate science communication, for example, science communicators strongly suggest discussing the effects of climate change that affect the audience in the here and now.
Another often-overlooked factor in pushing people to act is empathy.
Empathy, in this sense, can mean two things.
First, it can mean that for a science communicator to be able to have an impact on their audience, they must have some empathy toward the things that concern their audiences the most. Writing for PLOS.org, Webster University professor Nicole Miller-Struttmann writes that science communicators must use the following strategies: “tailoring outreach efforts to a distinct public and empathizing with our audience(s) in a deep, meaningful way.”
Second and more importantly, it can mean that for audiences to react in meaningful ways to a given information, the audiences must be able to empathize with the message. It is this second meaning that I would like to dig into here.
How can science communicators harness their audience’s sense of empathy to lead them to action? And how can advocates, say for climate action or better public health, convert this into strategies?
Research done by the American neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak and his colleagues at Claremont Graduate University, can shed light on what the science says.
Zak and his colleagues performed one study where they showed an emotionally engaging story involving a boy with terminal disease and the effect that disease had on his father. After watching the video, the participants were asked about their feelings regarding the story.
Since the results of the survey did not provide a clear answer, Zak and his colleagues measured the participants’ brain chemistry to see how their brains reacted. Their results show that the story made the participants’ brains produce the hormones cortisol and oxytocin.
Cortisol is a hormone that is often correlated with distress. It has the effect of focusing attention on something important. Oxytocin is correlated with empathy. It has been associated with caring and a sense of connection.
Zak’s team wanted to know how this translates to behavior. They gave their participants the opportunity to give the money they earned for volunteering in the study. Their results show that that more cortisol and oxytocin was detected in a participant’s blood, the more money that person shared with a stranger they could not see.
Their results also carried over to giving to charity. In fact, they were able to predict, with 80-percent accuracy, whether a participant in their study was going to donate to charity or not.
In other words, Zak and his colleagues discovered that once distress and empathy are triggered in a person’s brain, they can be powerful drivers for pro-social action.
But what can trigger such empathetic response?
To answer this, Zak and his team performed another study where they had a control group was shown a story without a strong narrative; there was no conflict and the characters did not elicit sympathy. They discovered that only those who watched the movie with a strong dramatic arc were moved to donate their earnings to a charity related to the story.
These findings are consistent with the result of another study performed by Emanuele Castano and David Kidd from the New School in New York City. Castano and Kidd did a study to see the effect of reading literary fiction on the reader’s capacity to think and feel. What they found was that reading powerful stories had a profound effect on a reader’s theory of mind. A theory of mind relates to the ability of a person to imagine themselves in the shoes of others, a hallmark of empathy.
Using these findings and many others, science communicators must harness the power of narratives to encourage behavior change that is more in line with up-to-date scientific knowledge. But it is also our responsibility as citizens to seek out the stories that are already out there.
