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Online Communication and Empathy Deficits

After giving a lecture about stereotypes, I received an e-mail from a student: “Stereotypes are DEMEANING!! People should DENOUNCE them, not TEACH them!!! WHY LECTURE ABOUT STEREOTYPES???” Noting the lack of greeting, capped letters, and excessive punctuation, I interpreted the message as angry. Irritated, I popped back a flippant response, “Uhhhh . . . because people often wrongly believe that stereotypes are true?” Hours later, I received a caustic reply: “I think it’s really disrespectful of you to treat my question so rudely!! I’M PAYING YOU TO TEACH, NOT MOCK!!!”

You have probably had similar experiences—online encounters in which anger or other emotions were expressed inappropriately, triggering a destructive exchange. In most of these interactions, the messages traded back and forth would never have been expressed face-to-face.

Why are we more likely to inappropriately express our emotions online? Two features of online interaction—asynchronicity and invisibility—help explain this phenomenon (Suler, 2004). Much of our online communication is asynchronous. That is, we don’t interact with others in real time but instead exchange messages (such as text, e-mail, or Facebook postings) that are read and responded to at later points. When communicating asynchronously, it’s almost as if time is magically suspended (Suler, 2004). We know that there likely will be responses to our messages, but we choose when (and if) we view those responses. This predisposes us to openly express emotions that we might otherwise conceal if we knew the response would be immediate.

Online communication also provides us with a sense of invisibility. Without sharing a physical context with the people with whom we’re communicating, we feel as if we’re “not really there”—that is, people can’t really see or hear us. Consequently, we feel distant from the consequences of our messages.

Recent brain research suggests that our sense of invisibility when communicating online may have a neurological basis. Recall from Chapter 1 that feedback consists of the verbal and nonverbal messages recipients convey to indicate their reaction to communication. Now remember our definition of empathy from Chapter 3: the ability to experience others’ thoughts and emotions. Research documents that the same part of the brain that controls empathy—the orbitofrontal cortex—also monitors feedback (Goleman, 2006). This means that our ability to experience empathy is neurologically tied to our ability to perceive feedback (Beer, John, Scabini, & Knight, 2006). During face-to-face and phone encounters, we constantly track the feedback of others, watching their facial expressions, eye contact, and gestures, and listening to their tone of voice. This enables us to feel empathy for them, to consider what they’re thinking and feeling about our communication. When we see or hear people react negatively to something we’re saying, we can instantly modify our messages in ways that avoid negative consequences.

Now consider what happens when we lack feedback—such as when we’re communicating online. Without the ability to perceive others’ immediate responses to our communication, it’s difficult for us to experience empathy and to adjust our communication in ways that maintain appropriateness (Goleman, 2007a). We’re less able to perspective-take (see the situation and our communication from our partner’s point of view) and to feel empathic concern (experience his or her emotions and feelings). Consequently, we’re more likely to express negative emotions—especially anger—in blunt, tactless, and inappropriate ways. We may “shout” at others by using capped letters and exclamation points or we may “say” things we’d never say over the phone or face-to-face. Complicating matters further, people on the receiving end of our communication have the same deficit. Their online messages are less sensitive, less tactful, and maybe even more offensive than their offline messages. Without feedback, we have difficulty experiencing empathy and gauging the appropriateness of our emotional expression.

What can you do to experience and express emotions more competently online? First, keep in mind that we do not experience as much empathy online as when we’re communicating face-to-face. Compensate for this deficit by investing intense effort into perspective-taking and empathic concern.

Second, communicate these aspects of empathy directly to your online partners, following suggestions from Chapter 3. Integrate into your online messages questions that seek the other person’s perspectives, such as “What’s your view on this situation?” Validate their views when they provide them: “You make a lot of sense.” Communicate empathic concern by saying things like, “I hope you’re doing OK.” If you receive what looks like an angry message, convey that you recognize the other person is angry and that you feel bad about it: “I feel really terrible that you’re so upset.”

Third, expect and be tolerant of any aggressive messages you receive, accepting that such behavior is a natural outcome of the online environment, rather than evidence that other people are “mean” or “rude.” Finally, avoid crafting and sending angry online messages in the heat of the moment. For instance, my wife has given me a 24-hour rule in such situations: When I get upset during an online encounter, I create a message, and then I store it as a draft (as discussed in Chapter 1). I wait 24 hours, revisit it, assess it in terms of empathy, and then modify or even delete it if it’s inappropriate.