Empathy Traps
Ask students if they know what the word “empathy” means.
Explain that it actually has two meanings – feeling what other people feel (like when you get sad because something bad happens to your friend) and recognizing how other people feel (like when you’re able to tell your friend is angry even if they don’t say anything).
What are the clues that tell us how someone is feeling?
Ask students to remember a time they knew that a friend was mad and think about how they knew that:
the look on their face;
the tone of their voice;
their body language (tense, hunched, etc.)
if they seemed to be preoccupied with something.
What are some things that might happen if we don’t realize that we are, or someone we’re with is, in a hot emotional state?
- We can do things without thinking about them;
- react differently to things than we otherwise would;
- provoke a reaction in someone that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Start a chart on the board with the headings OFFLINE and ONLINE, or have students access the student chapter Offline versus Online.
Ask students how talking to people online (through things like video games, social networks, texting and instant messaging) is different from talking to people face-to-face.
Make sure to include the following points:
| OFFLINE | ONLINE |
| You can see them | You can’t see them |
| You can hear their tone of voice | You can’t hear them |
| They can see you | They can’t see you |
| They can hear you | They can’t hear you |
| Things you say disappear | Everything you say can be read later |
| You can see how people react | Can’t see how people react |
Remind students of the ways that we can tell if someone else is in a hot emotional state.
- Which of these do we have when we’re online, and which do we not have?
- How might this affect how we respond to things that make us feel hot emotions when we’re online?
Ask students if they have done a similar activity before. If so, how have things changed since the last time they did?
Have students access the student chapter Staying Out of Empathy Traps or project it on a screen or digital whiteboard. Go through it with the class.
Next, have students access the student chapter Ethics and Empathy Scenarios or project it on a screen or digital whiteboard.
Read each scenario and then have students discuss the following questions as a class about each one:
How would you feel in this situation?
What would you do to resolve this situation?
Who would be affected by what you do?
Next, have students form pairs and have each pair access one of these student chapters:
Each of these scenarios revisits a scenario from another point of view.
After they have read each one, students consider the same three questions.
When students have completed their work on these scenarios take them up as a class, and ask the students if they would change any of their answers from side A based on what they now know.
Discuss the students’ solutions to the scenarios and which strategies they think would be most likely to work.
Remind students to review Staying Out of Empathy Traps to make sure all of the key tools and strategies are included.
Feeling what other people feel (affective empathy) or recognizing how other people feel (cognitive empathy)