Water and empathy
1 min read · September 27, 2022
New Power Labs
What does water have to do with empathy?
Picture this: as you are sipping water, you are presented with mundane, repetitive images of someone else drinking water. The only variation is that the person shown drinking water occasionally changes from a White person to a Black person, to an East Asian or South Asian one.
It turns out something unusual starts to happen during this otherwise unremarkable experience. Unbeknownst to the watcher, the brain responds differently to each image that is observed.
Research by Gutsell and Inzlicht had participants connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine that monitored brain activity while being shown imagery. When the observers watched a person of their own race, the motor-cortex of the observers’ brains lit up as it would if they were doing the task themselves. But when the person on the screen was of a different race, there was hardly any blip that registered. In fact, for some participants, observing someone of a different race having a drink of water resulted in their brains registering “as little activity as when they watched a blank screen.”
This experiment provides us with insight into diversity and inclusion: it suggests we have greater empathy – more care and concern – by default for those who appear most like ourselves. Hence, being aware of our unconscious bias is crucial in working towards equity.
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