Buckets of empathy in movement and design research: an experimental workshop
By Andrea Mecquel and Rafe Steinhauer
A. Mecquel is a kinesthetic teacher and lecturer integrating applications of mindfulness and positive psychology within entrepreneurship at Princeton University’s Keller Center for Entrepreneurship, Innovation Education, and Design Thinking. Bio.
Rafe Steinhauer is a visiting assistant professor of design thinking at Tulane University’s Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking. At the time of this talk, he was a lecturer and entrepreneurial program manager at the Keller Center at Princeton University.
Workshop Context: Mecquel and I co-facilitated this 90-minute workshop on June 25, 2019. The audience was the summer 2019 Tiger Challenge cohort: 18 undergraduate students working on design thinking for societal innovation projects. Mecquel helped us center mindfulness in the program experience in several ways (we wrote a post about this overall endeavor here). One way was a series of experimental workshops in which Mecquel and I explored a core skill set with both a mindfulness lens and a design thinking lens. The first workshop was on Empathy; the second was on Abductive Reasoning; the third was on Creativity. This post is an overview and recap of the workshop on Empathy.
Workshop Objectives:
- Understanding forms of empathy. Participants will understand that empathy can take multiple forms. We’ll use Daniel Goleman’s framework (Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy, and Empathic Concern) as one way to bring nuance to empathy. This framework should not be presented as definitive or comprehensive, but rather one useful framework
- Experiencing forms of empathy through movement. Through observing and participating in facilitated movement activities, participants will experience different forms of empathy, including the three in Goleman’s framework.
- Recognizing emotions as a skill of design research. By watching the first 13m of Up, participants will practice design research that focuses on emotions. Half the group will note-take, practicing cognitive empathy and identifying nuanced emotions. Half the group will be present with the characters, practicing emotional empathy and empathic concern, and identifying their own nuanced emotions and feelings of concern.
- Cultivating empathic abilities. Participants will feel like they have an increased ability: to understand others’ perspectives and experiences and to share the emotional experience of others. Hopefully!
Workshop Plan:
Here is is a link to our workshop plan. Summary:
- Room Setup: Large semi-oval of chairs, with a computer/projector at one end.
- Instructions: “Sit with a partner with whom you have not interacted much yet this summer.”
- Materials: One pen and five 4"x6" blank notecards per person; 10 buckets filled with gravel (one per pair) in the center with different amounts of gravel in each bucket. Projector. Copy/rental of Disney’s Up.
Workshop Artifacts and Resources
- Our lesson plan. Link.
- Brene Brown video. Link.
- Mecquel’s Lecture Notes on Goleman’s work. Link.
- HBR Series on Empathy. Link.
- Rent Disney’s Up. Link.
- (Partial) List of emotions Carl might experience in the first 13m. Link.
Workshop Reflections:
Mecquel: We began by setting up an empathic situation in which I — without any prompt or explanation — picked up several gravel-filled buckets. The intention of the activity was to elicit the experience of Goleman’s three forms of empathy, but something far more fascinating happened. I got a bit enthused by the performative aspect of struggling with the buckets and I kept adding more and more buckets until I was truly having difficulty holding the unwieldy weight. I was not sure if they were going to fall and I would spill gravel all over the carpet. Then, two students jumped up saying, “We can’t watch any longer!”, and they took the buckets from me. Rather than stopping them, I remained nonverbal and continued to pick up buckets while I watched to see what would happen next. Several more students jumped in and started to help me, as well as picking up their own buckets, while continuously glancing at me and Rafe to see if they were doing “it right” while others outright expressed their confusion and frustration at not knowing what we wanted. We both remained nonverbal with expressions of “I don’t know. What do you think?” as I continued to pick up buckets. We let this go on for 10 minutes or so, all while the playfulness, frustration, and anxiety of the group mounted.
While we did have an interesting conversation about empathy afterward, we had an even more revelatory discussion about comfort with ambiguity and how dominant the “presumption of one right answer” is: even when they were playing with toy buckets filled with gravel, the college students still assumed that there must be something they were supposed to do with them.
Rafe: Wow! This workshop was easily among the favorites of my career. It did not go according to plan, but it was as enlightening as it was riveting.
First, the buckets. One thing you have to know about Mecquel is that she teaches improvisational dance: so she may not show any signs at all that things aren’t going to plan when they aren’t going to plan. What was meant to be an activity and a discussion about empathy turned into a revealing exercise and conversation about ambiguity and “the presumption of one right answer.” I’m not sure if this same outcome would happen with other groups, or if it’s most likely in this age-group, or in Princeton undergraduates, or in this group of students specifically? Whatever the case, it was an unlocking introspective experience.
Second, Up. This part went a lot more to plan. How could it not: that clip is one of the most emotionally powerful in film history, right? The participants all had long lists of emotions they identified (group A) and emotions they experienced (group B). We didn’t have as much time for the discussion as planned, but the participants raised interesting questions, such as whether the two lists would be different in predictable ways: are there particular kinds of emotions that are more easily identified in others cognitively than they are shared in a felt-sense?
Third, the notecards. These helped facilitate discussion and learning, especially the three notecards in which the students were asked to write down specific times they remember practicing cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern, both during their design thinking projects and in a setting outside of it. Writing and rewriting a personal definition of “empathy” also bookended the workshop nicely.
What would I change if we did it again?
- My biggest regret was not filming the workshop!
- I might cut the Brene Brown YouTube, just because the first discussion had a lot to cover (their definitions, Goleman’s framework, and the bucket exercises).
- Even with cutting the YouTube, we needed to budget more time for the discussion in the middle of the workshop (28 minutes wasn’t enough); a student had just raised the concept of “performative empathy” and the limits of empathy and it would have been great to unpack these observations/critiques more than we did.
- The workshop could have easily been 120 minutes long… there was enough material, and it was highly engaging!
P.S. Ok, some fun was had:
