Understanding empathy in diverse cultural settings: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in empathy within healthcare; to understand patient needs and support therapeutic outcomes. This has inspired a significant body of research to define and measure empathy. Amidst this promising development there has been limited discussion of whether empathy should be treated the same in diverse cultural settings. More than an issue of translation, culture has long been recognised as a significant influence in a person's everyday experience of the world. Correspondingly, researchers have reported divergence from prevailing Western-cultural constructs of empathy with, for example, ideas of self and community, how people relate to and understand others, and conflicting motivations for empathy (e.g. see Hollan, 2017). Notwithstanding this complexity, a popular relational measure of empathy in healthcare, Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) (Mercer et al, 2004), is increasingly used around the world. This presentation aims to inspire consideration of cultural factors at the heart of empathy-related experiences. Firstly, I will provide a first-hand account of a failed inter-cultural empathy research project in India; secondly, explore empirical commentary from researchers using CARE in diverse cultural settings; thirdly, discuss recent literature on culture and empathy. I argue the need to better understand people's real-world relational experiences, which might inform a more culturally-responsive approach to empathy.