Paul Slovic on why we don't take action, and how actors, writer, and directors wield enormous power to change that

I just posted on the recent Nicholas Kristof column, "Would You Let This Girl Drown?" where Kristof references Paul Slovic's work, specifically his paper "If I look at the mass I will never act": Psychic numbing and genocide. Today I dug further and read Slovic's paper. The gist of the whole thing can be explained from this excerpt of his abstract:

"Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are 'one of many' in a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The answer to this question will help us answer a related question that is the topic of this paper: Why, over the past century, have good people repeatedly ignored mass murder and genocide?"

Slovic goes on to describe affect, "the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgements, decisions, and actions." Affect is simply the "sense (not necessarily conscious) that something is good or bad." It's automatic, and it's fast. And even though we're faced with facts that might lead us in another direction, we mostly make our decisions via "intuitive, automatic, natural, non-verbal, narrative, and experiential" means. That sometimes leads to us making choices that, in the clear light of day, don't seem to make sense. He describes studies that show consistently, that donors are more likely to make a donation that helps a single child, rather than donations that might help many children.

I'm not going to get into great detail about Slovic's work, but it's a great paper and I urge you to take a look for yourself. What's clear from the paper, though, is that our emotional, automatic responses to situations are what drive many of our decisions. In fact, we're likely to use logic and facts (our "analytic" system) simply to support the conclusions we've already made through our "experiental" system.

So what does that have to do with compassion and acting, writing, and directing?

You guessed it––plenty!

While Slovic points out that simple statistics, no matter how enormous, ultimately do not inspire people to take action, "images often strike us more powerfully, more deeply than numbers... we quickly grow numb to the facts and the math." "When it comes to eliciting compassion, the identified individual victim, with a face and a name, has no peer," Slovic says, and he points out many examples thereof including Baby Jessica, who fell into a well in the late 1980's; her rescue was the subject of massive media attention and her rescue caused nationwide celebration.

And this is where we intersect with acting, with writing, with directing. It's tough to convince billions of people to make their decisions in a different way; much of what we do is automatic. Slovic references Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote:

"The power of fiction is to create empathy. It lifts you away from your chair and stuffs you gently down inside someone else's point of view... A newspaper could tell you that one hundred people, say, in an airplane, or in Israel, or in Iraq, have died today. And you can think to yourself, 'How very sad,' then turn the page and see how the Wildcats fared. But a novel could take just one of those hundred lives and show you exactly how it felt to be that person rising from bed in the morning, watching the desert light on the tile of her doorway and on the curve of her daughter's cheek. You could taste that person's breakfast, and love her family, and sort through her worries as your own, and know that a death in that household will be the end of the only life that someone will ever have. As important as yours. As important as mine."

Slovic claims that relying on experiential systems, by using "powerful affective imagery such as that associated with Katrina and the South Asian tsunami" is hopeless. He points out that relying on this method creates the possibility of sensationalism, and requires consistent and powerful action on the part of the media. Slovic advocates clear attention to the facts, to compel governments to take action––in this case, against genocide.

But he himself points out how difficult it is to get anyone to pay attention to facts, to numbers. It is exactly these mechanisms, imagery, narrative, personalization, that artists must wield. And by doing so mindfully, their power is enormous!

By creating real characters, human stories that audiences identify with, we become compelled to take action on their behalf. Save the Children has known this for a long time: we're more likely to sponsor a real child with a real face, than to give money to a general fund for the well-being of children, even though the benefit might be greater.

I often say that in my work as a manager, I'm working my clients to create the world that I want to live in. So many artists want to make an impact with their work, and one surefire way to do it is to create real human beings that audiences automatically feel compassion for. This doesn't mean artists can only work on "issues," films about world tragedies, plays about human suffering. But it does mean that each time a story is told, there's an opportunity to create a space where an audience identifies with another human being's suffering, and is compelled to take action on it.

This might be on the scale of genocide, or it might be on the scale of family dynamics and relationships, or anywhere in between. Reading a paper about the American Dream, man's fear of failure and dreams of success, and family dysfunction doesn't inspire us to look inward. Watching a production of Death of a Salesman might. Hearing facts about addiction and how it can destroy a family is sad, but to watch Long Day's Journey into Night makes us look at our own families with compassion. To hear about 800,000 deaths in Rwanda is horrifying, but to watch Hotel Rwanda hits us in the gut, and inspires us to take action. To hear about millions of deaths in the Holocaust is gut-wrenching, but to read The Diary of Anne Frank, or to watch Schindler's List, or to learn any human Holocaust story through a human narrative makes us want to keep it from happening again. *

Paul Slovic on why we don't take action, and how actors, writer, and directors wield enormous power to change that

Compassion & Contribution: "Yeah, sure, compassion's great, but what's in it for me?"

Hi everyone. Sorry that it's been twelve days since I've posted. In that time I've done two extraordinary interviews, which I've been processing in my mind. I've been doing a lot of reading, too, and it all seems like it's bearing fruit:

You may remember that back in March, I asserted the following:

1. Compassion is at the center of every career that truly inspires me.
2. Compassion is the key to the most extraordinary career possible.
3. Compassion is the key to making the most extraordinary impact possible
4. Compassion is the key to the happiest life possible.

The very talented and articulate Keith Nobbs was kind enough to share his thoughts with me on compassion as it relates to his work in the arts. Keith's an actor, and he'll soon be seen starring in the massive HBO miniseries The Pacific. Here, Keith talks about working on stage:

"When people go in to a theater, they sit there and they think they have nothing in common with what they're about to see, or who these people are. And throughout the course of... the evening, they realize, these layers of protection start to melt away, and they start to identify with these people and they start to relate to them, and focus on what connects them to these people, instead of what separates and divides them."

This is pretty basic stuff, right? Most would agree, that if the artists putting on a play create something that allows the above to happen, they've been successful in some way.

But there's another layer I'd like to focus on, that's primarily related to numero 3 above: Compassion is the key to making the most extraordinary impact possible.

In the Christopher Shinn play Four, Keith played a young gay teen on a date with a much older man, in a sexually charged scene. The particular performance Keith discusses here is a "student matinee," in front of a theater full of high school kids.

In the video, Keith talks about his concern about performing this play in front of these kids.

“There was a part of me that was so terrified of doing this play in front of those kids, because I thought... these are the people [my character is] most afraid of, and he's having to get up in front of them and be that naked and that vulnerable, and reveal the parts of himself he hates the most, in the least safe environment possible.”

"The risk of doing that in front of other people and revealing that part of yourself in front of that audience... it's terrifying. These are parts of ourselves... they could be joyful parts of ourselves, they could be shameful parts of ourselves that you don't want to reveal, but the power and the freedom of being able to reveal that, and then having people recognize that, and having people respond to that and validate those parts of yourself, is such a powerful... gift for us and for them."

Keith goes on to describe how the kids ultimately reacted to the performance, at a graphic moment in the play:

“They were so invested in the story, and treating it as though this was a real person, with real thoughts and real feelings, it was silence. There was no anxiety, there was no nervous laughter. Everybody was just listening. And it moved me so much, I almost wanted to cry in that moment, because I could feel them giving my character respect, feel them listening to him as if he was a real person. And then I thought about... how amazing to have this forum to tell this story... and the kid out there in the audience... who's gay, who may not even know he's gay, and he's sitting there listening to this story, and these kids, who he's probably afraid of... he can see them listening to this character, and respecting this character, and how moving that it for him to witness.”

There are several layers of compassion here that are pretty obvious: Keith's compassion for the character, which enables him to portray him in a way that allows the audience to actually listen to him and respect him, the audience's compassion for the character, unexpected by Keith, Keith's compassion for himself, allowing himself to feel the fear the character himself might experience among his peers, and Keith's compassion for the audience.

It's this last one I'd like to focus on here, and the impact possible because of it.

After the performance, Keith notices two specific things: that the audience was able to give his character respect, and that there might be someone in the audience who specifically identifies with his character, and who gets something very important from that identification.

So here, compassion is potentially the key to an extraordinary impact. What I find exciting about the way this occurs to Keith is the fact that he so deeply recognized this impact, and in some ways it appears to be part of the fundamental reason he put himself on the line––courageously exposing himself in a terrifying environment.

Here, Keith declares himself a contribution, he recognizes the impact his work may have on an audience, or even on one individual in the audience, and that impact is part of what gives him the ability to take action, however terrifying it might be. And, inevitably, that impact reaches beyond any one individual.

The amazing Zanders talk about "being a contribution" in The Art of Possibility:

"The practice is... inventing oneself as a contribution, and others as well. The steps to the practice are these:

1. Declare yourself to be a contribution.
2. Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why...
   

...when you play the contribution game, it is never a single individual who is transformed. Transformation overrides the divisions of identity and possession that are the architecture of the measurement model, recasting the tight pattern of scarcity into a widespread array of abundance....

...naming oneself and others as a contribution produces a shift away from self-concern and engages us in a relationship with others that is an arena for making a difference. Rewards in the contribution game are of a deep and enduring kind, though less predictable than the trio of money, fame, and power that accrue to the winner in the success game. You never know what they will be, or from whence they will come."

I titled this entry "Yeah, sure, compassion's great, but what's in it for me." I hope that watching Keith Nobbs talk about his work inspires you to consider what is, in fact, in it for you. Think about what Keith says, above:

"And it moved me so much, I almost wanted to cry in that moment, because I could feel them giving my character respect, feel them listening to him as if he was a real person."

How extraordinary to feel that sense of aliveness, that connectedness with his audience, his awareness of the impact possible from his work. As the Zanders say, the rewards are deep and enduring when we take on being a contribution. And considering how you and your life are a contribution to others is the essence of compassion.

Thank you, Keith! *

Compassion & Contribution: "Yeah, sure, compassion's great, but what's in it for me?"

Jon Kabat-Zinn - "interconnectedness is primary... it is the birthplace of empathy and compassion."

The great mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn talks extensively about our relationship to our true nature, and how that relates to creativity, in his book Coming to Our Senses.

"...perhaps you have noticed that the sense of self is telling us all the time that we are not complete. It tells us that we have to get someplace else, attain what needs to be achieved, become whole, become happy, make a difference, get on with it, all of which may indeed be partially true and relatively true, and to that degree, we need to honor those intuitions. But it forgets to remind us that, on a deeper level, beyond appearances and time, whatever needs to be attained is already here, now -- that there is no improving the self -- only knowing its true nature as both empty and full, and therefore profoundly useful.

Knowing that in the deepest of ways, knowing it with the entirety of our being, we can then rest in the knowing itself and act much less self-centeredly in the world, potentially in amazingly creative ways for the benefit of other beings and with an attitude of non-harming and non-forcing. We can do this because we know on some fundamental level, not merely intellectually, that 'them' is always 'us.' This interconnectedness is primary. It is the birthplace of empathy and compassion, of our feeling for the other, our impulse and tendency to put ourself in the place of the other, to feel with the other. This is the foundation for ethics and morality, for becoming fully human -- beyond the potential nihilism and groundless relativism stemming from a merely mechanistic and reductionist view of the mind and of life.

From this perspective, in a very real sense you are not who or what you think you are. And neither is anybody else. We are all much larger, and more mysterious. Once we know this, our possibilities for creativity expand enormously, because we understand something about how we get in our own way and are diminished through our obsessive self-involvement and self-centeredness, our preoccupation with what we think is important but really isn't fundamental."

As I read this, it occurs to me that what Kabat-Zinn saying is something we already implicitly know but rarely acknowledge, and this is the root of what draws us to arts with compassion at their core. That "...we know on some fundamental level, not merely intellectually, that 'them' is always 'us.' This interconnectedness is primary."

The fact that interconnectedness is primary, and that we all implicitly understand that, means that when we see it acknowledged in the arts in different ways, it automatically rings as true to us. It's common sense. How often do we see a character going through something we personally relate to, and find that it moves us.

I watched part of a movie with my wife this weekend. The woman in the film was going through an enormous emotional upheaval, adjusting to her new life as a mother and the shift that caused in her life and in her marriage. And my wife turned to me and said, "here's how I know X is not doing a good job. This is a woman going through something I've gone through myself, almost identically, and I don't feel one bit for her. She's going through the motions."

When I pressed her further about it, later on, Amy said, "It didn't seem real to me and maybe that's because she's not a terribly good actress and she doesn't have anything to draw from. Maybe if you were a good actress you could draw on something else that made you feel powerless in that way and conjure up those feelings in a different situation. But she's never been through that and she's not adept enough at channeling her existing emotions to make it feel real. I don't think you have to be somebody who's done that specific thing in order to portray it but this actress just didn't have the ability to pull it off."

Obviously Amy doesn't speak for the whole world as an audience, but I was surprised to see such a specific example in a major film and to see how this lack of connection was directly by felt by Amy as an audience member. She had a direct relationship to the subject matter but felt nary a whiff of empathy, based on a performance that she perceived as lacking depth.

This is the impact I talked about earlier:

"There's a deep cost to the world that comes from this kind of behavior. We're suffering, and we're being deprived of the things that bind us, that show us what we have in common, that give us hope."

Imagine someone somewhere watching this film. Possibly a woman in a similar situation, facing a new stage in her life, a shift in her relationship to her husband, maybe coming to grips with what it feels like to be a mother and what that means to her. Or maybe it's something else entirely––maybe it's a man watching the film, who might be affected by a theme of feeling powerless in a family situation, or a teenager watching the performance, who might see his or her own mother or father in this performance, might understand them just a little bit.

Except it doesn't happen. The woman, the man, the teenager, they're all being robbed of the opportunity for connection. Not seeing, or even more importantly, feeling, any real connection to the person on screen, the moment passes, and an opportunity is wasted. The person goes on with their life, not knowing they might've been affected––however slightly or profoundly––and their life continues, untouched.

As I said earlier, when talking about my trip with Save the Children to the Navajo Nation, there is a cost to inaction. When you have an opportunity to make a difference in another's life, and you don't, there is an impact.

"There have been plenty of times when I've thought, I don't have the time, I'm tired, I'm busy, someone else will do it. And on this trip I saw the direct impact of the work Save the Children was doing, on real kids. Just like my own kids. And this relates to the arts in the same way. We can choose to remain in a fog, and rob the world of the real impact we have to offer. Or we can take on compassion in our lives and careers and make a difference."

*

Jon Kabat-Zinn - "interconnectedness is primary... it is the birthplace of empathy and compassion."