The Reality Check for Marketers on Empathy Levels

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I once had a meeting with strategy directors from a media agency to talk about their supermarket client. They kept calling the client 'the Brexit supermarket' and weren't very positive about its target customer.

Interestingly, not long before our meeting, the agency had introduced a new planning process that emphasized empathy.

Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump made the marketing and advertising industries nervous. Industry leaders were suddenly emphasizing the importance of empathy in connecting with ordinary people. The message was clear: we may have lost touch with a large portion of the population, but by tapping into our empathy, we can make things right.

Despite the talk of empathy, I found myself experiencing the opposite. I believed that marketers struggled to truly understand those with different worldviews. In 2019, my business partner Ian Murray and I decided to test this theory by adapting an experiment from behavioral science known as the dictator game.

We conducted a study where we asked marketers and a nationally representative sample of UK adults to imagine they were paired with an anonymous partner and given £50 to share between themselves. The respondent could decide how much of the money they wanted to keep for themselves and how much, if any, they wanted to give to their partner. Among marketers, 69% were willing to offer an equal share (£25), which was lower than the 77% in our all-adult sample.

There is a significant amount of academic literature that utilizes the dictator game to explore political polarisation and the impact of identity on individuals' social preferences. In essence, it is clear from the research that people tend to deviate from the fairness default when playing the game with someone who has a different identity or perceived values and beliefs.

There is a common belief in the industry that we, as professionals, have a stronger sense of empathy and are better equipped to overcome our biases. However, studies have shown that we may actually be more influenced by these biases than the general population!

To further investigate this phenomenon, we decided to introduce two new variables in our experiment. The first variable involved informing participants that the other person had voted to remain in the EU referendum. Surprisingly, the percentage of marketers willing to share 50/50 (£25) increased from 69% to 82%, a phenomenon known as 'in-group love' by social scientists.

We informed the marketers that they were collaborating with someone who supported leaving the EU in the referendum. The response was striking - only 43% of marketers were open to sharing equally with a 'leaver'. This marked a significant decrease of 39 percentage points in willingness to share.

This deviation from the usual fairness standard indicates a tendency to penalize or show bias against individuals with differing beliefs. I believe that if we were to conduct the same experiment with a current divisive topic, we would observe a similar trend.

When I’ve presented this data in the past, the first question is usually 'what about the UK adult sample'? We did notice a similar trend, although the decrease was not as significant at 31 percentage points. It is commonly believed in the industry that we possess a stronger sense of empathy and are trained to overcome biases. However, it turns out that we are actually more susceptible to these biases than the general population. This may not come as a surprise, as we are all human beings who can be heavily influenced by intuition and group mentality.

This experiment is just one of many that demonstrate marketers do not possess any special talent for empathy. Despite this, the emphasis on empathy continues. Empathy is constantly talked about, with some companies even claiming to conduct 'Ad testing with empathy'. It seems like nothing more than empty buzzwords.

The industry has diluted the true meaning of empathy so much that I believe we should discard it altogether. Marketers lack the ability to truly empathize, and there are valid arguments against practicing empathy at all.

In his book "Against Empathy," Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale, explains that empathy is not a reliable model for decision-making. Bloom argues that empathy is a biased emotion that leads us to make decisions based on our own prejudices, taking shortcuts to familiar and easily accessible feelings, values, and beliefs.

Empathy often leads us to prioritize the needs of our own groups over those of others. Despite what experts in the industry may say, this can make it challenging for us to empathize with individuals outside of our social circles. Through our experiment and my personal experiences in marketing, this issue has become clear.

Instead of empathy, I propose using the term 'perspective taking'. This approach differs from empathy because it involves a logical (rather than emotional) process of understanding a situation or concept from a specific point of view. To enhance our ability for perspective taking, we can broaden our understanding of diverse perspectives and cultures, as well as critically assess our own emotions, values, and beliefs. The key is to have the motivation to engage in this process, as relying solely on emotions and mental shortcuts will not lead to genuine understanding.

Understanding our target customers goes beyond just feeling what they feel. It's about being present and comprehending their perspective. This approach can not only improve our understanding of our customers but also serve as a remedy for the divisive world we live in.

Andrew Tenzer is one of the co-founders of Burst Your Bubble.

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