Collaborative Story Writing as a Method to Enhance Empathy

Abstract

Empathy has long been used and mentioned in psychology; it is the ability to understand people and consciously try to put oneself in the place of another person to understand their thoughts and feelings. This helps interpersonal skill development and social functioning. Narrative-based approaches have been studied by researchers as a tool to enhance empathy. While researchers have focused on passive forms of narrative, there is still much to explore in narratives as the active form. The present study gives a deeper understanding of this active form of narrative as collaborative story writing. It has also integrated transportation and affect to provide a more comprehensive understanding. The present study aims to explore the relation between story writing and empathy, specifically focusing on collaborative story writing as a method. It examines the difference in individual versus collaborative story writing in enhancing empathy while also assessing the role of narrative transportation. The study has worked on finding the possible factors contributing to the change of empathy. A mixed-method design has been used in the study to give up both practical and theoretical understanding. A group of college students participated in this study. Different tools such as the empathy scale, transportation scale, scale for affect and social desirability along with the collaborative story-writing task were used. The story also used semi-constructed interviews for the qualitative data. The study found a strong relation between narrative and empathy. There was a significant increase in the empathy level after intervention, especially in the group condition. Social desirability and mood effects show significant influence on empathy. The qualitative finding revealed various psychological processes involved in the development of empathy during story writing. Participants demonstrated various aspects such as perspective-taking shifts in identification with multiple characters, moral reasoning, communication awareness and others through the story-writing activity. This shows use in social bonding and grief-related therapy and family therapy. Thus, the study has strong implications in clinical and counselling settings along with the educational field.