The Role of Intellectual Empathy in Problem Solving: Pursuing an empathetic approach

When I worked in plant conservation in Texas, I faced a stark fact: more than 93% of the land around me was privately owned, and 77% of these lands were involved in some kind of agricultural production, predominantly cattle ranching. Very little land in Texas is publicly held in state or national parks or by the Bureau of Land Management, meaning that large-scale conservation in this state would entail working heavily with private landowners and managers.

Many landowning Texans build their identities around their land and how they use it. There is an equal divide between Texans regarding their relationship with nature: just as many Texans believe nature and wildlife are to be dominated or used for human benefit (Utilitarians or Traditionalists) as those who think we should live in harmony with nature (Mutualists).

When it came to plant conservation in the state, many people were not optimistic about working with ranchers; they assumed that our goals were opposed and that we’d never see eye to eye (ranchers being utilitarians and plant conservationists being mutualists). This cultural context created a complex milieu for me to walk into at the beginning of my career as a conservationist: I wouldn’t just be working with plants. If I wanted to impact plant conservation in Texas, I would have to learn to work effectively with people who thought differently than me about nature.

I was incredibly lucky to meet a new mentor, Dan Caudle, a retired Rangeland Management Specialist with the NRCS who hails from West Texas. I’ve never seen Dan without his cowboy boots, and we affectionately refer to him as “Dan the Grass Man” because of his impressive expertise in native grassland species. Dan’s 40-year career in ecologically informed rangeland management was shaped not only by his technical expertise, though. His extraordinary ability to relate to people like ranchers, and his deep understanding of the relationship between empathy and problem solving, underpinned much of his success.

Meeting Dan began a shift in my career trajectory. He shifted my mindset regarding conservation and taught me how to approach challenging interactions with compassion. If we wanted to work with private landowners and managers, I learned that the first step would be to meet them where they were, to try to understand their perspective, to build trust, and to reach a mutual understanding. This meant I needed to grow a specific muscle that I hadn’t been taught to use in my scientific training up to this point: my intellectual empathy.

Understanding Intellectual Empathy and its Significance

Intellectual empathy is the capacity to understand and appreciate other people’s perspectives that differ from our own, allowing us to step into their cognitive worlds, even when they challenge our own beliefs or values. Unlike emotional empathy, which involves sharing the feelings of others, intellectual empathy is more about thinking through the thought processes of others to understand how they came to develop their beliefs, values, and priorities.

This form of empathy is especially vital in problem-solving in environmental work involving divergent perspectives, like those of plant conservationists and cattle ranchers. As Dan showed me, working with ranchers and private landowners to understand how their goals were not too dissimilar to those of plant conservationists often helped us develop more comprehensive and practical solutions. For example, I learned that many of the ranchers I worked with knew about the native plant species on their ranch and deeply appreciated biodiversity. After practicing intellectual empathy and developing a mutual understanding, we worked together to think about how their land management practices could be shifted to achieve our collective goals: protect plant diversity and make their businesses more resilient.

Developing an Empathetic Approach to Solving Problems

Practicing intellectual empathy and developing an empathetic approach to solving problems are multifaceted skills that will take some practice. If you aren’t sure where to start, the following basic tenets will help you better understand the relationship between intellectual empathy and problem solving. Some critical practices for improving your intellectual empathy and problem solving skills include:

1. Suspend judgment and preconceptions: Try to enter situations with an open mind and question your preconceived notions/biases about people based on their backgrounds, livelihoods, cultures, or geography.
2. Ask questions and listen actively: When you interact with a new person, try to remember that the first goal of every conversation is to learn more about them so you can better understand the logic and experiences that shaped their beliefs and opinions.
3. Take new perspectives: Sincerely attempt to see things from the other person’s perspective by imagining you are in their shoes. Dig deeper and try to imagine what the situation might feel like for them, considering their background, knowledge, and life circumstances.
4. Analyze issues from multiple angles: Consider that there are likely always two sides to a situation and research diverse perspectives before forming conclusions or solutions. You may consider conducting interviews and collecting perspectives from several sources involved in the issue.
5. Recognize that intelligent people can disagree: Remember that expertise on an issue can come in various forms based on each person’s unique frame of reference, knowledge base, and thought processes.

A more empathetic approach to solving problems begins with active listening, a practice that goes beyond simply hearing words to genuinely understanding the underlying concerns and values of others. You must ask questions to better understand the deeper meaning of what other people have to say, never make assumptions, and remain open-minded. This kind of listening creates the foundation for perspective-taking, where we can step outside of our own viewpoint and try to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s not just about acknowledging that someone’s perspective differs from yours. It is also about critically engaging with these perspectives and weighing them alongside our own. When combined with critical thinking, this empathetic approach allows us to navigate complex issues with a more nuanced understanding, leading to solutions that are informed by a deeper awareness of the people and perspectives involved.

Check out Unity’s offerings that incorporate Intellectual Empathy to learn more:

• Unity Distance Education Communications Hub article on Intellectual Empathy
• Unity Distance Education Course Catalog: COMM 301 Communicating for Impact (Course Description on page 65)

Case Studies: Intellectual Empathy in Action

A movement upholding compassion and intellectual empathy has been gaining momentum in the environmental world over the past decade as many environmentalists feel we need to adopt new approaches to more rapidly reduce climate change and curb biodiversity loss. Scientists and experts have traditionally taken top-down approaches to sharing knowledge and implementing change. This approach assumed that non-experts likely did not know how to solve the problem and that they should listen to the experts for guidance. Perspective-taking and intellectual empathy were just simply not a part of the equation.

In my fields of ecological conservation and restoration, such an approach has often been shown to have low success rates. When solutions fail to incorporate the needs and values of local Interested/Affected Parties (IAPs), proposed land protections and management practices tend to fall apart. Alternatively, a 2021 metanalysis of conservation projects around the world found that when these projects are led and informed by local IAPs, they resulted in positive conservation and community outcomes 56% of the time, compared to only 16% of the time when they are led by external groups. When local communities are not included in the problem solving process, solutions often do not account for real-world contexts, making them difficult to maintain.

Embracing Intellectual Empathy for Better Problem Solving

To me, conservation is intrinsically a human issue: we wouldn’t need conservation if humans could learn to coexist with nature better. Sadly, we need biodiversity conservation because, collectively, we are not taking care of nature so that biodiversity can thrive. These issues will only continue if we aren’t thinking about how to work with people to account for their needs and help them change their behaviors.

A new movement in my work, Compassionate Conservation, has sparked a debate as to whether human dimensions, such as empathy and compassion, should be a part of decision-making in these fields. I uphold that without empathy and compassion, we won’t make the kinds of environmental progress we’d like to see. I learned these perspectives from my mentor Dan the Grass Man, and maybe this post has sparked some curiosity in you. I hope you’ll join me in finding ways to work together with all kinds of people to use empathetic approaches to problem solving and find more harmony with nature.

Written by Megan O’Connell, Assistant Professor of Environmental Communications & Information