Nonhuman Fictional Characters and the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Abstract

Highlighting a trend in current models of narrative empathy that suggests that readers’ ability to empathize with nonhuman characters is dependent wholly on anthropomorphization, this essay explores two narratives that feature chimp characters—Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth and Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves—to consider the challenges that nonhuman characters pose to such models and the empathy-altruism hypothesis. It first considers the cognitive differences between humans and chimps to stress just how difficult it is to represent chimp cognition and emotion in narrative and the resulting challenges that this difficulty poses for models of narrative empathy. It then discusses the mechanisms by which written narratives that refuse to anthropomorphize nonhuman characters, such those by McAdam and Fowler, might inspire a real-world ethics of care among readers for nonhuman subjects. Ultimately, this essay proposes an expansion to current models of narrative empathy by which we recognize the potential of human bridge characters to foster real-world care among readers for nonhuman subjects.

Invoking ‘Empathy for the Planet’ through Participatory Ecological Storytelling: From Human-Centered to Planet-Centered Design

“…It can bridge a psychological barrier towards entities that score low on the agency, affectivity, coherence, and continuity scales. For some, anthropomorphism is a condition for building empathy for nonhuman characters or narrators in a story [102]. For others, there is a risk of reinforcing anthropocentric bias [103] and triggering 'false empathy' (the incorrect projection of personal experiences and the incorrect belief that one feels the suffering of another without cognitively understanding the other) [33,58,70].…”

Perceived authenticity of virtual characters makes the difference

“…Initially, the concept of characters refers to fictional humanor non-human-beings in narratives, typically in literature (Everett, 2007;Maslej et al, 2017;James, 2019). As technology develops, both the locus and the representations of characters have been enriched: no longer do characters exist in the "wordmasses" in literature works (Keen, 2011), but they can also be seen, heard, and even felt in media as well as in the physical world via technology (Hoorn and Koinijn, 2003;Gulz, 2005;Reynolds, 2006;Holz et al, 2009;de Borst and de Gelder, 2015;Peters et al, 2019;Kellems et al, 2020).…”

“Fingeryeyed” Description: Laboratory Animals and Transspecies Empathy in VanderMeer and Yanagihara

“…Taking this observation as a prompt, this article joins a growing number of narratological studies turning to questions of anthropomorphism, transspecies (narrative) empathy, and realworld altruism in literature (Keen 2006;Bernaerts et al 2014;Herman 2018;James 2019).…”

“…Yet, in recent years, we find attempts to step away from the centrality of mind-based approaches to transspecies empathy. For example, Alexa Weik von Mossner (2017) and Erin James (2019) consider, respectively, "affective contagion" and an adaptation of Suzanne Keen's "bridge character"-a human character whose compassion for an animal within the Pre-print version -PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE. To cite, see Lambert, Shannon.…”