Promoting Empathy, Connection, and Pro-Sociality Through Storytelling in American High Schools: A Collaboration Between Academic and Practitioners

For a variety of reasons connected to the rise of the Internet and our current political environment, societies around the world are facing an existential crisis–a lack of empathy. Today, people are increasingly struggling to be empathetic to others in their communities and in society more broadly. In the current research we (a team of academic researchers and practitioners) attempt to tackle this problem of decreasing empathy by testing and evaluating a school-based intervention program developed by Narrative 4 in American high school classrooms (N=380, 10th and 11th graders) using an experimental approach (i.e., comparing Narrative 4 programming to a control condition). This 10-session program focused on building empathy, perspective taking, and active listening skills (among other skills) through narrative storytelling exercises. Results indicated the program was successful in promoting students’ reported empathy, perspective taking, curiosity to diverse ideas, and active listening skills as compared to the control condition. Additionally, this greater empathy led participants to report more pro-sociality (e.g., greater willingness to be civically engaged, more respect for others in their classroom and community more broadly) and less affective polarization towards those who disagree with them on politics. At the end of the program, participants also reported positive experiences with the program. Taken together, this research highlights the merits of Narrative 4 programming for promoting empathy and pro-sociality among high school students, the merits of academic and practitioner partnerships, and a promising narrative-based intervention for promoting empathy in society.