Empathy and the responsiveness to social affordances

The direct perception theory of empathy claims that we can immediately experience a person’s state of mind. I can see for instance that my neighbour is angry with me in his bodily countenance. I develop a version of the direct perception theory of empathy which takes this perceptual capacity to depend upon recognising in what way the other person is responsive to the affordances the environment provides. By recognising which possibilities for action are relevant to a person, I can thereby understand something about the meaning they give to the world. I come to share something of their perspective on the world, and this allows me to grasp based on my perception of them something about their current state of mind. I argue that shared affect plays a central role in this perceptual capacity. Shared affect allows me to orient my attention to possibilities for action that matter to the other person. I end by briefly discuss the implications of this view of empathy for the disturbances in so-called “cognitive empathy” that are found in people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.     

Queer affordances of care in suburban public libraries

Public libraries are more than the materiality of their built form and collections. Within ever-widening mandates to enhance social inclusion and citizen emotional and physical well-being through micro-political practices of care, this paper addresses the resourceful community resilience that insider activist and ally librarians may foster for LGBTQ + suburbanites. Turning its attention to Canadian suburban public libraries in three case study peripheral municipalities (Mississauga, Brampton, and Ajax) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), this paper draws on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with librarians to identify affordances of care selectively available for sexual and gender minorities. Following its original usage in psychology of perception scholarship, affordances are understood as the perceived differential, functional, and relational possibilities of objects, places, and people for action. The range of affordances of care discussed in this paper include: LGBTQ + -positive space iconography; LGBTQ + Pride book displays, reading lists, and book marks; and LGBTQ + book clubs, writing workshops, and story times. These empirical examples are used to explore the performative progressive limitations of suburban public libraries.     

Effects of task constraint on action dynamics

The actualization of action possibilities (i.e., affordances) can often be accomplished in numerous ways. For instance, an individual could walk over to a rubbish bin to drop an item in or throw the piece of rubbish into the bin from some distance away. The aim of the current study was to investigate the action dynamics that emerge from such under-constrained task or action spaces using an object transportation task. Participants were instructed to transport balls between a starting location and a large wooden box located 9 m away. The temporal interval between the sequential presentation of balls was manipulated as a control parameter and was expected to influence the distance participants moved prior to throwing or dropping the ball into the target box. A two-parameter state space derived from the Cusp Catastrophe Model was employed to illustrate how behavioral variability emerged as a consequence of the under-constrained task context. Two follow-up experiments demonstrated direct correspondence between model predictions and observed action dynamics as a function of increasing task constraints. Implications for modeling, the theory of affordances, and empirical studies more generally are discussed.