A new short film explores the unique challenge of connecting people with the deep sea to develop empathy for creatures rarely seen. Daryl Cameron, a Penn State researcher who studies empathy and moral decision-making, made an appearance in the film "Deep Dive: Face Value" by the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration with film maker Caitlin Bailey.
In the film, Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor, senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, and director of the Social Science Research Institute’s Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, discussed with Bailey empathy challenges for deep-sea animals that are less familiar and may not have faces.
A wildlife cinematographer, Bailey films deep-sea exploration for the Global Foundation for Oceanic Exploration and National Geographic aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. She reached out to Cameron due to his prior work on empathy for animals and how that may play a role on empathy for animals without faces.
"We had a long conversation about empathy and the deep sea: how do we motivate empathy for animals that are so different, and how do we motivate empathy for the frontier of an ecology we don't even fully know yet, because new species are discovered every day? To me, it seemed like a fascinating 'compassion collapse' problem," Cameron said.
For the video, Bailey interviews people on the street, showing them an image of a fish that has a face, and an image of a starfish with no face, then capturing people’s reactions. She also interviews social scientists like Cameron, along with biologists and other scientists, demonstrating an interesting combination of perspectives.
Throughout the film, Cameron spoke about how the frontier of discovery might encourage people to be more open, willing, and embracing of their empathy. "I thought it was great that Caitlin essentially had people do an empathy choice paradigm between different animal species and getting their reactions in real time, which parallels some of my prior work with Penn State psychology professor Janet Swim."
Cameron said the film is one way to communicate research to the public, and simply talking about a paper you’ve written doesn’t land the same way. “It’s important to connect the research we are doing here at Penn State to the community, and present empathy in a way that people can engage in.”
To view the short film, click here.