In the build-up to Diwali, I didn’t even notice when the crackers started going off around me. I no longer have dogs at home, nor babies who might be startled by the noise. It was only when a neighbour (who has both dogs and a baby) mentioned the racket that I realised I hadn’t heard a thing.
I realised something else, too. The same thing happens with impediments on the road. Being able-bodied, I rarely register a missing ramp or a high kerb. But when I’m accompanying an elderly relative or family friend who uses a walking frame or wheelchair, those barriers become impossible to miss. On my own, I see only what my immediate concerns direct me towards.
The realisation was unsettling. Had I become terribly self-centred and apathetic, or was something else going on?
Happily, research suggests it’s something else. (Phew!) To function effectively, our brains cannot process all the sounds, sights and sensation that come our way. So, drawing on what they know about our life and interests, they prioritise the signals most likely to matter to us and filter out the rest.
Neuroscientists call one aspect of this process ‘sensory gating’; psychologists describe the broader phenomenon as selective attention. In effect, a signal that carries no relevance for us is unlikely to enter our conscious awareness.
Real life is full of examples. The one most cited in research is the cocktail party effect. In a noisy room, we tend to tune out all the surrounding chatter. But the moment someone across the room says our name, our head turns. The fact is the sound was always travelling our way, but only our name passed the relevance test. This is also the reason new parents sleep through traffic and thunder but wake at the faintest whimper from the baby cot. Dog owners flinch at firecrackers because they are already attuned to their pet’s distress. Meanwhile, people who live near a railway line stop hearing the trains within weeks of moving in.
Is it all self-centredness? Not in the moral sense. Selfishness involves noticing someone else’s needs and choosing to ignore them. This, by contrast, is a failure of detection, not a failure of care. We cannot respond to a signal that never registers in our awareness. It is a feature of an energy-efficient system, not necessarily a defect in our character.
However, our filters are shaped by experience, which means they can be retrained. That is where responsibility enters the picture. We cannot be blamed for what we fail to notice but are accountable for what we do once we become aware of it. Hearing a friend explain how a crowded footpath makes life difficult for her father, or seeing how a loud bang frightens a neighbour’s dog can change what we pay attention to.
We cannot possibly attend to everything; we would only end up overwhelmed. But we can consciously widen our field of attention and become more empathetic in everyday situations: by asking people about their daily struggles, noticing who is having difficulty negotiating a staircase and why, and listening when someone tells us that a particular sound distresses them—and doing something about it.
Think of empathy as the practice of borrowing another person’s filter for a while. And, like any good loan, it is worth returning with interest. The next time a firecracker goes off, you may not be bothered by it personally but you might just remember who is.