As a qualitative researcher who has conducted literally hundreds of focus groups, interviews and ethnography studies, I’m used to the aftermath of my job: after spending time with a stranger discussing their emotional attachments, decision-making process, and personal values, I can’t help but feel a letdown when I’ve gotten all the data I need and it’s time to leave them.  We call this “researcher empathy” and it stands to reason: a key to successful qualitative research is developing rapport with our subjects and creating a trusting environment, free from judgment, where our research subjects feel free to share their innermost thoughts. That level of emotional intimacy is often only seen among family, close friends and spouses – and we researchers bring it on fast and furiously in an accelerated timeframe, recreating the whirlwind of emotion usually seen only in the early stages of dating! It’s no wonder we researchers and research subjects alike often feel like “something or someone is missing” days after being involved in a particularly intimate discussion. But as a researcher, it’s something you get used to.
Recently I’ve been noticing something else going on for me that is a bit perplexing: I’ve developed attachments to the products and services I’ve been researching, switching prescriptions, adopting new vices, and completely overhauling my attitude toward household chores – all after talking with people about their attachments to these things. This goes beyond the idea of supporting my client for the sake of experiencing his product, and enters the space of full-fledged product loyalty…in a matter of weeks or even days-!
Witness: after spending days in smokers’ homes listening to them talk about the appeal of smoking (I was researching the development of a drug to help heavy smokers quit) I found they had painted such a rosy picture of smoking that I was drawn to the idea of smoking a cigarette, and even went so far as to buy a pack! In a study on household cleaning, after watching moms clean their homes I became obsessed with having the newest, most innovative cleaning products and spent over $500 on a new vacuum, mops and various green cleaning supplies! And recently, in a study about coffee drinking, I not only began drinking coffee after years of not drinking it, but also have become a 3+ cup a day coffee drinker- tea just will not do!
So why does this happen, I wondered? Listening to loyal consumers talk about why they love a product so much – or even listing to their objections to a product and devising strategies on overcoming the barriers – is powerfully influential to a researcher.  The same factors that cause attachment to our subjects cause attachment to the products and categories we research: hearing someone talk about a product with strong emotion generates an emotional response in the researcher – and for better or worse, we react to it.   Whether or not smoking is a habit I’ll take up permanently (it wasn’t, BTW), or frenetic cleaning will become a part of my normal routine (it just might, if my family has their way), or my coffee drinking will spin out of control (I think I’ll stop at 3, where the productivity seems to break for me), is up to me, and I will implement a more thoughtful decision-making process to help me determine what to do with my newfound attachments. I wonder what the process is like for our customers? And what other researchers experience, and how they deal with the virtues and vices of research empathy?