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There are people who believe that the political polarization now afflicting the United States might finally start to subside if Americans of both parties could somehow become more empathetic. If you're one of these people, the American Political Science Review has sobering news for you.
Last week APSR—one of the alpha journals in political science—published a study[$] which found that "empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity in the electorate and in some respects even exacerbates it."
The study had two parts. In the first part, Americans who scored high on an empathy scale showed higher levels of "affective polarization"—defined as the difference between the favorability rating they gave their political party and the rating they gave the opposing party. In the second part, undergraduates were shown a news story about a controversial speaker from the opposing party visiting a college campus. Students who had scored higher on the empathy scale were more likely to applaud efforts to deny the speaker a platform.
It gets worse. These high-empathy students were also more likely to be amused by reports that students protesting the speech had injured a bystander sympathetic to the speaker. That's right: According to this study, people prone to empathy are prone to schadenfreude.
This study is urgently important—though not because it's a paradigm shifter, shedding radically new light on our predicament. As the authors note, their findings are in many ways consistent with conclusions reached by other scholars in recent years. But the view of empathy that's emerging from this growing body of work hasn't much trickled down to the public. And public understanding of it may be critical to shifting America's political polarization into reverse somewhere between here and the abyss.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @06:56PM (20 children)
More important than what is commented on the summary is their defintiion that, "We argue that, in practice, the experience of empathy is biased toward one’s ingroup and can actually exacerbate political polarization." Their design reflects this belief. I would question that belief, in that if empathy is limited to one's ingroup, or that empathy leads one to favor an ingroup, one isn't displaying empathy. Maybe it is sympathy, groupthink, or just straight-up prejudice. Perhaps the better question: What instrument were they using to measure the student's empathy?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday November 11 2019, @07:04PM (18 children)
"Like many past studies, this one gauges people’s level of “empathic concern” by asking them how strongly they agree or disagree with a series of seven statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”"
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @07:48PM (11 children)
“I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”
That's an old commie trick.
To be real, you have to go full biblical by asking them how strongly they agree or disagree with a series of statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people that hate me.”
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 11 2019, @08:19PM (10 children)
To go full biblical, I would ask, do I think this person that hates me is redeemable? Or do I think God thinks they might be redeemable. If Jesus shed his blood for them, would I shed mine? That's a difficult path to follow. Something to strive for. But could I actually treat this way someone who hates me?
Would tender concerned feelings translate into any action?
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 11 2019, @08:58PM (9 children)
To really go full biblical wouldn't you ask yourself if that person had seen something they shouldn't have? If they have, then they ought to be turned into a pillar of salt, of course.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 11 2019, @09:38PM (8 children)
My understanding is that Lot's wife liked her life in Sodom. She looked back at the life she was now leaving. That is why she turned to salt. So Lot ends up with his two daughters and no wife. The daughters take turns getting him drunk, copulating with him, and getting pregnant. [wikipedia.org] From which come the Moabites and Ammonites.
There is a rumor that if you look at a Vorlon, you turn to stone.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 11 2019, @10:24PM (5 children)
Yes, the Bible is full of awful stories.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:23PM (4 children)
The stories don't flatter any of the participants.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:28PM (3 children)
Particularly god.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @09:09PM (2 children)
The fact that people do stupid stuff shouldn't be unflattering of God.
God didn't tell Lot's daughters to get him drunk and get pregnant.
Judges 11 [biblegateway.com] tells a story of a man who made an incredibly stupid and ill-considered vow.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:05PM (1 child)
God did however murder everyone living in Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Old Testament god is an arsehole.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:17PM
God also told the Israelites to destroy certain people groups and leave nobody and nothing left alive.
But it also describes why.
But this is a different topic than what Lot's daughters (and other O.T. people) did of their own choice.
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(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:56AM
Perhaps that's where the phrase "Don't get all salty" really comes from?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday November 12 2019, @09:35AM
Religion is weird [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pipedwho on Monday November 11 2019, @09:19PM (5 children)
In other words, they asked a bunch of questions testing for sympathy and called it empathy.
Do you pity the fool? Sympathy.
Is your heart open and accepting? Empathy.
Sympathy seems to go hand in hand with some level of condescension, judgement and often hypocrisy. "Those poor gays, may god have mercy on their souls." Or, "That poor beggar, someone should give him a job."
Sympathy often manifests in a response that is devoid of empathy, often due to uninformed assumptions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @09:22PM
"I'm sympathetic to their cause, but they're a bunch of pricks."
"Such a nice bunch of guys deserving of so much better, but I'm totally unsympathetic to their cause."
(Score: 5, Informative) by exaeta on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:18AM (3 children)
There is actually a technical distinction between empathy and sympathy.
Empathy is the ability to comprehend how others feel at a rational level. I.e., the ability to infer people's feelings from their behavior. That is, an exercise of mirror neurons.
Sympathy is what most people would usually call "empathy" and is roughly concern for another's feelings.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:08AM (2 children)
If the only criteria for empathy is understanding someone's feelings, then it stands to reason that many of the people surveyed may have been empathic, but didn't give a rat's arse about the person's feelings. Those sorts of 'empathic' people are the epitome of users of the phrase "Sucks to be you."
They know you're feeling like crap about a situation, and well isn't that just too bad.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:23AM (1 child)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:43PM
I think you're right about that. A study like that likely has an agenda, either intentional or sub-conscious.
Questions like they're asking are the kind of thing that people even lie to themselves about. Who wants to think they have zero concern for someone in trouble? Who wants to think they're being hypocritical? Lest they be found out, or worse, find out that they aren't the loving/caring/etc person they think they are.
Many people are very selective and conditional on where they put (or pretend to put) their concern, and in being selective they are working to their own agenda rather than from the emotional needs of the 'other'.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 11 2019, @08:14PM
Maybe empathy is biases away from one's outgroup and has more to do with perception of evil than differences over public policy.
I (not a Trump supporter) would have empathy to a Trump supporter in difficulty. But I might not have empathy towards, say, Hitler or Manson, regardless of politics.
I hope that made sense.
I don't have to agree with someone to have empathy. But I might not empathize with someone I would perceive as an evil, defective human being who wants to harm others.
My next door neighbor and I can get along well even if we have differences over public policy ideas. We don't see each other as wanting to hurt others.
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