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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: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @06:58PM (29 children)
Hmm, so too much empathy drives left partisanship. What is it that drives the right? Pure hatred, or a mix of that and something else?
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
You got close, but the real answer is PURE EVIL.
The Republican party is Satan's political party.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @09:03PM (1 child)
You're confusing empathetic with pathetic. The Republican party is pathetic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:46AM
Emphatically pathetic.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @07:13PM (4 children)
How many people in either group are going to self-report a lack of empathy?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 11 2019, @08:21PM (2 children)
I will admit there are people that I would have difficulty feeling empathy for.
Especially if I rightly or wrongly perceive that they are somehow bad evil people.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @08:43PM
Me too. I'm not going to give myself any glowing scores on the empathy-self-evaluation, though.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:35AM
I don't. You don't need to cut off your ability to recognize what drives a person to oppose them and you don't need to demonize them. I could simultaneously understand what might drive a meth head into breaking into my house and put two rounds in his chest and one in his head. And unless you're severely deficient in the empathy department, you should be able to as well. So this study was bullshit from the outset, regardless of the conclusions it reached, because it doesn't even understand what empathy is.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:18PM
I think what's more interesting here is that the study shows that much of the people who self-identify as being empathetic are on the more extremely side of not being empathetic. It's something like people who think they are wealthy being poorer than average or people who think they're astronauts being more likely to live in caves.
I think much of this is due to the population being studied, consisting in large part of college students. The usual group of twenty-somethings will have inflated estimates of their abilities and such. Maybe this is just another thing that doesn't get self-evaluated well. Or even perhaps that young people who don't self-evaluate well are more likely to have problems with empathy too? Then there's the ideologies that have all kinds of empathy for the in-groups and hate for the out-groups.
(Score: 5, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Monday November 11 2019, @07:19PM (7 children)
The lack of empathy, of course. Goes right along with the "I got mine, fuck you" mentality.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @08:09PM (4 children)
No, those sociopaths like to imagine they are altruistic realists.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @08:40PM (3 children)
As do the socialists! That's kinda the whole point.
Everyone is the hero in their own story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @09:35PM
Is this a bizzaro world version of deathmonkey I'm agreeing with?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:45AM
I'm not. I'm entirely too old and tired for that nonsense. I know very well who I am. I'm quite happy with who I am but it's situationally heroic at best. I don't lie to myself to justify something I know is wrong. I just decide if I'm going to do it anyway or not.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:05PM
That may be a good abstract point, but reality right now in Western nations is not so equivalent. Conservatives may think they are doing GOD'S work, but a cursory review of reality will quickly show thst the GOP is not GOD and is a true force of evil promoting death and hate. You don't have to be a Democrat, you can even remain a Republican, just vote out the evil shitheads.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:01AM (1 child)
Unfortunately those who most often disparage others claiming they have a "I got mine, fuck you" mentality have their own "I want everything you have but I shouldn't have to work for it like you did" mentality. They never learned to delay gratification so they believe they deserve it instantly by force of law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:40PM
This is actually a truly astonishing comment in that it appears to be a kind of Rorschach test. I suspect that your idea of the people who have an "I got mine, fuck you" and "I want everything you have but I shouldn't have to work for it like you did" mentality may be quite a bit different from who I think displays that attitude. Fascinating!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Monday November 11 2019, @07:22PM
That wasn't actually their conclusion, and the study does not appear to support that conclusion.
They don't seem to have found any sort of difference between right and left on this. Only that they identify with a different 'in group' but not how it goes from that point.
And this is nothing new, it's one of the oldest games. Got some troublesome peasants to deal with? Just split them up into two teams and tell each team the other team are the bad guys.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 11 2019, @10:42PM (11 children)
Some people give a damn,
Some don't.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @11:51PM (3 children)
The problem is 'giving a damn' in the wrong place.
Lets say a country is doing poorly with food. You donate millions of tons of food. Suddenly that countries farmers are out of business and can not make anymore more food because they move away. Now you have a country that will always need food. Woopsie!
To fix a problem you have to be very careful not to create a broken window fallacy sort of situation. It is very very very easy to destroy wealth when you intend to create it.
I have an acquaintance who spent 3 years (that I know off) trying to not work. He went from friend to friend trying to live off them. Food, money, housing, you name it. When he finally ran out of people to beg off of he got a job. Suddenly he is doing 100000% better in life. He would today if he could do the same thing. Sit on a couch smoke weed and watch the cable. Everyone had to cut him off and force him to do better. Everyone felt bad for him. Then everyone stopped and he was forced to listen to everyone saying the same thing, get a job. In his case the charity he was getting enabled him to destroy wealth of everyone around him. His mother on the other hand will need help for her whole life. She is mentally challenged. He on the other hand is just fine, but learned exactly how to work the system from his mother.
Be careful how you apply charity. It can be just as dangerous. Some people make it a way of life. Spotting them and pulling them out of that system is hard for they are comfortable with the life they have made at the expense of others. As they look for all intents like people who need real help.
Then there are those who are hell bent on giving things away. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-detroit-residents-pushed-back-against-tree-planting?utm_source=pocket-newtab [getpocket.com]
When the person on the reviving end just want you to leave them alone.
Charity unfortunately is a tricky thing. It can make a situation much worse without even really trying.
You feel really bad for people. I do. But it can be just as hard to shutup sit and just listen to them. Sometimes that is all they really need. Maybe a spot of advice. But even then they probably already know the right thing to do but refuse to do it. For 'reasons'.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:30AM (2 children)
Sounds like living like that was making him happy, at the time.
"Better" by whose measure? Presumably he was making more of his own money but having much less time to spend in the ways he wanted?
Presumably his friends knew what they were getting into when they decided to help him. Perhaps he was deceiving them, but when they felt like they were reaching a point where they might be giving too much, they stopped and cut it off. He wanted help and, for a while, they wanted to help him. I don't approve of deception or using people, but other than that, why all this focus on defining people's success in how much they are working? What good is that as a measure of success, if it makes you less happy?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:23PM (1 child)
Doesn't sound like that to me. But it also sounds like he was making everyone around him unhappy.
Did he really have less time? Begging takes time too.
Why is happiness so important that you're willing to sacrifice other peoples' happiness for it? And why would we think this guy were happy before and not happy after?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:45PM
I don't know, but I bet many CEOs know the answer.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:46AM (6 children)
Empathy isn't giving a damn. It's only recognizing how someone else feels. Giving a damn is sympathy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:11AM (2 children)
Then if I am sympathetic, I am also apt to be sympathetic as well.
Giving a damn nearly always gets me in trouble, especially at the workplace. Seems quite incompatible with the needs of the leadership mindset.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:13AM
One of those sympathetics should be empathetic.
I should proofread better.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 12 2019, @11:59AM
That's because you're being paid to be a proxy of effort for the owner(s). If you're not being a very good proxy, you're going to make them dissatisfied.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday November 12 2019, @11:37AM (2 children)
Actually not really. Empahty is the social skill of reading and understanding emotions.
Sympathy is a social mechanism where you feel for yourself emotions you emphatically perceive.
The act of deciding to solve bad sypathetic feelings by "giving a damn" is just one reason you might give a damn, sympahty can bring you pleasant or neutral feelings that don't call for action and you might want to solve a sympathic problem by simply removing yourself from the presence of the person sending you offending empathic signals.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:01PM (1 child)
Fair enough. People can and do indeed override their emotions with rational thought. Not often enough but they do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:07PM
So...close....to becoming....self...aware! Hmm, it was a pretty full moon last night...