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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 11 2019, @06:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-could-care-less dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Empathy Is Tearing Us Apart

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Monday November 11 2019, @07:19PM (7 children)

    by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 11 2019, @07:19PM (#919025)

    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.
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @08:09PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @08:09PM (#919045)

    No, those sociopaths like to imagine they are altruistic realists.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @08:40PM (3 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday November 11 2019, @08:40PM (#919065) Journal

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @09:35PM (#919097)

        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

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:45AM (#919220) Homepage Journal

        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

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:05PM (#919425)

        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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:01AM (#919251)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:40PM (#919473)

      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!