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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: 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...