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Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

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Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#31

Post by larnmar »

tehjoker wrote: post #13
harshreality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#nondualism The master and slave are part of the same whole; one cannot exist without the other, and more generally, everyone is a flawed or incomplete person in one way or another. Having empathy for one without having empathy for the other is to misunderstand the universe.

Would you seriously argue that in 1864?

I certainly would. A little more empathy for slaveowners (that is, the ability to see things from their point of view) would have enabled the US to abolish slavery without the bloody civil war.

Every country in the western henisphere abolished slavery around about the same time, but only in the US did it cause a civil war.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#32

Post by StuffedParrot »

tehjoker wrote: post #13
harshreality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#nondualism The master and slave are part of the same whole; one cannot exist without the other, and more generally, everyone is a flawed or incomplete person in one way or another. Having empathy for one without having empathy for the other is to misunderstand the universe.

Would you seriously argue that in 1864?

As a bald statement explicit empathy would (perhaps correctly in a political context) be confused for endorsement. That does not imply a lack of empathy: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2009/5/18/732785/-

(Ignore the partisan commentary please, I am only linking for the quotes which do demonstrate this.)

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#33

Post by sysbin »

kempbellt wrote: post #12
dragonwriter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have empathy, you do both. That doesn't mean that your sympathy for each is equal. EDIT: But, the measure in the article doesn't measure empathy, which is independent of position, it measures whether one frames virtue through victimization narratives. People who agree with that wouldn't empathize with both, they'd empathize with the one that they see as the slave, which would all too often be driven by confirm…

Empathizing with the master is difficult for many people. Not realizing that a person, born into the lucky privilege of being the master, doesn't see what they do as victimizing to a slave. It's just how life works for them. Tim Minchin did an interesting bit on empathy a while back. Discussing the nature of empathizing with the shooter, as well as the shooter's victims, in incidents of mass shootings. The podcast is…

Listened to the podcast and its good. I've always been empathetic to shooters because I understand determinism and realize the shooter didn't have any free will in how his/her life turned out. The universe just happened to make it be. Anyway more food for thought to the topic.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#34

Post by larnmar »

dorkwood wrote: post #14

> 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.” Does this really signify empathy? I consider myself empathetic, but I wouldn't agree with the above statement. If anything, having concerned feelings for someone solely be…

I agree, empathy is about being able to see things from another’s point of view, not the feeling of “tender, concerned feelings”, and particularly not of restricting those feelings to those less fortunate than yourself.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#35

Post by StuffedParrot »

garmaine wrote: post #26
StuffedParrot wrote: post #19

Most people’s views don’t neatly align with any party; that’s simply the easiest narrative to follow. I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. When party loyalty is divorced from values I wouldn’t expect a change in the underlying dynamic that drives people to partisan polarization. To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans f…

> To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans face: fear of a loss of quality of life, fear of loss of stability, fear of change, fear of changing classes, fear of losing your culture, fear of being left behind by society. I’m a republican-leaning independent, and what you write here strikes me more as stereotype of the right than actual concerns of the right. I don’t really worry about any…

That may be true, I never claimed to be accurate (certainly not in a general sense), I am just conveying what I hear when I talk to people about what matters to them. Fear is certainly not a value, but americans rarely talk about values in any explicit way.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#36

Post by EdwardDiego »

StuffedParrot wrote: post #19

Most people’s views don’t neatly align with any party; that’s simply the easiest narrative to follow. I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. When party loyalty is divorced from values I wouldn’t expect a change in the underlying dynamic that drives people to partisan polarization. To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans f…

> I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats.

I'm entirely unsurprised, they're more to the right than our NZ centre-right party National.

The fact that the Democrats are even considered left-wing in the USA baffles me.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#37

Post by chongli »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #9

Maybe the scale at which you love your neighbor comes at the cost proportional to how much you hate your common rival. To put it another way, humans might be incapable of emotional empathy outside of tribal brotherhood. That is, people they can identify with. It'd make sense in a sort of selfish gene way. Emotional actions just seems wholly negative at the scale of our society. This may be the core of our division. W…

You don’t need empathy to love your neighbour, you just need to choose to do so. This is one of the central tenets of Christianity.

This story reminds me of Scott’s essay I can tolerate anything except the outgroup [1]. I am partial to Father Brown’s argument that it doesn’t count if you only forgive the people you like. That’s just tribalism, which humans are naturally inclined toward. The hard thing is to forgive (or indeed to offer anything of worth to) people you don’t like.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#38

Post by tehjoker »

larnmar wrote: post #31
tehjoker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you seriously argue that in 1864?

I certainly would. A little more empathy for slaveowners (that is, the ability to see things from their point of view) would have enabled the US to abolish slavery without the bloody civil war. Every country in the western henisphere abolished slavery around about the same time, but only in the US did it cause a civil war.

This is a misunderstanding of American history. I don't fully know why it was so easy to do away with slavery in other parts of the world (and it mostly happened all within about 100 years of each other), but in the US, slavery was core to the economic system of the south - a slavocracy headed by white slavocrats.

The slavocrats would have been happy to have empathy, for the northerners to treat them softly and allow their system to persist. They were (not entirely happily) trading free state / slave state as new states were admitted to the union.

It was only when a fever pitch of abolition put the new Republican party in with Lincoln as president did the south finally decide it would be impossible to continue their system in co-existance with the industrialized free north. The capitalist free north also had an interest in liberating the slaves so they could be put to use as highly productive industrial workers instead of agricultural workers.

To this end, the south seceded from the union and fired the first blow against the north at Ft. Sumter. A brutal military campaign was necessary to break the power of the slavocracy and free the slaves.

You can look at the historical material interests of the north and conclude it wasn't entirely selfless, but by god it was necessary to end the evil endemic to the southern economic system.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#39

Post by rdtsc »

> 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.

> 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.”

It seems like a problematic way to measure empathy. I don't think it would be surprising that people who claim to have a lot of empathy in surveys, or in general conversations, would demonstrate a lack of empathy in their actions.

My tongue-in-cheek version of the abstract would be something like "...We argue that, in practice, the _self-reported_ experience of empathy ... can actually exacerbate political polarization."

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#40

Post by noobermin »

rabidrat wrote: post #23
dorkwood wrote: post #14

> 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.” Does this really signify empathy? I consider myself empathetic, but I wouldn't agree with the above statement. If anything, having concerned feelings for someone solely be…

> Does this really signify empathy? I consider myself empathetic, but I wouldn't agree with the above statement. You are noticing the difference between "compassion" (a divine emotion) and "pity" (its near enemy). Pity grants you a position above the pitied, while compassion positions you alongside/with the sufferer. These nuances are hard enough to suss out given unlimited information and attention. I agree it's all…

I'm busy, but it would be nice to see the questionaire, because the supplied example in the article could either signify pity or compassion.
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