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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

#51

Post by User23 »

rdtsc wrote: post #39

> 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 m…

This leads me to believe that what's actually being measured here is neuroticism[1] and not empathy. It's pretty easy to see how the two could be confused, since the former is sensitivity to one's own emotions and the latter is sensitivity to the emotions of others. Obviously people with neurotic tendencies are particularly prone to ego-preserving fictions like believing that they are empathetic and not neurotic.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#52

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

dorkwood wrote: post #47

> 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. For those interested, here's the story that participants were asked to respond to. You can find it in the supporting documents section of the study linked in…

This seems like a poor prompt to generalize from. The premise isn't about some random speaker from the other side. It's about a controversial celebrity known for mocking, inflammatory statements, who practically calls their opponents subhuman. Sounds like an asshole. Maybe highly empathetic people don't like assholes. This headline certainly doesn't seem to be a warranted takeaway.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#53

Post by baked_ziti »

allovernow wrote: post #49
baked_ziti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word does seem to be taking on a different meaning as time goes on. People seem to intend for it to mean "care and consideration for the ingroup as I define it." Which is of course, not its actual meaning.

Sure it is. Nothing about the definition of empathy suggests that it isn't selective. We are generally empathetic but still eat animals. Some cultures still eat dog - you don't think they can love their children?

I think that taking unironic pleasure at the misfortune of others, or wishing others harm, and the capacity to do so, is the literal opposite of empathy.

> Some cultures still eat dog - you don't think they can love their children?

This is a non-sequitur.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#54

Post by mrxd »

Great study. As usual, Robert Wright’s evopsych tendencies have him barking up the wrong tree. White college educated liberals are highly empathetic towards racial minorities, people they don’t have any kind of “tribal” or “in group” connection. Meanwhile, they are highly unempathetic towards certain other whites.

Empathy isn’t a primitive spontaneous moral emotion that everyone assumes it is. In real life, our empathetic reactions are determined by abstract moral beliefs about whose suffering is valid or not.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#55

Post by garmaine »

StuffedParrot wrote: post #35
garmaine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations.

Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might be surprised to learn that republicans are NOT against gay marriage! They're against the government defining what marriage is: marriage is a religious and/or cultural tradition and it's none of the government's damn business to define or restrict it in any way.

Being right-of-center is more about preferring distributed, consensual, market-based solutions over government mandates and regulation, and staying out of people's lives. The obsession with "our values!" and fear response is a weird leftist caricature of the right, not reality.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#56

Post by StuffedParrot »

garmaine wrote: post #55
StuffedParrot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations. Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might…

A straw man implies I am trying to convince you of something. I am just sharing my perspective. “Market based solutions” is no more a value than fear is. You can’t evaluate its efficacy without having a value with which to measure. There’s really no point in discussing politics at all without values.

Personally I think it’s fucked up that government recognizes marriage at all. The benefits have very little to do with the pluralistic definitions of marriage that exist around the world today—tax benefits & visitation rights are not closely related to tying family assets together OR romance. It’s abhorrent that these rights were ever denied to couples regardless of whether they married or not. Religious couples deserve these rights regardless of marriage too. It makes no sense to recognize marriage at the state level. As a gay man I have never nor will ever have any ambitions of marriage, but these rights are still denied to me.

I hope you can see through this that the policy and dialogue championed through partisanship is divorced from values that I hold dear, though I emphatically do not begrudge the gay couples that did find a victory through the policy.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#57

Post by StuffedParrot »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #36
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.

Note, the downvotes distinctly correlate with US evening timezones.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#58

Post by pas »

daenz wrote: post #46

I think there's an interesting dynamic with empathy and freedom of speech: defending freedom of speech forces you to have a basic empathy for everyone. It might not be an empathy based on their lived experiences, but it is one based on respecting that we should collectively protect what they have to communicate. It's why I believe attacks on freedom of speech are so dangerous...they undermine this foundational respec…

Naturally this empathy only self-reinforces itself, if it selectively ignores those who agitate against it. Eg if someone advocates against free-speech, maybe protecting them won't preserve this basic empathy.

And it seems this instability is real, as we have a hard time defining the minimums of free speech.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#59

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

garmaine wrote: post #55
StuffedParrot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations. Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might…

I would wager that people who vote Republican and oppose gay marriage do so for a variety of reasons, not just the one you stated.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#60

Post by rfrey »

garmaine wrote: post #55
StuffedParrot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations. Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might…

Honest question from someone who knows nothing about American culture except what the media chooses to tell me.

Wouldn't the position outlined above lead to preferring policy that:

1. In the best case, removed all government recognition of marriage: e.g. remove all differential tax treatment, remove marriage licenses, remove any recognition of marriage whatsoever from government documents

2. In the case that (1) is not possible or complete, ensure that what regulations do exist make no distinctions at all between "types" of couples that marry - e.g. no distinction or restriction between same-sex marriage, cousins marrying, more-than-two-partner marriages, etc.

That seems to me to follow logically, but also does not seem to be the position of the Republican party, at least the parts of it I read about.

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