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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

#61

Post by pas »

knzhou wrote: post #18
daenz wrote: post #15

>The authors of the APSR study—Elizabeth Simas and Scott Clifford of the University of Houston and Justin Kirkland of the University of Virginia—have this kind of dynamic in mind when they write, “Polarization is not a consequence of a lack of empathy among the public, but a product of the biased ways in which we experience empathy.” That's the nugget. According to the study, it seems that people with high empathy ar…

Nah, I would argue that empathy has never been anything more than that. We have existing names for the “real” empathy you being up too — people call it being two-faced, practicing whataboutism, being callously analytical, being too unempathetic to side with the obviously right side, and so on.

People can be empathetic toward one person easily. A small group, yeah sure, it happens. But the moment they need to consider a group roughly the same size as theirs, and with opposing intents, fuck no. (And that's why seemingly two part politics devolves everywhere to a zero-sum game.)

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#62

Post by baked_ziti »

pas wrote: post #58
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.

> we have a hard time defining the minimums of free speech.

In what sense? Legally, for example, we don't.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#63

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

harimau777 wrote: post #8

I wonder if some of this could be due to people feeling that what people believe is not as relevant of what they do. E.g. it seems like a lot of Republicans genuinely believe in family values and integrity, but whenever Trump violates them there is some excuse for why they don't stop supporting him.

This has puzzled me as well. I lean right of center, and know some really super people who also lean conservative. I haven't been able to reconcile their values, their support of Trump, and Trump's behavior.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#64

Post by pas »

kempbellt wrote: post #11

> 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. I can relate, as I am certainly someone who would probably laugh in this situation, as I also find myself laughing at the idea that people trample one…

Probably highly empathetic folks would be hard to find in todays information overloaded world with so many bad news.

Eg I have a relative who very much cannot look at the news because it's all bad. And actively seeks out positive things. (Like meditation, Om chanting, they try to bring positivity to the world, basically the new age thoughts and prayers.)

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#65

Post by baked_ziti »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #52
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.

Highly empathetic people should be the ones most able to empathize with people who are deeply unpleasant. Else they wouldn't be highly empathetic.

> Maybe highly empathetic people don't like assholes.

Nobody likes assholes...

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#66

Post by pas »

baked_ziti wrote: post #62
pas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> we have a hard time defining the minimums of free speech. In what sense? Legally, for example, we don't.

But we do. In many countries, and even in the US the history of what is and isn't a good trade off to limit speech is a long and still ongoing discourse.

Sure, the gov part seems easy, but then people call on FB to filter lies in political ads, and again people want laws to mandate social networks to do this, and so on.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#67

Post by Gibbon1 »

rfrey wrote: post #60
garmaine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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

As an American all I have to say is don't take anything that guys is telling you at face value.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#69

Post by vkou »

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.

No, it wouldn't have. The South's entire way of life was centered around the in involatile, unassailable idea that human beings are property.

The difference is that in no other Western country were slaveowners ready to resort to violence to defend that idea.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#70

Post by dr_dshiv »

Adam Smith's first book was about empathy: "the theory of moral sentiments." He used empathy to describe why people act good to others. Because when others feel bad, we feel bad; and, when others feel good, we feel good. It like the exchange of feelings as an economic good.
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