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Weird retitling of 'Empathy Is Tearing Us Apart' to 'Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study'. The thesis of the article is that empathy may actually be causal and the research does support that conclusion.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wishing others harm and being able to empathize are tangential concepts.
The ability to understand what it's like to have something terrible happen to you does not preclude you from wishing it upon your enemies.
I suspect that for a subset of people the ability to empathize with people who are suffering makes the suffering of their enemies all the better.
>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…
> According to the study, it seems that people with high empathy are more often people with high empathy towards their in-group...and a lack of empathy for the out-group. I'd argue that it isn't really empathy at all...just a more emotional form of tribalism. Yes this, especially considering literally everybody is this way . Care and concern for some people and none for others is par for the course. At that point it'…
I get pretty worked up about perceived injustices. I cringe when I see people get hurt. The people I've volunteered alongside over the years also seem to care enough about the welfare of strangers to actively participate.
Sure, I've also know plenty of people who don't care about others. eg solution to climate crisis is to cull humanity by 99%, people in jail deserve it, political opponents are traitors.
Though I think most people are in the apathetic middle.
> 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…
And that is before the "literal head of ISIS". Sometimes extreme situations results in weirdness like "killing everyone else in the room with your bare hands was ironically the most moral option".
On another note can the political polarization lazy reporting trope just die in a ditch already? Sometimes the other side is objectively wrong both morally and effectiveness. The solution is not to compromise and have half a pogrom.
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Empathy allows people to better understand the asshole which will cause them to hate the asshole even more.
Perceptiveness is not empathy, or else we wouldn't need another word for it. Hatred and empathy are not on the same ends of the emotional spectrum. The ability to perceive others emotions and simultaneously carry toward them feelings of anger, hatred, or malicious intent is not empathy. It's called something else.
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I'm not sure how a field of science can work without any established basics. Shouldn't there be a standard, thoroughly tested, agreed upon definition of "empathy" so one can build on top of that?
I don't think the problem is the definition of empathy but the measurement of it.
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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...