Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

Could this not call into question the empathy scale used in the study?

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 confirmation bias and tribal victimization narratives within their in group. I mean, we live in a country where the racial, religious, gender, and political ideology groups (alone and in every combination) having measurably disproportionate social, economic, and political power have equally strong or stronger (within their own communities) victimization narratives to the groups that are objectively disadvantaged. It's very easy for people to answer yes to the question that supposedly measures empathic concern when they in reality have no empathy for those outside of their identity group, which they perceive as disadvantaged and their only “empathic” concern is for those within their in-group that they identify as even greater victims of the same injustice that they themselves are victimized by.

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.

Likely not. I would assume they use one of the big five traits which is called agreeableness, or something that's close enough it, and this result seems in keeping with how that trait would be described. People who are high in agreeableness are more likely to see the world in prey vs. predator terms - in my speculative opinion because this trait evolved as a maternal trait primarily to deal with the protection of infants - which takes its form in the political sphere as a very nasty type of behavior where if someone is found out to be the enemy everything's fair game to destroy them, since they're predators and you need to protect the prey on your team.