
Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study - Reedx
https://www.wired.com/story/empathy-is-tearing-us-apart/
======
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."

~~~
timwaagh
Relying on self reported things is a big problem with a lot of psychological
research. It is very hard to do it otherwise because sympathetic feelings are
an inner world experience. Only if we found something measurable that
coincided with these feelings in almost all instances could we improve upon
it.

~~~
umvi
It's almost like you need unaffiliated third parties to rank people on their
good qualities.

"Are you humble?"

"Oh yes, definitely, I'm one of the most humble people I know"

"Are you a good person?"

"Oh yes, one of the best"

vs.

"How humble would you say your co-worker is?"

"Hmm, in my opinion probably average humility. I've never seen them do
anything that made me think they were especially humble."

"Would you say your co-worker is a good person?"

"Hard to tell. They don't particularly stand out as being especially good."

~~~
whatshisface
That's subject to a lot of well-known social biases, for example the fact that
more attractive people are perceived to be smarter and better-intentioned.

~~~
umvi
But am I even more biased toward myself is the question. I would answer yes.

People may be biased toward me based on my looks, but I am _way_ more biased
toward myself by comparison.

------
daenz
>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 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.

~~~
baked_ziti
> 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's not empathy, it's just being the same thing everyone else is.

~~~
specialist
I must be an outlier then.

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.

~~~
automatoney
Could it be the case that your in-group includes strangers and those who have
been wronged, but does not include some other group of people? Maybe 'people
who don't care about others'? Or maybe it's the people who perpetuate the
injustices? I'm not saying that you have to have empathy for these groups, but
maybe your outgroup doesn't look like what you may expect.

~~~
specialist
Sorry, I've lost the narrative. In group? Out group? Like when I can't
remember which fork is for me and which is for salad.

Why the downvotes? I really want to know.

Because obviously correct statement about the bell curve distribution of a
personality trait is somehow whackadoodle?

Or is it because those who volunteer are just virtual signaling SJWs who's
only motivation is to mock misanthropes?

------
thinkingemote
If I were to produce a survey for users here asking if they are empathetic I
would expect everyone to answer in the positive.

It's like those surveys of university students asking how many times a week
they have sex (hint, it's much more than reality as no insecure student wants
to admit they are not getting any)

People want to be thought as good, kind and considerate. Whether they actually
are or of it only applies to their in group are other questions.

I'd wager to say that it's a selective empathy, compassion or love at its core
that drives partianship. That your opposite group are full of people thinking
and feeling they are good and empathetic is itself a shaking thought for most
people.

For example, here is something that most of the people who voted yes to in my
survey would shudder at. The idea that Trump voters are acting how they do
from the sense of love and positive feeling for their families and communities
is very worrying for self identified empathetic people. Or how about that
China is acting the way they do from a sense of love and empathy to their huge
country and people and they seek to reduce suffering overall. It sounds insane
doesn't it?

------
daenz
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 respect for one another.

If hating what someone has to say but defending their right to say it isn't a
form of sincere empathy, then I don't know what is.

~~~
pas
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.

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

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

~~~
Dumblydorr
What about shouting fire in a crowded theater? I've had lengthy debates about
whether that should be allowed or not, and if we still "have" free speech if
we disallow it.

~~~
pas
The ever relevant Hitchens
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aePgiW0Km_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aePgiW0Km_0)

(I don't necessarily share his very individualized approach/view.)

------
dorkwood
> 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
the article. Replace 'Democrats' with 'Republicans' for the alternate version.

> College Democrats Shut Down Invited Speaker

Rowdy protests lead university to cancel lecture from controversial speaker

On Monday, campus police struggled to break up a large group of students who
were gathered to protest a speaking engagement that was planned for Friday
night. The invited speaker is a social media celebrity known for making
inflammatory statements about Democrats. His posts frequently mock the
intelligence of Democrats and in one recent post said that “there may be
nothing more despicable or disgusting than a Democrat.”

Thought the protest, which was organized by the College Democrats was mostly
peaceful, it became chaotic as students tried to pass through the protestors
and enter the building. Michelle Jones, a junior at the university, said she
was struck with a sign being carried by one of the students demonstrating. “I
don’t know if he did it on purpose,” said Jones, “but I was pretty annoyed. I
just wanted to hear what the speaker has to say.”

Ultimately, the College Democrats were successful in getting the university to
cancel the event. But not all are happy with the outcome. A petition on social
media is calling for officials to punish those involved and suspend the
College Democrats’ ability to hold events for the rest of the school year.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
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.

~~~
baked_ziti
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...

~~~
itronitron
Empathy allows people to better understand the asshole which will cause them
to hate the asshole even more.

~~~
baked_ziti
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.

~~~
vict00ms
It sounds to me like your idea of empathy is more akin to compassion.

~~~
baked_ziti
Yes, they go together. Sociopaths are low in empathy but excellent at
perceiving the emotional state of others.

------
dorkwood
> 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 because they're less fortunate than me seems a bit patronising.
I wouldn't want someone to think I thought less of them just because they had
less than I do.

This is why I'm skeptical of studies based on surveys in general -- by playing
empathy chess, and wondering how it would make the other person feel if they
knew how I was feeling about them, I'm placed into the "not empathetic" camp.

~~~
rabidrat
> 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 but impossible to gather equivalent distinctions
from a rigid survey.

~~~
noobermin
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.

------
StuffedParrot
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 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. In more concrete terms, how do I know I can eat and be
healthy and be around my people in the future and experience joy as I do now?
In fact these are often the same things that drive Democrats, Independents, in
fact these are universal. It is something else (cultural, economic, social?)
that drives party loyalty.

For another example, often conservative christians give to charity at higher
rates than any other group (at least in the us). Yet, the left is constantly
striving for representation and equity, which in some forms is certainly a
type of empathy. It is a mistake to consider a lack of empathy a driving force
in politics.

~~~
garmaine
> 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 of the things you mention.

~~~
StuffedParrot
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.

~~~
garmaine
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.

~~~
rfrey
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.

~~~
Gibbon1
> 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.

------
knzhou
Empathy has always been morally neutral. Feeling what others do allows you to
help them, but it also allows you to manipulate them, or better hurt them.
Most of the time it only acts as a way to strengthen existing tribal
affiliations.

------
jenxkfjeo0
The problem is we’ve exploited our ability to tailor our messaging so
specifically that people aren’t getting new information.

We’ve seen this before, in a way: when Christianity ruled, no new emotional
information or perspective was capable of taking hold.

Our media apparatus is essentially doing the same thing by feeding people the
same narrative they grew up on their entire lives.

We have kept thousands of hours of TV shows, video games, and movies, news
clips, etc and repeatedly view it. One can mentally exist in 1995 with the
Internet and the new couch that feels just as comfy. Our limbic system
suggests it anyway.

Look at our politics mired in clinging to the past, sticking to same old tax &
drug policies.

The problem is a bunch of nerds who meant well built the panopticon, because
they were staring at screens and not considering human history of
authoritarian corruption of our emotionally guided agency (humans brains don’t
find facts, they engage motor controls and coordinate agency, speaking sounds
or doing a mechanical motion of some sort) to focus on the speech we don’t
control. Previously religious doctrine, now finance.

Now media corp can beam the exact speech necessary to keep every individual
soothed just so. How brilliant.

~~~
vharuck
>One can mentally exist in 1995 with the Internet and the new couch that feels
just as comfy.

1\. 1995 was just 24 years ago. I'm not a historian, but thinking a cultural
period lasting 24 years unusual would be ridiculous for any time before the
industrial revolution. And I don't think it even applies today.

2\. You might be biased about 1995 culture because it's _your_ culture. My
mother-in-law watches reruns from the 70s. People tend to stick with what they
like, and there have always been other people willing to provide.

~~~
jenxkfjeo0
The year was an arbitrary choice.

People used to have to, except in the political context, move on from such
experiences. Being able to recall a few quotes of much different than sitting
there importing it all verbatim over and over.

For minute in all-the-minutes: LiterallyWatch(FavoriteShow)

There was no preservation, books wore out, etc etc

They were forced to emotionally process as part of assimilating the info and
seek out new info.

I am describing an abstract process and how it’s changed to where we can
reconnect instantly to past emotional selves.

We keep certain pathways lubed and hot without generating new ones through
exploration of new truly unique sensory input (how many for loops does a
programmer write over and over? Oh sure the JSON content changes. Does the
value of a for loop?)

Stand still in information stagnation so the social political system can
figure out to adapt to maintain control.

This isn’t novel thinking and it’s not even radical, it’s pretty well trodden
philosophy backed by modern biology research. So downvote all ya want HN.
Disinterest in one posters rhetoric does not delete facts of reality

------
kempbellt
> 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
another during Black Friday.

If someone were to physically injure someone during a controversial debate, I
find it amusing in the sense that I am thinking "Hah... That's the way to get
people to listen to your viewpoint", sarcastically.

It's not that I'm laughing at the injury. I'm laughing at the absurd
immaturity of it all. Laughter is frequently used as a coping mechanism for
dealing with unpleasant realities. Personally, it doesn't diminish the tragedy
of what happens. It allows me to process it with a sort of mental "buffer".

~~~
pas
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.)

------
Nasrudith
I know that I am not typical in my thinking but seems almost obvious. I would
have expected partisan animosity to increase with empathy because of the
stakes and the views "against" being viewed as actively harmful and damaging
enmasse. And extreme viewpoints can have very divergent viewpoints.

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.

~~~
zchrykng
> Sometimes the other side is objectively wrong both morally and
> effectiveness.

The thing is that both sides feel that about the other.

------
foobar_
Paul Bloom: Why Empathy Is Not the Best Way to Care

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVCwjjT_CVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVCwjjT_CVY)

------
tehjoker
When you have empathy, do you take the viewpoint of the master or the slave?

~~~
harshreality
#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.

~~~
tehjoker
Would you seriously argue that in 1864?

~~~
larnmar
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.

~~~
vkou
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.

------
steven_is_false
There's no reason to think evolution gave us a single variable for "goodness".
We have a strong tendency to love our in group; our family, friends, tribe and
so on. But I see no reason why love of the out group should be the same.

Parents do lots of bad things to get their children ahead. Consider the
soldier who "loves his country" but "hates the enemy." Prosocial behavior
benefits your society, not other societies. But there's also no reason to
think it benefits individuals.

We know the halo effect is real and we have no reason to think empathy to
attractive people is the same as empathy to ugly people.

More worryingly consider the case mother cat. Mother cats love their kittens.
They also eat them sometimes when they are sick or there's not enough food.
The same drive to have genetic offspring can produce care and intense hate.
There's no reason to think apes don't have similar kinds of natural urges.

------
jeffdavis
Political polarization is weird, if you think about it. It makes sense given
the social dynamics, but makes zero sense from a logical standpoint.

Maybe it would be interesting to make a kind of polarization "test". You could
ask someone a bunch of questions, and calculate how polarized they are. If
statistically improbable, it would inform them that, logically, their opinions
are not really their own, and they should consider them more deeply and
objectively.

Obviously you'd need to make the test carefully and try not to bias it, or it
would be worthless. But you could use some objective criteria to make it
pretty good.

There are certainly some challenges. People who live in cities their whole
life are bound to have different opinions that those who live in small towns
their whole life. But you could address that by looking at how people change
their opinions after moving to a city from a small town or vice versa.

~~~
xamuel
The list of people whose opinions are "really their own" is pretty much
limited to feral children and certain philosophers/scientists

~~~
Dumblydorr
Which philosopher scientists did you have in mind? I think Newton and Einstein
were fairly independent, though undeniably they needed to stand on the
shoulders of giants to make their independent discoveries. Maybe that is a
contradiction....

~~~
xamuel
In the context of political opinions, I was thinking people like Adam Smith,
Karl Marx, etc. But you're right, even those people stood on the shoulders of
giants, they didn't just independently get struck by lightning one day and
suddenly have ideas in a vacuum. In any case, it's not realistic to expect Joe
Smith the Generic Voting Citizen to have to have completely original new
opinions on all the hot-button issues.

------
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.

------
andrew_
I'd be curious if there's a tie-in with idea of Ruinous Empathy [0] to the
conclusions laid out in the article.

[0] [https://www.radicalcandor.com/our-
approach/](https://www.radicalcandor.com/our-approach/)

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

~~~
adnzzzzZ
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.

------
throwaway13337
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. We shouldn't be encouraging broad emotional responses to global
events.

~~~
chongli
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...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

------
DanielBMarkham
Excellent.

I had a difficult time when I moved from hands-on work to true consulting,
which is trying to help others. In a way, a consultant is a "rented smart
friend". We put your interests first, we know stuff you don't, we try to watch
out for you for things you wouldn't think about.

Why did I have a hard time? Because I had the wrong model of empathy and
caring. Like most of us, my initial model for "how not to be a dick" came from
my family. The lessons I learned there lasted a lifetime. They were about
empathy, sharing, caring, listening, and so forth. As I got older, I involved
myself in larger and larger social groups.

What nobody told me as I grew up, was at the same time I was learning all of
these great lessons about being a good person, I was also learning in-group,
out-group behavior. Nobody ever looks at that directly. Instead it's always in
the context of some greater good. Sure, the SWAT team accidentally set fire
and burned down that person's house, but they were doing meth, and the babies
needed to be saved. Sure, our family loves others and is kind to others, but
we keep the doors locked and we don't make eye contact with people on the
street asking for money (or whatever might the case). The idea of being a good
person was taught inextricably with the idea of being a social person. Social
people have hierarchies and other folks they are wary of. You can't be a human
without having in-group, out-group behavior. It's part of the basic package.

So when I got consulting, I tended to view things the same way. You are my
friend, we are doing this one thing (say coding). Those folks over there, the
marketing dudes? You gotta be careful around them.

I was teaching empathy and caring the same way I was taught. There is really
no other way to do it. Not unless you want a society that involves direct
violence to organize.

As I saw more and more teams and how organizations actually worked, to make my
consulting effective, to be part of the solution instead of just another part
of the problem, I had to replace that internal mental model with the doctor
model. I am a doctor, I am still a smart rented friend, but I have a lot of
patients. In general they are all good and bad in various ways. I have no
desire to sort all of that out. Instead, I'll help you as best as I can, and
then I won't worry about you again. We are no longer in a tight social group,
but neither are you in the out-group. I have learned clinical empathy.

So when I see people argue politics online, or org structure in a big company,
I have to back out of being part of their social group and think about being a
doctor. Heck, I might agree with you and still tell you that the things you
are doing will not help you reach your goals. Or I might find you morally
abhorrent and encourage you that this education you're picking up after work
will eventually help out in your career a great deal.

What I can't do is sort the world out into some higher-level categories and
then pronounce judgment on which people are in which categories and which I
agree with and which I don't. Not and do a good job. I can have personal
opinions, sure. I keep them to myself. That's part of being a professional.

That's not being cold, that's actually trying to help as many people as
possible. To do this any other way is the exclude from helping a huge number
of people simply because of my social preferences. I don't feel I have the
right to hurt that many people based on my broken-ass brain, which tends to be
inconsistent and change-up which groups are I like and which groups I don't
like depending on what I had for breakfast.

------
pgcj_poster
This isn't surprising. If you don't much care about other people, then
politics just won't seem worth it. Even if your side wins completely, your
personal gains will be pretty small. And conflict isn't fun. Just read the
flurry of articles that will be coming out this week about politics and
Thanksgiving dinner. The easy, comfortable position is "why can't we all just
get along?" And that's the one you'll take if you're only concerned about your
own welfare, and not that of the millions of other people who are affected by
political decisions.

------
harimau777
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.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
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.

~~~
thinkingemote
In group belonging is a powerful motivator

------
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.

------
goodmachine
Sci-Am link if you hit the paywall

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-
emp...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-empathic-
concern-actually-increase-political-polarization/)

Original APSR paper

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-
political-s...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-
science-review/article/how-empathic-concern-fuels-political-
polarization/8115DB5BDE548FF6AB04DA661F83785E)

------
golemotron
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.

~~~
chippy
the study's title is: "How Empathic Concern Fuels Political Polarization"
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-
political-s...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-
science-review/article/how-empathic-concern-fuels-political-
polarization/8115DB5BDE548FF6AB04DA661F83785E)

