Culture

La trampa de la empatía

Dec 12, 2016 Peter Singer

PRINCETON – Poco después de resultar electo presidente de los Estados Unidos, Barack Obama le dijo a una niña: “A este mundo le falta empatía, y cambiar eso depende de tu generación”. La idea que expresaba Obama está muy difundida, así que el título de un nuevo libro de Paul Bloom (psicólogo de la Universidad de Yale) puede generar sorpresa: Against Empathy [Contra la empatía]. ¿Cómo puede alguien estar en contra de algo que nos permite ponernos en los zapatos de los demás y sentir lo que sienten?

Para responder esa pregunta, podríamos hacer otra: ¿por quién debemos sentir empatía? Ahora que Donald Trump se prepara para suceder a Obama, algunos analistas señalan que Hillary Clinton perdió la elección del mes pasado porque le faltó empatía con los estadounidenses blancos, en particular los votantes del viejo cinturón industrial que añoran los días en que Estados Unidos era una potencia fabril. El problema es que la empatía hacia los trabajadores estadounidenses está en tensión con la empatía hacia los trabajadores mexicanos y chinos, a quienes quedarse sin empleo perjudicaría incluso más que a los primeros.

Tener empatía con alguien nos predispone mejor hacia esa persona. Es algo bueno, pero también tiene su lado oscuro. En sus discursos de campaña, Trump usó el trágico asesinato de una joven llamada Kate Steinle a manos de un inmigrante indocumentado para generar apoyo a sus políticas antiinmigrantes. Por supuesto, nunca ofreció una descripción tan vívida de los casos (publicados) de inmigrantes indocumentados que salvaron las vidas de personas que no conocían.

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Peter Singer

Writing for PS since 2001
227 Commentaries

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, is Founder of the nonprofit organization The Life You Can Save. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, The Most Good You Can Do, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, One World Now, Ethics in the Real World, Why Vegan?, and Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, also with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In April 2021, W.W. Norton published his new edition of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. He is a co-author (with Shih Chao-Hwei) of the forthcoming The Buddhist and the Ethicist (Shambhala Publications, December 2023).

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 21 Comments on this article

Tom W Dec 19, 2016

This is an essential message for our times. Calling for "more empathy" has become the latest bromide. The context of such statements often implies that reason - or any analytical and scientific approach - is at odds with empathy and that empathy is equivalent to compassion. Proposals that "feel cold" are rejected in favor of those that make the observer feel good, even if there is a net harm.
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John Cowan Dec 18, 2016

What, because we leftists don't think blind loyalty, authoritarianism, and sanctimony count as moral virtues?
- John Cowan Dec 18, 2016
  
  (This was meant to be a response to Amy Boone below.)
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Robert Bruce Dec 18, 2016

I think the author is badly abusing the true meaning of empathy. I strongly suggest reading an in-depth explanation from a leading expert such as Roman Krznaric, who knows what he is talking about. If you are short on time, try this short youtube video by Krznaric on "The Power of Outrospection".

https://youtu.be/BG46IwVfSu8

This explains there are two key forms of empathy. The most obvious is "shared emotional response" which emphasises how human beings share the same feelings. If we are hurt we all feel pain, so we can "sympathise" with others who are suffering, and if our favourite team scores a goal we all share the feeling of celebration together.

The less intuitive, but far more powerful form of empathy is "perspective taking". This is when we try to enter into the experience of people who are very different to us. A straight man can seek to understand what it might feel like to be gay, even though he can never share these feelings. A Democrat may hate the policies advanced by a right wing Republican, but can still seek to understand why they might think differently. It is only by taking the perspective of others, particularly those who we disagree with, that we come to a more respectful understanding of how their own history and experience might have led them to have needs, or hold views that we may fail to understand.

Empathy is not about a cuddly World where we all learn to love others and help them out at our own expense. It is in fact about undrstanding that our own judgements are always subjective, as each of us can only ever truely experience life from one point of view. However, by exploring our understanding or "empathy" for others, we broaden this perspective in ways than enable compromise and cooperation, even when this means dealing with people who may hold very different values and beliefs to our own.

This is all very basic psychology 101. If Paul Bloom is trying to point out that decisions should be taken on a rational rather than purely emotional basis, than I am in full agreement. But if we want to take rational decisions it is essential to gain a proper understanding of the true emotional needs of others, rather than just assuming we can project our own feelings about the World onto them.

Perhaps Mr Bloom needs a better understanding of his chosen subject. Krznaric would be an excellent starting point.
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Marcelo Menegali Dec 18, 2016

My first reaction to this post was negative, but then I understood that it's a semantic problem: the author and I use the same words (i.e., "empathy" and "compassion") to refer to different ideas.

From Wikipedia:
- Empathy: "Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference."
- Compassion: "Compassion is the response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help."

My use of the words match those in Wikipedia, while the author's use of the words seems to be the exact opposite.
- Tom W Dec 19, 2016
  
  Thank you for posting those definitions, but by my reading of the article the author is using those terms according to those definitions. The example of the Buddhist certainly aligns with those definitions. All of the examples the author provides also align with the definition of empathy that you posted.
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AMY BOONE Dec 18, 2016

This very subject is dealt with by Jonathan Haidt in his (non-partisan) work described in The Righteous Mind, specifically, the "moral matrices" which Haidt finds correlated with political positioning on the left-right spectrum. Right-of-centre types give more equal weight to a range of six basic elements of moral reasoning, whereas left-of-centre types prioritise "compassion" (empathy), equality, and fairness (yes I know those are relative and mushy terms, but Haidt defines them in greater detail) to the near exclusion of other values. The problem with relying on compassion (particularly to a perceived underdog) as a main consideration to policy-making is that competing values (public good, societal order, etc.) are lost, with the predictable cost to levels of order, public good, etc. Hence the way in which some in western societies fear a mass influx of those with different (and not particularly compatible) values because of the potential harm to societal order, but this can be practically neutralised with the poignant: "Have you no compassion?"
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Christine Constable Dec 17, 2016

Peter, I fear that the loss of "empathy" is commensurate to the massive increase in the world's population. We are suffring from a huge population explosion which has been quietly growing and growing until it has burst out of the confines of Africa and the Middle and Far East and has made its way to the West.

The world is creaking under the weight of billions of the worlds disadvantaged and lost fleeing war torn and tyrannical regimes; global warming; lack of opportunity and grinding poverty.

We can all be empathetic when the first few hundred migrants come through the door, when the trickle turns into a tsunami empathy will become short on the ground because the issues are massive and self preservation comes before empathy to the stranger.

It is clear that if the billions of poor and dispossed are to get a slice of the cake then that cake must be given by the west to the rest of the world - under those conditions western "empathy" becomes a rare commodity as the question to be asked your family or the incomer? Who will you "empathise" with first?
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Karen Davis Dec 15, 2016

A question is why, if most people presumably are more attracted to "cute" creatures with "big eyes" than they are to others, why would they be more likely to empathize with robots than with chickens or fish? Why would they empathize with insentient objects more readily than with alive, sentient individuals? Also, not only emotion, but logic and reason, detached from emotion, may produce just as much havoc, cruelty and injustice, and be just as blind, as unregulated emotion. It is true, as suggested, that sadism involves "empathy" with the victim, as in "I feel your pain and it gives me pleasure to vicariously experience your suffering."
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jean nutson Dec 14, 2016

Passion and total commitments to what one does seem to be the strongest driving force of events and proceedings in the world rather than empathy,sympathy,kindness etc. and should be the guidelines to the study of human behavioral patterns.
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Curtis Carpenter Dec 12, 2016

If an individual lacks the ability to empathize, the question of who or what (s)he will empathize with seems moot doesn't it?.

I look forward to the author's essay on "the compassion trap," since that argument too can be made -- and along similar lines. Also an essay on "the reason trap" since there is ample evidence that it too can lead us to do the wrong things, particularly where normative issues are involved.
- Curtis Carpenter Dec 19, 2016
  
  That's not the way I read it Tom W. At best, Singer is saying that empathy is a crap shoot.
  
  Deontic and utilitarian attitudes toward ethics want to put reason at center stage. But I subscribe to Hume's view of the passions and reason, and believe that virtue ethics take a more balanced approach to the emotional content of ethical decisions.
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- Tom W Dec 19, 2016
  
  Read the final sentence of the article "Empathy and other emotions often motivate us to do what is right, but they are equally likely to motivate us to do what is wrong. In making ethical decisions, our ability to reason has a crucial role to play."
  
  The author clearly means that empathy is important in motivating us to do good and that reason is essential in harnessing that emotion so that we are not simply reacting to our own emotions in ways that may harm.
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Peter Schaeffer Dec 12, 2016

From "Shooting of Kathryn Steinle"

"On July 1, 2015, a man fired a stolen gun on Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district in San Francisco, California. The bullet ricocheted off the pavement, then struck 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle in the back, causing her to die two hours later at a hospital. A homeless man, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, was arrested and charged with murder.

Lopez-Sanchez is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had previously been deported on five different occasions. The shooting sparked controversy and political debate over San Francisco's status as a sanctuary city. President-elect Donald Trump has cited Lopez-Sanchez in support of his proposal to deport foreign nationals living illegally in the United States, and mentioned Steinle during his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention."
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Peter Schaeffer Dec 12, 2016

So much for online integrity. A comment pointing out the illegal aliens are "illegal" gets deleted. Apparently, we have entered the "post-truth" era where only PC rhetoric is allowed.
- Tom W Dec 19, 2016
  
  An individual speeding on the highway is committing an illegal act. We would say the driver is "speeding", which identifies it as an illegal act. The term "undocumented" sounds like an administrative detail, whereas the term "illegal" makes clear that a crime is being committed. I personally dislike the term "illegal aliens", preferring phrases like, "people in the country illegally" that, though more cumbersome, contain the truth of the illegal act while reminding us that these are *people*, not scary "aliens". (And most of them in the United State are very good people, IMO, even though they are breaking a law.)
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- John Cowan Dec 18, 2016
  
  People who speed on the highway are illegal too. So what? They are "us" and illegal immigrants are "them", that''s what.
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Peter Schaeffer Dec 12, 2016

The correct term is "illegal aliens", not "undocumented immigrants". Illegals have lots of documents... Ids from their own countries, stolen ids from Americans, etc. They are heavily documented, not just legal in the USA. An immigrant is defined (under U.S. law) as a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. Illegals are (wait for it), illegal.
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Jose araujo Dec 12, 2016

I think this is an article more against Fallacies and Demagogy than against empathy.

And for sure empathy is used a lot in demagogy, but is also something missing in a psychopath personality, which unfortunately is becoming the norm in our leaderships.
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