Most people see the benefits of empathy as too obvious to require justification.
In general, empathy serves to dissolve the boundaries between one person and another; it is a force against selfishness and indifference.
Obama talks frequently about empathy; witness his recent claim, after his first meeting with Pope Francis, that “It’s the lack of empathy that makes it very easy for us to plunge into wars. It’s the lack of empathy that allows us to ignore the homeless on the streets.” In The Empathetic Civilization Jeremy Rifkin argues that the only way our species will survive war, environmental degradation, and economic collapse is through the enhancement of “Global empathy.” This past June, Bill and Melinda Gates concluded their Stanford commencement address by asking students to nurture and expand their empathetic powers, essential for a better world.
Empathy is biased; we are more prone to feel empathy for attractive people and for those who look like us or share our ethnic or national background.
The most important entry on her checklist was number thirty-one: “Voiced empathy for my situation/problem.” But when she discusses her real experiences with doctors, her assessment of empathy is mixed.
What about aggressive behavior more generally? Are more aggressive people less empathetic? Even I, a skeptic, would imagine there is some substantive relationship between empathy and aggression, since presumably someone with a great deal of empathy would find it unpleasant to cause pain in others.
The authors of “The relation between empathy and aggression: Surprising results from a meta-analysis” report that only 1 percent of the variation in aggression is accounted for by empathy.
Source: Against Empathy
Originally published at Cogly.
