Against Empathy Bias: The Moral Value of Equitable Empathy

Fowler, Zoë; Law, Kyle Fiore; Gaesser, Brendan

doi:10.1177/0956797620979965

Cited by 40 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Unequal valuations in this thesis refer to that people's donation decisions often reflect that lives are not equally valuable to help. Previous research has shown that help responses to victims of a similar plight do not reflect they are equally valuable to help -even when people themselves agree the provided help should reflect that each life is valued equally (Dickert et al, 2015;Fowler et al, 2021).…”

Section: What Are Unequal Valuations?mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…One thing to investigate further is whether people agree with such normative notions regarding these three factors. Recently, Fowler et al (2021) investigated whether people consider it normative to show empathy equally between socially distant and close others (i.e., the ingroup effect; feeling empathy or helping socially close ones more than distant ones) and found that people considered equal empathy for all people to be most morally correct.…”

Section: Implications and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

Moche

2022

Linköping Studies in Behavioural Science

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Many people choose to donate money to help victims of humanitarian crises. However, people's donation decisions often fail to reflect that all victims are equally valuable to help. Instead, some victims seem to be favored. This thesis aims to better understand valuations of lives by looking at how people respond to charity appeals that differ on three factors: level of identifiability (if there is an identified victim or not), numbers in need (if there is one, few, or many victims in need), and age (if the victim is a child or an adult). This thesis also tests two kinds of interventions in charitable giving aimed to make people value lives more equally regarding numbers in need and the identifiability of victims.Paper I investigated how the identifiable victim effect (i.e., more willingness to help an identified victim than unidentified victims) influences people's donation decisions if they are reminded of alternative uses of money (i.e., opportunity cost). In two studies, participants (N = 2397) saw a charity appeal that either included an identified victim or not, while either receiving an opportunity cost reminder or not. The results showed that for a one-time donation decision, people became less willing to donate when reminded of opportunity cost, but mainly for non-identified charity appeals.Paper II investigated how the victim's age relates to the identifiable victim effect. In three studies, participants (N = 1508) saw a charity appeal that either helped children or adults, and either included an identified victim or not. The results showed that people did not donate more if the charity appeal included an identified victim, regardless of whether the victim was a child or an adult, but that people were more motivated to help or more willing to donate to children than adults.Paper III investigated two types of deliberation interventions for the singularity effect (i.e., increased willingness to help a single identified victim over a group of identified victims). In two studies, participants (N = 900) saw a charity appeal that either depicted one or eight identified children in need, and either got an intervention prompting them to rely on deliberate thinking, an intervention asking them to rate the importance of four decision-relevant attributes, or no intervention at all. The singularity effect was found in control conditions, but not in either of the intervention conditions. However, this was at the expense of decreasing the help to the single victim, without increasing help to the group of victims.

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Section: What Are Unequal Valuations?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Implications and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

Moche

2022

Linköping Studies in Behavioural Science

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“…The Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS) [36] distinguishes these forms of utilitarianism via two subscales: impartial bene cence, which re ects maximizing welfare in a self-sacri cial manner, and instrumental harm, which re ects maximizing welfare in a manner that allows for harming others. Prior work nds that people who endorse instrumental harm also endorse empathizing with distant others over close others, whereas people who endorse impartial bene cence preferentially endorse valuing close and distant others equally [40]. To our knowledge, little data exists linking utilitarian reasoning to real-world prosocial behaviors outside the laboratory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Moral Foundations, Values, and Reasoning in Extraordinary Altruists

Amormino

Ploe

Marsh

2022

Preprint

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Donating a kidney to a stranger is a rare act of extraordinary altruism that appears to reflect a moral commitment to helping others. Yet little is known about patterns of moral cognition associated with extraordinary altruism. In this preregistered study, we compared the moral foundations, values, and patterns of utilitarian moral reasoning in altruistic kidney donors (n=61) and demographically matched controls (n=58). Altruists expressed more concern only about the moral foundation of harm, but no other moral foundations. Consistent with this, altruists endorsed utilitarian concerns related to impartial beneficence, but not instrumental harm. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find group differences between altruists and controls in global values. Extraordinary altruism generally reflected opposite patterns of moral cognition as those seen in individuals with psychopathy, a personality construct characterized by callousness and insensitivity to harm and suffering. Results link real-world, costly, impartial altruism primarily to moral cognitions related to alleviating harm and suffering in others rather than to global values, fairness concerns, or strict utilitarian reasoning.

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“…However, empathy may pose a danger when the media use empathy to trigger bias and hatred ( Bloom, 2017 ). Importantly, such biased empathy is narrow, and its unfairness makes people overlook those genuinely needing help, which, in turn, intensifies intergroup conflict ( Fowler et al, 2021 ). Empathy that considers all people equal has greater social value and aids in the maintenance of social harmony and stability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of doctor–patient news-induced moral judgments on pain empathy for doctors and patients in China

Zhang

Yang

et al. 2022

Front. Neurosci.

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ObjectivePain empathy’s preferential nature tends to trigger prejudice and intergroup conflicts. Given the current degree of proliferation of doctor–patient conflict news in China, this study aims to determine whether readers of doctor–patient news-initiated moral judgments prefer pain empathy for doctors or patients.Materials and methodsThis study utilized localized doctor–patient news with high or low moral performance (based on morality ratings of patients’ behaviors) as moral-judgment-eliciting materials, and painful pictures as pain empathy-eliciting materials. The event-related potential (ERP) technique was utilized to assess moral judgment’s effect on the cognitive empathy component and to investigate electroencephalogram signals’ accuracy in classifying four brain response patterns when facing doctor or patient is experiencing or not experiencing pain.ResultsUnder low moral text material, participants exhibited smaller mean wave amplitude of positive 300 (P3) and late positive potential (LPP) to painful pictures than non-painful pictures when facing patients; under high moral text material, participants exhibited larger mean wave amplitude of P3 and LPP to painful pictures than non-painful pictures when facing doctors. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals’ classification accuracy was significant in 0–1,000 ms in both high and low moral judgments, but the classification accuracy was higher in low moral judgments in some cognitive empathy stages (0.51, 0.53–0.55, 0.66–0.79, and 0.88–1 s).ConclusionUnder low moral judgment, individuals pay less attention to the patient’s (perpetrator’s) pain; under high moral judgment, individuals empathize with the doctor (the person praised), showing that news-induced moral judgment can sway readers’ empathy for different social groups. In cognitive empathy, individuals’ brain representations are more discriminatory under low than high moral judgments when confronted with pain by doctors and patients, which provides insight into objectively recognizing group bias.

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Against Empathy Bias: The Moral Value of Equitable Empathy

Cited by 40 publications

References 48 publications

Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

Moral Foundations, Values, and Reasoning in Extraordinary Altruists

Effect of doctor–patient news-induced moral judgments on pain empathy for doctors and patients in China

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