The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Abstract

Empathy, or the ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others, has long been considered by philosophers and scientists to be an important part of human morality. We present a new framework that explains empathy as resulting from motivated decisions. Drawing on models of cybernetic control, value-based choice, and constructionism, we suggest that empathy shifts depending on how people value and prioritize conflicting goals. We generate novel predictions about the nature of empathy from the science of goal pursuit, and address its apparent limitations. Empathy appears less sensitive to suffering of large numbers and out-groups, leading some to suggest that empathy is an unreliable ethical guide. Whereas these arguments assume that empathy is a limited-capacity resource, we suggest that apparent limits of empathy reflect byproducts of domain-general goal pursuit. Arguments against empathy reflect a misguided essentialism: they mistake our own choices to avoid empathy for intrinsic features of empathy, treating empathy as a capricious emotion in conflict with reason. We suggest that empathy results from a rational decision, even if its rationality is bounded, as in many decisions in everyday life. Empathy may only be limited if we choose to avoid pursuing empathic goals.Ends of empathy 3 "Empathy isn't just something that happens to us-a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain-it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, the dowdier cousin of impulse." -Leslie Jamison (2014), The Empathy ExamsIn the summer of 2016, empathy went viral. The world learned about Harambe, a silverback gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo who was shot and killed by zookeepers in an attempt to save the life of a child who had fallen into his enclosure. In the aftermath of the incident, people around the world expressed support for Harambe in a variety of ways, ranging from social media posts to charitable donations to Harambe tattoos. Empathy for Harambe became a meme in its own right. On the other hand, many people appeared to lack empathy for the zookeepers, the child, and the child's mother, to the point that some even issued death threats. This example reveals a broader point about empathy (and the lack thereof): it can feel effortless, contagious, a passion to which we are subject, rather than something we choose or control.Empathy-our ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others-is typically considered an emotion, which can entail the conceptual baggage that many people associate with emotion. People often see emotions as passions that are out of our control, as something that happen to us. This idea has much precedent. The term derives from the Greek empatheia, which takes feeling or passion (pathos) and directs it at or into (em) someone else;this was adapted to the German Einfühlung ("feeling into"), and translated into English as empathy (Wispe, 1987). These traditions emphasize continuity of empathy with emotions, and in so doing, ca...

Motivating empathy: Three methodological recommendations for mapping empathy

“…In the current paper, I first briefly review a motivated emotion regulation approach to understanding empathy, which draws upon more general approaches to motivated emotion regulation (Tamir, ; Zaki, ) and provides a new path for developing research questions about empathy. The approach is consistent with suggestions to focus on empathy as a motivated phenomenon (e.g., Cameron, Cunningham, Saunders, & Inzlicht, ; Hodges & Biswas‐Diener, ; Keysers & Gazzola, ; Zaki, ). After outlining this approach, I outline how it can illuminate three questions in the study of empathy.…”

“…Instrumentally, you might choose to empathize with someone in order to help them more effectively (Batson, ), and empathy has also been shown to be important for the vicarious learning of fear responses from others (Olsson et al, ). The relationship between these motives is likely to vary as a function of the situation and the motives it affords, and how people weight different motives (for more on goal hierarchies shaping empathy, see Cameron, Cunningham, et al, ).…”

“…Empathy is often linked with ethics and morality in academic and public discussions, in large part because of connections with prosocial behavior (Batson, ; Eisenberg, ) and because of its tendency to vary situationally (Bloom, , ; Decety & Cowell, ; Prinz, ; Slovic, ). This discussion points to the need for a clear understanding of why empathy fluctuates, and what this means (for discussion of the role of goal selection, see Cameron, Cunningham, et al, ). A useful distinction is between ability and propensity (for more on this distinction, see Keysers & Gazzola, ): Ability is the upper boundary beyond which a person can no longer generate empathy, and propensity is the tendency for a person to feel empathy in a given situation.…”

“…From a motivated empathy regulation approach, it is critical to try to measure whether and how empathy varies as a function of ability and propensity. A second methodological recommendation (for discussion of motivation, see Cameron, ; Cameron, Cunningham, et al, ) is that claims about why empathy varies are not justified without testing whether empathic propensity varies under manipulations of motivation .…”

“…Doing so would allow for more rigorous tests of the role of ability and propensity in empathic outcomes. Elsewhere, I have reviewed how motivation can apply to insensitivity to mass suffering (Cameron, ) and to empathy more generally (i.e., in thinking about the balance between competing goals; Cameron, Cunningham, et al, ). This logic can be extended to other contexts, such as intergroup empathy gaps (Cameron, Harris, & Payne, ; Nook, Ong, Morelli, Mitchell, & Zaki, ; Porat, Halperin, & Tamir, ), and to empathy surpluses—for instance, heightened empathy as a function of similarity (Valdesolo & DeSteno, ) and adversity (Lim & DeSteno, ).…”