Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy

Abstract

People are often motivated to increase others' positive experiences and to alleviate others' suffering. These tendencies to care about and help one another form the foundation of human society. When the target is an outgroup member, however, people may have powerful motivations not to care about or help that “other.” In such cases, empathic responses are rare and fragile; it is easy to disrupt the chain from perception of suffering to motivation to alleviate the suffering to actual helping. We highlight recent interdisciplinary research demonstrating that outgroup members' suffering elicits dampened empathic responses as compared to ingroup members' suffering. We consider an alternative to empathy in the context of intergroup competition: schadenfreude—pleasure at others' pain. Finally, we review recent investigations of intergroup-conflict interventions that attempt to increase empathy for outgroups. We propose that researchers across the range of psychological sciences stand to gain a better understanding of the foundations of empathy by studying its limitations.

Morality in intergroup conflict

“…Given people's social desirability concerns and reticence to self-report these thoughts and feelings, researchers have utilized implicit measures-neural, hormonal, and physiological-that are indicative of people's emotional reactions to the suffering of in-group and out-group members [38]. For example, people who see needles pricking in-group members' hands, but not out-group members', experience a sensorimotor pain response.…”

Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy

“…This is alarming because clinicians' empathy is important for the therapeutic alliance between mental health providers and patients and significantly predicts positive clinical outcomes. empathy (18,20,26,27). Thus, biological conceptualizations of psychopathology could actually decrease clinicians' empathy for patients with mental disorders.…”

Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War

“…Although this can result in increased prosociality among ingroup members, it is unlikely to increase prosociality toward outgroup members unless one can improve his or her reputation by engaging in such behavior (Norenzayan & Shariff , 2008). Despite certain religious scriptures that may profess the unity of all humankind, our psychological predispositions to ingroup amity and outgroup enmity are diffi cult to override (see Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011). Th is heightened perception of the ingroup and outgroup may partially explain why largely irreligious societies are less likely to go to war, especially unprovoked war (see Paul, Chapter 25, this volume), although additional research must be done to determine whether there is any causal relationship.…”