Empathy, The Emperor of All Virtues, Has a Dark Side
Rational compassion seems a better choice than empathy in making a difference in the world
What really matters for kindness in everyday interactions is not empathy but capacities such as self-control and intelligence and a more diffuse compassion.(Paul Bloom in “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion”)
Who would you choose for your major heart surgery? (Don’t really wish it happen!). An empathic surgeon who puts herself in your shoes and feels exactly what you feel?
Or a compassionate doctor who understands your condition, shows deep concern for you, and focusses on making the surgery successful?
I would prefer the second doctor. When an empathic doctor identifies herself too closely with your condition, she may lose her ability to think and act in a calm and professional manner.
The compassionate doctor’s sympathy is no less humane than that of the empathic doctor. She is more attentive to her surgical expertise and focusses on the task without getting distracted by emotions.
Empathy without emotional distance dilutes professional expertise.
Empathy, the ability to feel what we think others are feeling, is the most venerated and least criticized human trait. According to conventional wisdom, empathy is the emperor of all virtues.
The problem with conventional wisdom is that it perpetuates certain notions about morality and human goodness. Since dominant moral narratives get entrenched in popular perception, it becomes difficult to challenge these notions without attracting a backlash of furious criticism.
For example, it’s hard to imagine that empathy has a dark side. It is inconceivable that anybody can speak ill of empathy. Those who dared to question empathy’s exalted status in the pantheon of human traits have had to face a huge backlash.
For instance, Ayn Rand, the popular American writer, who called to reject the morality of altruism for civilization’s survival, has been widely criticised as a psychopath.
However, Darwinian authority and evolutionary biologist Michael Ghiselin, had the chutzpah to proclaim that “scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.”
We should neither censor nor taboo counterintuitive positions that run counter to conventional wisdom.
We built the foundation of human progress on open-minded debates.
Who is the naysayer or Devil’s Advocate whose thesis against empathy has stirred up a storm in the academic world?
It’s Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at Yale University, whose book, “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion”, makes the bold assertion that empathy causes more harm than good.
Paul Bloom is not against empathy per se, he is against the misapplication of empathy.
Bloom has nothing against two broad definitions of empathy:
- Empathy is our capacity for caring and love
- Empathy is our capacity to understand others.
According to him, the problematic definition of empathy is “the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone does.”
Paul Bloom raises two principal objections against empathy:
- Empathy is a spotlight focussing on certain people in the here and now. For instance, we empathize with a starving Somali child but cannot think of the wider poverty in the region, its causes, cultural and political roots. Empathy thinks short-term and ignores long-term consequences.
- Empathy is innumerate. We can empathize with an individual but not with all those who may suffer similarly. We empathize with those we know or those who have cultural affinities with us. We ignore others facing a similar plight. Our concern for our chosen victims turns into hostility for those who differ from us. Empathy encourages parochialism.
Empathy’s good and bad versions
According to Paul Bloom, empathy is like cholesterol, with a good type and a bad type.
Cognitive empathy, covered by its first two broad definitions, makes up the good type.
Emotional empathy, the mainstream view that is feeling what others feel, is the bad type.
Cognitive empathy is morally neutral. We can use it for good or bad purposes.
Paul Bloom wields the consequentialist stick to beat empathy with. Empathy’s narrow focus blinds us to its unintended consequences.
Compassion and concern are more diffuse than empathy. There is no mirroring of others’ feelings. You can feel compassion for millions of children afflicted with malaria but not empathy.
Like empathy, compassion and concern can also be biased. But there is a continuum and empathy is on the one extreme. Compassion comes in the middle — simply caring about people.
Reason is an essential part of morality. Bias can colour reasoning, but the problem is with reasoning badly not with reason itself.
James Rachels, the American philosopher, sees reason as an essential part of morality:
“morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason — that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing — while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual affected by one’s decision.”
The effective altruism movement seeks to temper empathy with reason for selecting worthy causes to support. According to effectivealltruism.org:
Effective altruism is about answering one simple question: how can we use our resources to help others the most?
We use evidence and careful analysis to find the very best causes to work on.
Three major findings of empathy research
An empathic response to someone else’s experience activates the same brain regions that are active when you have that experience.
However, an empathic response is relatively weak when compared to an experience. Watching somebody getting slapped doesn’t make your cheek burn.
Our empathic experience is influenced by our perceptions of the other person and by how we judge the situation they are in.
For instance, people show more empathy to people infected with AIDS through blood transfusion than to those who use drugs. Empathy is sensitive to many extraneous considerations.
We relate understanding and feeling but as different processes. You can understand that somebody is in pain without feeling it.
The compassionate doctor who understands your pain is more effective than an empathic doctor whose emotions may overwhelm her ability to perform.
Wrapping up
The notion that empathy lies at the foundation of morality is questionable. There is a weak correlation between high empathy and moral character and between low empathy and evil character.
We use empathy as a catch-all word meaning the ability to mirror others’ feelings. We should distinguish between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy.
Emotional empathy works like a spotlight narrowing our concern to an individual or a group or a single issue.
Cognitive empathy is having a keen understanding of a problem and co-opts reason and evidence to maximize solutions to ease suffering in the world.
The action that empathy motivates is not always morally right. Empathy can be harmful even in close relationships. If we empathize too much with our children’s problems and make their lives too easy, we will compromise their resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity.
The concern about empathy is not that its consequences are always bad. It’s that its negatives outweigh its positives and that there are better alternatives.( Paul Bloom)
The marriage between emotion and reason, between compassion and logic, can maximize well-being in a trouble-prone world.
Thanks for reading!
