The Altruism Option: Empathy

Introductory waffle

This is very much a work-in-progress blog post, written in a bit of a rush. I hope to edit it ‘sometime’ to make it more clear, readable, and engaging, especially for non psychology students. This blog post spans content covered in two consecutive weeks of my altruism module: “Mind-reading and morality” and “Passion and emotion”.

“Mind-reading and morality” considers the role of understanding in caring about the positive welfare of others (called “altruism” on the module and in this blog). Such understanding has two (or three) components: understanding others’ specific experiences or situations and understanding others-as-individuals-worthy-of-concern.

“Passion and emotion” considers the role of emotions in caring about the positive welfare of others; both as potential causes of altruism (e.g., guilt, gratitude, etc.) and as potential manifestations of altruism (e.g., pity, sympathy, compassion, etc.).

Many of these topics will merit its own blog post in time, fate willing. In this one I focus on yet another term that is routinely used in a way that impedes rather than promotes understanding and progress: “empathy”.

What is empathy?

Adopting my now-standard practice of trying to delineate distinct phenomena rather than make claims about what empathy “is” or “really means”, here is a list of what might be argued to be its main aspects, building blocks, or types:

1. Other-understanding, i.e., having beliefs about another’s experience or situation. These can vary in how accurate they are (a.k.a. “empathic accuracy”). 1b. The processes used in reaching other-understanding are often also referred to as aspects of “empathy” but are probably better referred to as methods of attempted mind-reading.

2. Contagion, i.e., having experiences that are triggered by and similar to another’s experience. Most commonly this is discussed in terms of “sharing” another’s emotional experience, e.g., being distressed because another is distressed (a.k.a. “empathic distress”) or joyful because they are joyful (a.k.a. “empathic joy”).

3. Consideration, i.e., behaving in ways that suggest concern for another’s positive welfare; “showing” or “demonstrating” empathy. From my point of view, a manifestation of altruism.

Because these seem to be distinguishable phenomena, it would seem wise to call them different things. This is true even if they are related. Indeed, it is especially true because they are sometimes related. If we want to understand the causes, correlates, and consequences of each of these things, and the relationships among them, it really cannot help to use the term “empathy” willy-nilly for each or any of them.

Potential determinants of empathy

By which I mean things that may sometimes lead to one or more of: other-understanding, contagion, or consideration. Confusingly, if unsurprisingly, each of these potential determinants is also regularly if erratically referred to using the term “empathy”. For example:

Perspective-taking, i.e., trying to imagine what another person is experiencing, what one would be experiencing were one in another’s situation, or both. Perspective-taking can be fostered by other processes that are themselves sometimes called “empathy”, e.g., identification (feeling an association or affiliation with another because of perceived or fantasized similarity).

Mimicking, i.e., copying something about someone else, e.g., their posture.

Projecting, i.e., the act of imputing characteristics to others rather than genuinely perceiving such characteristics in them. This may result from expectations, desires, or both. Having “put them there”, it is easy for people to then reach beliefs that they are there.

Attention to another, e.g., their expressions, posture, self-reports, etc.

Again, understanding the unique and common causes, correlates, and consequences of other-understanding, contagion, and consideration is unlikely to be helped by promiscuously and indiscriminately calling all three of them and potential determinants of one or more of them “empathy”.

When the title or abstract of a scientific article reports some discovery concerning “empathy”, I genuinely have only a hazy and tentative notion of what that article is likely to be about. It might be about almost anything between a dispositional tendency to be concerned about the positive welfare of others (i.e., trait altruism) to an ability to spot which of four facial expressions is registering disgust (i.e., accurate emotion recognition). That can’t make for good science.

Empathy in the Empathy Altruism Hypothesis

The longer I teach about the Empathy Altruism Hypothesis (EAH), the more I am reminded of the witticism that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy, Roman, or an empire.

I have previously suggested that the “altruism” discussed in the EAH (i.e., a qualitatively distinct form of motivation in which pursuit of personal goals plays no essential part) is a chimera. Nevertheless, “empathy” as discussed in the EAH does sometimes seem to promote altruistic helping as the term is used here, i.e. helping motivated by concern for the positive welfare of another.

It therefore becomes important to be clear about what sort of empathy that is. Again, I have discussed this previously. To recap, it is the experience of a set of emotions: compassion, sympathy, tenderness, warmth, softheartedness, and feeling moved. Batson notes that others prefer to label this collection of emotions with one of the emotions within the collection, e.g., compassion or sympathy. I am one of those others.

So, the EAH predicts that when we feel compassionate or sympathetic towards others we will sometimes try to help them.⁽¹⁾ I have absolutely no issue with this. Surely only someone confused by jargon could possibly object!

This does not mean that that any alleged type of empathy promotes altruism. Only that compassionate emotions can. If you want to claim that some other alleged type of empathy also promotes altruism, you need to provide some evidence about that specific relationship. (Some of the EAH literature will help justify some such claims, e.g., claims about links between other-understanding and sympathy.)

(1) Mainly when our help seems necessary and sufficient to improve their welfare and we are not overwhelmed by contrary concerns.

Other-understanding and consideration don’t entail contagion

(Alternative sub-title: Empathy is not necessarily empathic)

It seems possible to understand something about others’ situations and strive to make things to be better for them without sharing their feelings. Surgeons can understand that anesthetised patients they care about will benefit tremendously from a well-executed operation and therefore be motivated to be as effective as possible in helping them. Their other-understanding and consideration seem unlikely to result from or even to be accompanied by them “catching” their patients’ feelings. Hopefully, their patients temporarily have no feelings at all!

Similarly, and to reiterate a point I have made in an earlier post, humans can feel compassion and concern for people who are currently quite happy (because we know and they do not that they are in peril) and for wholly imaginary entities (e.g., fictional characters, cartoon characters, characters represented by video game avatars, etc.).

So, whatever alleged empathy you may be considering, if you want to make claims that it is the result of emotional contagion or similar, please provide evidence beyond “It’s empathy, in’it?” This includes claims about empathy in the EAH.

Against Paul Bloom

Paul Bloom has taken a public stance “Against Empathy”. He recognises that his position is “outlandish” and hastens to be clear that he is not against “morality, compassion, kindness, love…” and nor he opposed to other-understanding or to promoting others’ welfare. He is only against (certain instances of) people “experiencing the world as others [apparently] do”. Broadly, he is against emotional contagion (in some situations).

I have various complaints about Bloom’s article and associated stance. One main complaint is that Bloom repeatedly uses the term “empathy” loosely, inconsistently, and expediently. The other is that this unhelpful provocativeness is beneath Bloom. Paul Bloom is a very fine scholar, scientist, writer, and raconteur who is engaged here in a project that makes scholarship, science, and perhaps even morality harder than it would be had he not gone down and remained so committed to this path. (See also my comment below his article.) You wanted a nemesis, Professor Bloom :-)

Mirror neurons and empathy

A detailed discussion of mirror neurons will have to wait. The standard story is that when humans and some other animals witness another experiencing something, they and those they are witnessing experience something very similar. We wince if we see someone bang their thumb with a hammer. We feel a certain sadness when we see others who appear to be sad. Therefore, the story goes, we are “naturally empathic”. Contagion happens automatically and, according to some versions of the story anyway, other-understanding and consideration/ compassion/ altruism follow almost equally automatically.

If you want to tell a story a bit like this, you will do well to evaluate the evidence and don’t believe the hype. In particular, give some consideration to: findings that people unable to experience pain can recognise (but not “share”) others’ pain; the fact that Charlotte Willis taught me how horses express emotions; psychopaths seem unbothered by others’ distress; sports fans revelling in their opponents’ woes; people being insensitive to the misery portrayed in TV news programmes; how glorious Schadefruede and revenge can feel; and Jarrett (2013).

Summary

The term “empathy”, like the term “altruism, is used so promiscuously that it can impede clear thinking and scientific progress. When wondering about where empathy comes from or what results from it, one’s first question has to be, ‘What might be meant by “empathy”?’ When discussing empathy, one’s first responsibility is to be as clear as possible about what ‘aspect(s)’ of empathy you mean. The research literature is stuffed with nuggets about relationships between mind-reading, other-understanding, contagion, and altruism, but synthesising that literature will remain a challenge until some terminological norms take hold. I will nevertheless attempt to review many such relationships in later posts.

Videos

One really good: What is empathy?

One that students love but which gets my goat: The power of empathy

Picture credits

Canine empathy [Link]

Helping the handless [Link]

Nemesis [Link]

Sad smiley [Link]

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

See: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

T. Farsides. (2014, November 07). Empathy. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2014/11/empathy.html

The Altruism Option

Friday 7 November 2014

Empathy