Murphy's Law: We need less empathy

In our current political climate, many issues caused by identity politics stem from empathy. On this topic, Yale Psychology Professor Paul Bloom explains the dangers of empathetic decision-making in "Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion" (2016).

Firstly, empathy is identifying with the emotional state of another person; being in someone else’s shoes. It is not kindness, love or compassion. We are empathetic to a sick person that needs an organ transplant or the victim of an attack because we can feel their pain. But empathy clouds judgment and directs resources to the wrong places.

Bloom offers the example of an experiment by C. Daniel Batson. He asked participants to imagine a little girl named Sherri, who will die from a very painful disease. She is on a fair list to receive a treatment, so to move her up would bump a more deserving person down. When asked if one would move her up, participants left the list alone. But, simply by asking the participant to place him or herself in Sherri’s shoes, the majority decided to move her up the list, knowing that it was unfair to more deserving patients. Empathy becomes problematic when we favor an individual or group over the many because we identify with the individual or group.

When given an identifiable case, empathy narrows our focus and biases our actions. Bloom offers historical examples of empathy getting in the way, such as Natalee Holloway, an abducted 18-year-old girl who received eighteen times the network coverage of simultaneous famine and civil war in Darfur that was killing tens of thousands. We focus millions of dollars on preventing mass shootings because we publicize the victims’ families’ suffering, yet they only make up 0.1 percent of American homicides. Humans feel more empathy for similar people than for those who are different; empathy makes us vulnerable to bias.

Those of us who followed Donald Trump’s xenophobia peddling remember his referencing of “Kate,” a San Francisco woman who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. He used this story to justify hardline immigration reform and stoke hatred and fear that motivated his voters. This was unjustified though, as every statistical analysis on the topic shows that immigrant communities commit fewer crimes than non-immigrants do. But people can identify and empathize with Kate and her family. They cannot identify and empathize with a statistical abstraction of people who would have been killed but were not. Trump took advantage of this, tapping into empathy for the wrong reasons, and winning votes in the process.

Empathy can misdirect resources and aid. It can stoke hatred against underserving groups and bring division. It makes us waste our resources. One should be more compelled by statistics than stories. Understand the statistical impact of a political issue and do what will help the most people. We must not let identity obscure our thinking with empathy. Be analytical and rationally compassionate to find the greatest possible positive impact and do not succumb to empathy.