Is empathy making the world a worse place?
Empathy is supposed to be a moral good, a natural reaction to the suffering of others. But apparently if you really want to be good and do good, empathy is not the answer.
"Empathy is fundamentally, from a moral standpoint, a bad thing," Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom says.
"It's because of empathy that the world cares so much more about a baby stuck in a well than we do about global warming," Bloom told the Atlantic.
Empathy is biased towards the individual - towards those who look like us, share the same beliefs, and have similar backgrounds, he said. That can blind us to the long term consequences of our compassionate actions.
Going to war, vaccinating children, and responding to climate change would be better served without empathy, according to Bloom.
For example, the common argument for going to war is to stop the suffering of others, without full consideration given to the number of other victims that war would create.
"But our empathy, our selfish moralising zooms us in and says 'oh my God there are these people suffering, let's bomb the crap out of them. Let's destroy the whole country to save these people'," Bloom said.
Esteemed Australian moral philosopher Professor Peter Singer agrees with Bloom,"You need the head as well as the heart".
In his book The Most Good You Can Do, Singer cites a study where one group were shown a photo of one child, with her name and age, and were asked to donate money for a $300,000 drug treatment to save her life. A second group were shown photos, with names and ages, of eight children, and were asked to donate money for a $300,000 drug treatment to save all their lives.
More money was donated to the single child than to the eight sick children. That was held up as an example of empathy being biased towards the individual, not the masses.
Singer said support for empathy has created a wave of "warm-glow altruists" who will give a little to a lot of causes because it makes them feel a "warm-glow" feeling every time they think they are helping a cause.
"They give them $10 and once the charity processes $10 and gives a thank you letter and so on, there's not much money left," Singer said.
Singer said giving to beggars on the street is a common way people will serve their need for a "warm-glow".
"Generally I think that it's not a good idea to hand out money to people in the street.
"You don't know what they're going to do with it. Are they genuine? If lots of people give out money people will fake it to get money that way.
"We need a larger solution," Singer said.
But Dr Frans de Waal, psychology professor at Atlanta's Emory University, disagrees, saying Singer and Bloom are trying to "remove morality from biology".
"How can one be against empathy? I know Paul Bloom has been making this argument that empathy is a poor guide for moral decisions, but ... without empathy why would we even care about others and take decisions that take their interests into account?
"Bloom is part of a movement ... of driving a wedge between morality and biology.
"All that matters is a sense of duty. But humans can rationally justify almost anything, sometimes the most gruesome behaviour, and our only hope in this world is the natural ties that bind us together with each other and to the environment. Trying to depict those ties as problematic is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater," he said.
Contentious words, but do you agree with them? Do you think that empathy is by and large making the world a worse place to live in?
Please let us know in the comments below.
Written by Rachel Clayton. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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