EMPATHY and MORALITY and Emotions

Prinz 2007

A capacity for empathy might make us better people, but placing empathy at the center of our moral lives may be ill-advised. That is not to say that morality shouldn't centrally involve emotions. I think emotions are essential for moral judgment and moral motivation. It's just that empathetic emotions are not ideally suited for these jobs

Neuberg, et al. (1997)

A meta-analysis shows that empathy only weakly correlated with pro-social behavior

Empathy versus compassion

Empathy can make me suffer and lead me to avoid you and helping you whereas compassion will make be invigorated and be happy to help you

Prinz 2011

First, women have lower status than men in male dominant societies, and sensitivity to the emotions of others may be a good coping strategy under such circumstances. Second, because women are often subordinate to men, they may develop more concern for the underdog because they can relate. Third, because women play a disproportionate role in childcare, they may develop more nurturance skills

deontological considerations overrule utilitarian principles.

For example, one might judge that it is bad to kill an innocent person even if his vital organs could be used to save five others who desperately need transplants. Here, arguably, we feel cumulatively more empathy for the five people in need than for the one healthy person, but our moral judgment does not track that empathetic response

Prinz 2011- do I need to empathize with anyone in order to feel guilty about taking the last cookie?

It seems plausible that I do not. If I construe my action as greedy, I may immediately feel a pang of guilt. It might be objected that empathy is needed to construe an action as greedy, but I find that implausible. I can recognize an action as greedy without putting myself in someone else's shoes

Hein et al 2010

One European study tested male soccer fans. The fan would receive a shock on the back of his hand and would then watch another man receive the same shock. When the other man was described as a fan of the subject's team, there was more of an empathic neural response - an overlap in self-other pain - than when he was described as a fan of the opposing team

consider cases in which there is no salient victim.

One can judge that it would be wrong to evade taxes or steal from a department store, for instance, without dwelling first on the suffering of those who would be harmed

The suggestion that empathy is necessary for morality can be interpreted in at least three different ways.

One might hold the view that empathy is necessary for making moral judgment. One might think empathy is necessary for moral development. And one might think empathy is necessary for motivating moral conduct.

Bateson et al 1995

One problem with empathy is illustrated in a classic experiment in which subjects were told about a 10-year-old girl named Sheri Summers who had a fatal disease and was low on the waiting list for a treatment that would relieve her pain. Subjects were then given the option of moving her to the front of the list, although this would mean that another child, perhaps more deserving, would not get the treatment. The majority said no. However, if they were first asked to feel what Sheri Summers felt - an empathy prompt - their answers shifted and a majority chose to move her up

Paul Bloom 2013

Our evolutionary social instincts evolved to help us interact with those in our social group, and suppress selfish short-term desires

Adams et al. (1995)

Parents use emotion words twice as frequently when talking to their daughters

Carlson et al 1988

Researchers found that positive mood is consistently related to enhanced prosocial behavior and that a variety of mechanisms might explain this association.

Bloom 2017

To the extent that empathy clashes with these considered moral views, it is a poor guide to moral decision-making. One can concede that empathy is a poor guide to deciding how to act, but defend it as an important motivating force. Empathy can be used to motivate action

Consolation

argued to be an indicator of cognitive empathy, occurs when a victim of a fight is approached by a bystander who provides support (e.g., grooming or other affiliative behaviours).

Consolation behaviour occurs in apes (Romero, Castellanos, & de Waal, 2010)

but has not been seen in monkeys (de Waal & Aureli, 1996) leading to the hypothesis that some empathetic behaviours require the more advanced cognition seen in the apes

Neuroscience and pain

demonstrates empathy for in group more so than others

Prinz 2011

empathy has serious shortcomings. It is not especially motivating, and it is so vulnerable to bias and selectivity that it fails to provide a broad umbrella of moral concern.

Carlson & Miller (1987- meta analysis)

found an association between negative emotion and helping, which varied with the degree to which attention was focused on the self vs others, with helpers' feelings of responsibility for the mood-lowering event, and with a high level of objective self-awareness (i.e. the focusing of attention on the self as an object)

Singer et al. (2006)

found evidence for this in the brain: when men watched a wrongdoer getting shocked, they showed activity in reward centers of the brains (the nucleus accumbens), whereas women showed no reward activity and significant activation in pain centers, suggesting an empathetic pain response. Correspondingly, women were less than half as likely to desire revenge.

Batson et al. (2005)

found that college students were more likely to feel empathetic concern for children, dogs, and puppies than their own peers.

Tsoudis (2002)

found that in mock trials, a jury's recommendation for sentencing could be influenced by whether or not victims and defendants expressed emotions. When sadness was expressed, empathy went up, ingratiating the jury to the one who expressed the sadness. Sad victims evoked harsher sentences, and sad defendants got lighter sentences.

Weyant (1978)

found that people who are made to feel good by being given an easy test to solve are almost twice as likely, when compared to neutral controls, to volunteer for a charity that requires going door to door collecting donations.

Gibbs et al. (1984)

found that women made twice as many appeals to empathy in moral justification (53% vs 27%)

Mikhail (2002)

found women twice as likely to say it is impermissible to sacrifice one life in order to save five people in harm's way (by switching a runaway trolley onto an alternate track).

Eisenberg et al 1994

have defined empathy as an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition and is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel pure empathy is not other-oriented

Karniol et al. (1998)

observed neural differences seem to correlate better with gender roles than with biological sex for empathy

Empathy focuses

on ingroup

Simmonds, 2006

other species also show evidence of empathetic behaviour, such as in situations in which a group member is ill, injured, or dead

Klimecki et al 2014

people were given either empathy training (instructions to try to feel what others were feeling) or compassion training (in which the goal is to feel positive and warm thoughts toward others without vicariously experiencing their suffering). There was a neural difference, with different brain areas becoming active during the two sorts of training. More relevant to the concerns here, there was also a practical difference. Empathy training led to empathic distress, which is a risk factor for burnout and where the unpleasant nature of an experience can lead people to avoid situations that would trigger such distress. By contrast, 'compassion training not only promotes prosocial behavior, but also augments positive affect and resilience, which in turn fosters better coping with stressful situations'

Batson et al 1997

people who are induced to experience sympathy for a member of a stigmatised group actually develop more benign attitudes toward those individuals weeks later

Underwood and Moore (1982)

show that there is a positive correlation between emotion attribution and pro-social behavior in children, but no correlation between empathy and pro-social behavior.

Lerner et al. (1998)

showed subjects emotion-inducing

Eisenberg and Lennon (1983)

strong evidence that women are more prone to empathy than men

Carlsmith and Gross (1969)

subjects were asked to make some fund-raising phone calls for a charity organization after they administered shocks to an innocent person. These subjects made more than three times as many fund-raising calls as the subjects in a control condition where no shocks were administered.

Hoffman 1998

the experience of justice-related negative emotions such as guilt or anger frequently leads to consideration of justice issues

Eisenberg et al. (1989)

used observers' reports and found that prosocial behavior is positively correlated with 'concerned attention' in children. A child who wrinkles her brow when watching someone in need is more likely to help. But no correlation was found for 'shared emotion.'

Paul Bloom points out that a doctor who felt their patient's pain

would be unlikely to be able to do their job - picture a surgeon empathising with your cancer as she cuts out your tumour