Conservatism, Empathy, and Political Values

• Empathy is multifaceted, with one aspect closely related to sympathy or compassion

Behavioral Mimicry

• Theodor Lipps coined "Einfuhlung," referring to an instinctual drive towards inner imitation

Limits to Empathy

• Empathy is limited by the ability to understand and one's motivation to empathize
• Motivation to empathize may be lacking even when one is able to do so
• Empathy is not a definitive solution to stereotyping and conflict and can sometimes intensify conflict
• Empathy can be selective and is influenced by pre-existing likes and dislikes

Facets of Empathy

• Potentially overlapping facets include mimicry, cognitive perspective skills, emotional contagion, Einfühlung, and sympathy

Historical Perspective: Selfishness

• Philosophers have debated whether selfishness is necessarily a negative trait
• Thomas Hobbes believed people are inherently selfish and require government intervention
• Adam Smith argued humans are selfish but can still be good without government involvement
• Ayn Rand advocated for selfishness, so long as you do not harm others

Empathy and Social Psychology

• Empathy is often seen as the opposite of selfishness, as it focuses on others, while selfishness aims at maximizing personal outcomes
• Evolutionary theory tries to explain altruism
• Kin Selection: People help those who are similar because they are most likely related
• Reciprocity: helping others creates reciprocation (Trivers 1971); like cleaner birds and alligator teeth

Self-Sacrifice

• Social reward perspective and personal distress motive explain self-sacrifice
• Kin selection involves helping others because they are like you
• True Altruism: Mutually beneficial relationships exists as described by Dan Batson

Altruism

• Terminology: Empathic concern is helping because you want to

Bystander Effect

• The Kitty Genovese case highlighted the bystander effect, where the more people present, the less likely someone is to intervene
• Explanation for failure to help include:
  • John Darley
  • Bibb Latane

Latane and Darley's Model

• Assisting someone in need is a key aspect of empathy and central to bystander intervention models
• An emergency situation requires noticing the event, interpreting it as such, assuming responsibility, and offering assistance
• Presence of others can influence each of these stages

Good Samaritan Study

• Situational constraints, like time pressure, affect helping behavior
  • No hurry: 63%
  • Moderate hurry: 45%
  • High hurry: 10%

The Smoke Filled Room

• The interpretation of a situation is shown to be an emergency:
  • Alone: 65% help
  • Group: 10% help

Diffusion of Responsibility

• "Something seems wrong! Maybe they need help? But surely someone else will step in.”

The Seizure Study

• An experiment about seizure indicates an individual is more likely to help when they think that no one else is present
  • 0 observers: 85% help, average delay of 52 sec
  • 1 observer: 62% help, average delay of 93 sec
  • 4 observers: 31% help, average delay of 166 sec
• Non-helping can result when all factors occur at the same time, i.e. in the Illinois student pool
• The Latane and Darley Approach does not take in to account personality

Personality

• Personality shows consistency and stability

Individual Differences Measurement

• Measures for individual differences must have construct validity and predictive validity

The Big Five Model

• Measures Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism
• Conscientiousness is most correlated with empathy
• Agreeableness is most correlated with empathy
• Support for the Big Five model shows:
  • Good predictive validity
  • Reasonable consistency over time
  • Across cultures, except for openness
• Criticisms of the Big Five Theory
  • Could be more than 5 measures
  • Measures are too broad and encompass subdimensions

Measuring tools

• Behaviors are used to measure empathy in young children
• Questionnaires are used to measure empathy in adults

Mark Davis and the Interpersonal Reactivity Task

• Mark Davis created a reactivity test that is multi-dimensional, clear, easily administered, has high predictive validity and statistical relevance, and has been cited many times
• Scale has 4 subcomponents:
  • Empathic concern
  • Perspective taking
  • Personal distress
  • Fantasy
• Empathic concern and perspective taking were mostly used by personality researchers

Narcissism

• Americans are perceived to becoming narcissistic and less empathetic
• NPI (Narcissism personality inventory) has 4 dimensions:
  • Exploitative
  • Authority
  • Superiority
  • Self Absorption

3 different methods used for studies

• Longitudinal Studies
  • Tricks the same group of people overtime
  • When done well, can be useful
  • Very hard studies to do, takes a long time to collect the data
  • Age effects are difficult to disentangle from cultural effects
  • American culture becoming less empathetic

Cross Sectional Studies

• Collect data from different groups of participants at same time
  • Easier to run and has larger samples

Time-lag Studies

• Examines responses by different participants of similar age at different points in time
• Example: sophomores who completed a given personality survey at different points in time
  • When done well can be very compelling
  • Controls for age effects
  • Interpreting is difficult

Jean Twenge

• Has indicated Narcissism scores have gone up over time
• Time lag indicates empathic concern decreased between the 1970s and 2005
• One must consider whether the decrease of empathy is due to the historical period

Empathy, Emotion and Justice: Categorical vs. Dimensional Approaches

• Categorical is supported by Paul Ekman
• Dimensional is supported by Russell's circumplex model of emotion

Traditional Goal-Based Emotion Handout

• Traditional Goal-Based Emotion only emphasizes anger
  • If one evaluates that someone has been suffering, it creates opportunity for hapiness
  • Anger is directed towards people you do not like and serves antisocial behavior

Positive benefits of negative emotions

• Positive benefits of negative emotions (pain, fear)
  • Pain signals point point to where the body needs to stop
  • Fear signals point point towards what is necessary for safety
• Anger can result in pursuing justice violations

Adaptive Feelings

• Primary adaptive feelings:
  • Feeling: fear
  • Information: Danger
  • Need: Safety
  • Goal: Avoidance
  • Feeling: Anger
  • Information: Justice Violation
  • Need: Restore justice, punishment of wrongdoers, reparations to victims
  • Goal: Approach, see that justice is done
• Just as there is need for fear there is need for anger

Darwin suggested…

• Further theory and research on the evolutionary advantages of anger, supported by Darwin, has
  • organism prepared for action and facilitates communication with others Fehr and Gatcher suggested…
• It motivates punitive action towards morn violators
• Compassion towards those who had been harmed

Boundary Conditions

• Certain conditions have to met in order for anger to be more likely:
• Harmful actions performed by a person in which the actions
• Are intentional
• Have clearly foreseeable consequences
• Performed by someone of their own free will
• Harmful actions may or may not directly involve another person
• You will clearly be angry if someone wrecks your car and it was their fault - You weren't harmed if someone damaged property is ruined
• Random, unforeseeable events not likely to make you angry
  • But if a flood could have been predicted but wasn't it could make you angry
• Empathic Anger is the predictor of helping and punishing desires

Anger vs Fear

• Anger vs Fear need to be measured in the context of neuroscience
• Two important subsystems in the brain:
  • BIS: Behavioral Inhibition
    • Avoidance
  • BAS: Behavioral activation
    • Approach
• Anger is the only negative emotion that is part of the BAS system
• Summary
  • It may serves as a signal to norm breakers and also forge alliance with people harmed.
  • Unique among negative emotions.

Anger and Empathy Part 2

• Desire for Justice
  • Retributive
  • Restorative

Scales of Justice

• Equilibrium and Balance
• Retributive Response
  • response focused on offender's past Restorative Response: emphasis on harmful consequences of offenders behavior
• One additional finding regarding empathy and emotion
• Helper's high Empathic acts make helpers feel good

Empathy and Political Psychology

• Liberals are viewed as being emotional
• Conservatives are seen as unemotional
• However, the research community want to understand if there’s an actual relationship

Shalom Schwartz

• Conservatives score higher than liberals reflects tendency from Cs embrace old fashion norms Liberalism- more broadly related to how people think Conservatism- more broadly opposite how people tend to think

Schwartz model criticism

• It may have a complex of measuring tool compared to social and personality psychologists
• Right Wing Authoritarianism
• Social and Dominance Orientation test

Part 2: Parochial Empathy

• What is parochial empathy:
• Empathy could be wonderful, if alway's facilitated our ability to put ourselves in shows that has ability to put our self in other shows- - Some selectivity is called parochial empathy and that the dynamics of empathy

Paul Bloom book

• Empathy is limited
• Weaponization of empathy occurs by
  • describing acts of violence
  • creates empathy for the good guys which further provokes anger towards the bad-
• One sure way triggering anger to the bad guy
• People that can trigger more sympathy than people whom have a higher volume.

Empathy and sympathies

• People often band together - All else being equal, or more impacted from other
• In war, they more sensitive
• In other word, there have been a famous study suggest the effect is a automatic
• And has a racial group and that group has a modulate empathetic

An automated brain responses to the question do you feel my pain?

• Racial group membership modulates with empathy

• Antarior has a cortex so it's to be when watching someone can can can

• become become acting when when someone that suffers a from pain

• Showed in video depicting receiving factors received in paniful stimuli

• Showed the people can be eithier Chinese, or Causicans

• It was showed from prediction

• Greater reaction to a ingroup. showed on an image

• Greater reaction to Chinese when Chinese face showed

• Showed when face was a causian

• Analized that group member were from

• This then shows an an analyzation and in group

• What is it like in the political world?

• Do people have to make decisions based on political beliefs?

• Expirement*

• -* Tim was lost in the woods

• If it was cold outside you could have empathy with your friend

Demonstrating Paralochism experiment two

• Water could be provided and a person lost water Or could provide 2 extreme:
  • One group with water and salty, the other lost in the water and lost

Additional demonstrations of parochiualisim

Study that manipulated two vaiables

• Targeted race
• Motivations
• Instructions
• Results indicates empathy can be effective and demonstrate the effects of ingroup and outgroup based

Developmental Psychology

• Jean Peat's theort children is focused on
• Preoporiational the that develop is 2-6 - This is where the minds
• This will affect the the way the way one would
• Can you the mind in cognition and emotiom