This research explores the revolutionary role of empathy in American politics. This dissertation is concerned primarily with the effects of empathy across social group lines, and specifically, how empathy for individuals from marginal groups influences dominant group members' attitudes and behavior toward those marginal groups. Central to this research is the distinction between sympathy, which refers to feeling sorry for another, and empathy, which involves "putting oneself in another's shoes," feeling what the other is feeling, and understanding the other's perspective. These two emotional phenomena can lead to very different political outcomes. By definition, because empathy involves putting oneself in another's place, it puts people on an equal plane--at least mentally--and thereby increases awareness of existing inequalities and desires to remedy them using political means. Empathy is a revolutionary emotion. In contrast, in sympathy, no shift to the other's perspective or increased awareness of inequality occurs. Instead, the observer's pre-existing worldview remains, and while she may feel sorry for the other and want to help with the other's plight, the type of help supported is often private in nature and does not challenge the status quo or change systemic inequalities.
Arguably the greatest political achievement of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is just one historical example of an important political outcome that may be attributable to public empathy. The passage of this landmark legislation is often linked directly to events that occurred earlier that year in Selma, Alabama on "Bloody Sunday," when images of extreme police violence against peaceful African American protestors were broadcast around the nation, producing public shock and outrage, which some believe ultimately provided the political will and urgency to pass the Voting Rights Act (Lee 2002). However, political scientists still do not have a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms behind this massive egalitarian shift in white Americans' opinions. In the subfield of political psychology, there are numerous theories about why and under what conditions groups conflict and harbor negative out-group attitudes--whether in-group favoritism, stereotypes, prejudice, or intolerance--particularly with regard to the attitudes of dominant group members toward lower status groups. But there is comparatively little about what produces favorable or egalitarian attitudes among dominant group members for lower status groups. Scholarship on the other-regarding values of altruism, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism is somewhat of an exception, but more work needs to be done in order to understand what motivates people to consider and value the rights and well-being of others in the first place, particularly when those others belong to an out-group. Drawing from the rich literatures on empathy and perspective-taking in the fields of psychology and philosophy, this dissertation suggests that empathy is a key emotional mechanism that can explain egalitarian shifts in public opinion, like that which occurred among whites during the 1960s.
The proposed project represents one of several tests in the dissertation of the theory of empathy and equality. In the simplest terms, this theory is that empathy can increase equality by increasing public preferences for equality, which may manifest as increased support for egalitarian policies or increased adherence to egalitarian values. To test this proposition, empathy will be exogenously elevated in a large, population-based survey experiment of white Americans (n=1400). Methodologically, this technique combines the best of both the observational and the experimental worlds: the generalizability of representative surveys and the causal inference of traditional experiments (Mutz 2011). The 2x2 study design builds upon treatments used in pilot testing, which supported the main hypotheses. First, a pre-treatment survey containing emotional trait measures will be administered a month prior to the experiment in order to assess individual differences in sensitivity to empathy cues. In the experiment, empathy will be manipulated for a single mother and Hurricane Katrina survivor, whom is described in a fictional newspaper editorial and pictured (randomly) as either African-American or white. Subjects will be randomly assigned to either a treatment editorial that facilitates empathy or a control editorial that contains the same information but lacks empathy appeals. A post-treatment survey containing preference measures for policies affecting Hurricane Katrina survivors, single mothers, women, and African-Americans (the key dependent variables in the analysis) will immediately follow the experiment. OLS regression models that include a treatment dummy variable, treatment-partisanship interaction terms, and standard control variables will be used to evaluate the overall causal effects of empathy, and, also, its possibly unique effects on Democrats and Republicans.
This research is of broad social value because, in many societies including the United States, the attitudes of dominant majorities toward minorities shape how societies ultimately deal with their minorities, including the level of civil rights, privileges, and protections they grant them. Variation in dominant group members' egalitarianism toward minority groups has significant implications for whether a society will engender conflict or peace, injustice or justice, and inequality or equality. If the proposed research finds evidence to support the theory of empathy and equality, real changes in U.S. society could result. With this knowledge, political actors could strategically use empathic appeals to erode discrimination against marginal groups and rally public support for policies designed to address inequalities in citizens' life opportunities and basic civil rights. In short, this research could spur reductions in inter-group conflict and advances toward greater justice and equality in American society.
What leads individuals in a majority group to change their minds and become more supportive of equal rights for minority or marginal out-groups? Why, during particular periods, have large numbers of Americans changed their minds in this way, shifting the balance of public opinion in favor of equal rights for salient out-groups? During the 1960s, whites became dramatically more supportive of civil rights for African Americans, but what caused so many whites to change their minds? Similarly, twenty years ago it was unthinkable to most Americans that gay men and women would be able to marry legally, but now thirteen states grant this right and a majority of the American public supports gay marriage. What caused these changes? The findings of this study suggest that one cause may be empathy. The theory of empathy and equality tested in this project is that empathy is both a unique psychological trait and emotion that facilitates desires for equality for marginal groups. This occurs because empathy involves feeling what another person is feeling (not to be confused with sympathy, which refers to feeling pity or sorry for another). Empathy changes public opinion by first changing dominant individuals’ emotional perspectives from their own to that of an out-group other; once a person feels what another feels, she will be more likely to desire for the other what he wants for himself and his group (e.g. equal rights). However, people naturally differ in the trait of empathy, meaning some people are more prone to experiencing emotional empathy than others. Only majority members who possess high levels of the trait of empathy are expected to empathize with out-group members and change their opinions in response to empathy cues in the environment. It is theorized that majority members with low levels of the empathy trait, when they encounter empathy cues for out-group members, are unlikely to experience empathic emotions, and thus, are not expected to change their opinions. The NSF dissertation grant enabled testing of the theory using a national survey experiment of 1,970 Americans. Some participants were randomly assigned to watch an empathy-inducing video of an out-group member and others were randomly assigned to watch either a nearly identical "in-group version" of the video or a "no empathy" video of inanimate objects. The logic of the experiment is as follows: because subjects were assigned at random to these videos (as if by a coin flip), the video groups should be identical, on average, in all of their characteristics (including their political opinions) prior to watching the videos, and the only differences among the three groups should be the video each watched before answering the survey questions. Thus, the randomized experimental design allows us to conclude that any differences observed in the opinions of the groups were caused by the content of the videos. The findings support the theory – albeit with one caveat. Relative to high trait empathy subjects assigned to the "in-group" and "no empathy" videos, subjects who possessed high levels of the ability to empathize and viewed the empathy-inducing video of the out-group individual expressed greater support for equal rights for the out-group. However, contrary to the expectation of no opinion change among subjects with low levels of the empathy trait, these participants were affected by the video of the out-group individual, but negatively. Relative to low trait empathy subjects assigned to the "in-group" and "no empathy" videos, subjects with low levels of the empathy trait who viewed the out-group character expressed less support for equal rights for the out-group. These findings present a dilemma for journalists, activist organizations (e.g. GLAAD), and other political actors that seek to promote equality through the media: while media portrayals of out-group individuals may induce empathy and change opinions in the direction of equality among some members of the majority public – namely those members with high levels of the empathy trait– such portrayals may be unable to generate empathy for out-group members among the segment of the population with low empathic ability. Failures of empathy are not innocuous, however. Such media portrayals seem to simultaneously generate attitudinal backlash (i.e. preferences against equality) among this subgroup. On the surface, these findings call into question the effectiveness of such media "empathy interventions." However, this research only examined the effects of a single instance of empathy-inducing media. Additional research is needed to better understand the cumulative effects of repeated exposure to such media. In the meantime, the findings suggest that media interventions may be more fruitful in generating emotional empathy and preferences for equality if targeted toward individuals with high levels of the trait of empathy. In addition, this research serves as the foundation for the researcher’s ongoing book project, which will expand and deepen scholarly and societal understandings of the influence of empathy and other emotions in politics.
