Imagine you're reading a newspaper and you come across an article about a woman lost in a nearby forest. She had hiked several miles to a small cabin for a bit of an escape from her stressful work life, and a freak spring snowstorm dropped eight inches of powder overnight as the temperature plummeted. This forest is difficult to navigate under the best of conditions, and the woman is a fairly inexperienced hiker. Her family and friends are concerned because she didn't pack food or water for a long stay, and she dressed for mild weather. Rangers are combing the forest.
How do you feel about this woman as you read her story? You don't know her personally, but it's not hard to imagine wandering lost through a snowy forest. What are your first thoughts, and concerns, as you ponder her plight?
Well, it probably depends on a number of things -- some seemingly irrelevant. Imagine again that you're reading the newspaper account, but now you're dressed in flannels and sitting in front of a crackling fire. Or, by contrast, picture yourself reading the hiker's story while standing at a frigid bus stop. Will your situation influence the empathy you feel for this stranger?
Or what about her values and politics? What if the story mentions in passing that the hiker was a well-known gay rights activist, or that she was a staffer for a staunchly conservative Republican lawmaker? Will these facts shape your thinking and emotions?
We like to think that, as human beings, we sympathize with anyone who is suffering or in danger. But is this true? A provocative new study suggests that we may not be nearly as connected and empathic as we might hope -- that indeed our emotional outpouring for others is strictly limited by our own immediate situation and our own cherished values. University of Michigan psychological scientists Ed O'Brien and Phoebe Ellsworth used a story very much like the hiker's tale to measure people's visceral reactions to another human's misfortune in two experiments.
They ran the first study in Ann Arbor, Mich. in January, where the median temperature is about 6oF, with lows in the negative double-digits. As with the hypothetical situation outlined above, they actually did interview some people who were outside in the cold waiting for a bus, while they interviewed others in the warmth of the library. Previous research has shown that it's very difficult, when we're in one visceral state, to take the perspective of someone in the opposite visceral state. So, for example, it's hard to imagine someone being satiated -- even our future selves -- when we are ravenous. The scientists took advantage of the Michigan winter to explore how cold might similarly shape attitudes toward strangers.
The volunteers read the news account, some at the bus stop and others in the library. Some read about the gay rights activist, others about the Republican staffer. Male volunteers read about male hikers; women about female hikers. Afterward, all the volunteers answered a series of questions that required getting inside the head of the unfortunate hiker: What was the worst part of his or her experience in the woods? What was his or biggest regret? Not taking water? Food? Extra clothing? How hungry is he or she now? How thirsty? How cold? The volunteers also described their own political values, and rated their similarity to the hiker.
The idea was to see if and how these irrelevant factors shaped their judgments of another person's internal state of mind, and the results were clear. Being cold did indeed influence the volunteers' judgments -- but only if they were thinking about someone just like themselves. That is, when it was a shivering conservative thinking about another conservative -- or a shivering liberal thinking about another liberal -- in these cases the volunteers imagined that cold was the hiker's main concern, not food or water. They shared the hiker's regret in not taking along warm clothing. But being cold did not influence liberals' empathy for conservatives stranded in the woods, nor conservatives' feelings for liberals in the same dilemma.
This is a bit distressing, but a second study reinforced the main finding. In this experiment, instead of comparing cold and toasty volunteers, the scientists fed some of the volunteers crackers and other salty foods to make them very thirsty, while allowing others to drink water. They then all read the same story as before. The researchers expected that the parched subjects would project their own thirst only onto hikers who shared their political values, and that's exactly what they found. As reported online in the journal Psychological Science, even very thirsty Republicans could not feel the thirst of liberals, and vice versa. In other words, being different appears to trump even strong visceral feelings like thirst and cold.
Why would this be? Everyone uses stereotypes to judge others, often unfairly, but thirst and cold have nothing to do with political stereotypes. Nobody thinks, "Democrats drink more water," or, "Republicans wear warmer clothes." Knowing someone's politics should not affect how cold or thirsty we think they are -- yet these results suggest that it does. And if this is the case, O'Brien and Ellsworth say, then it appears that our judgments of people unlike ourselves are much more automatic and deeply rooted in the psyche -- and therefore much more resistant to change. In these deeply partisan times, this is not welcome news.
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Actually, I DO think that. I think of Democrats as more intelligent, and therefore more health conscious and likely to drink more water. I think of Republicans as cold-blooded reptiles, and therefore in need of warmer clothes.
Conservatives would say "It's her own fault she's in trouble, why waste taxpayer money helping her? And what is a thermal imaging scanner, something sciency from Star Trek Wars?"
Also, if I'm in a cabin in these conditions, I'm pretty okay. I have melted snow for water and a pretty good shelter for the night. Everyone knows where I was headed and how to find me. I use whatever I can find to keep warm, including a pile of pine branches or dead leaves if nothing else presents itself.
Also, I don't know what Ann Arbor in what Michigan you're talking about, but your weather facts are waaaay off. You might be thinking of up in the U.P.
But as the leader of a very large and active search and rescue team organization, I can tell you that while my team members are not universally conservative, the vast majority are, and that's regardless of their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whatever.
Having a roll-up-your-sleeves willingness to expend your own blood, sweat, and money instead of relying on government seems to be a conservative trait. Again, that's not universally true and, of course, there are nuances, but in my experience it's a valid generalization.
As for your personal survival strategy. Smart plan. I probably won't ever have to come looking for you!
Liberals would say, "It was Big Oil's fault. Global warming caused the freak cold snap. And there was no ranger on duty because Republicans cut the park budget."
FAIL
It is important to get out and experience the world and get to know different peoples.
I have to say that when someone who has been deliberately dispassionate about the suffering of others finally has their moment of suffering, I find myself feeling satisfaction in the lesson I hope is being learned. I recognize that feeling is not right. I should not rejoice in the suffering of anyone. Yet some visceral reaction inside me wants the person to experience the terror and hurt and need for help, hoping that afterwards there will be a connection to others that was not there.
Indeed, partisans on both sides of the aisle have been willing for others to suffer for their goals to be achieved. The questions often then focus on who should suffer, and why.
I think in many cases this desire for vengeance translates into a lack of perception of how much the person involved is suffering. "They deserve it, so they must not be feeling it as much as someone who doesn't deserve it."
Again, not right, but understandable.
As for why liberals wouldn't feel empathy for conservatives, many liberals feel there must be something wrong with a person with such limited empathy for others. In any social species, when a member shows aberration, they will be rejected. We don't feel empathy toward someone we view as aberrant.
For me, I like to think that my level of empathy wouldn't be affected by knowing the person had a conservative worldview, but if I knew that person was, say, Eric Cantor or John Boehner or one of the current Republican candidates for president, then I'm pretty sure my response would be more like laughter at their predicament than empathy.
Each of us builds a model of reality from the time we are born. Every one is different, based on our different genes and our different experiences.
When some new information arrives that forces you to change that model of reality, it takes effort to do so. The greater the change, the greater the harder it is to change, the greater the effort, the more energy (literally) it takes.
So, in general, we don't like to change. Further, our initial assumption is that everyone else thinks like we do (or should). Otherwise, that would imply some flaw in our model, requiring us to change. As a result, we tend to reject people who are perceived as different from us, and the more different they are, the stronger the rejection.
That is one reason why Ayn Rand's meme about the rugged individual will lead her followers, like the Shakers, into oblivion.