They are long-established clichés: conservatives, according to liberals, are heartless – while liberals, according to conservatives, are bleeding hearts.
That’s a very straightforward differentiation of a single attribute: empathy. And it’s also something we can meaningfully measure. We can turn a scientific eye toward the question of empathy, and where it sits in our political attitudes and behaviors.
Do liberals have more empathy than conservatives? And if so, what are the implications?
This has been studied by social scientists for some time, but there is recent research that can shed some light.
One 2018 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, “Are Liberals and Conservatives Equally Motivated to Feel Empathy Toward Others?”, surveyed hundreds of citizens of the United States, Germany, and Israel.
“On average and across samples,” the study’s authors concluded, “liberals wanted to feel more empathy and experienced more empathy than conservatives did.” Liberals, the study found, were also more willing to help others than conservatives were.
The study made an important distinction between the desire to feel empathy and the actual experience of feeling empathy. The authors measured both, and found that liberals were not only experiencing higher degrees of empathy, but experiencing more desire to experience it. Put another way, liberals have a stronger conscious interest in empathy.
A similar finding emerged from the study “Political ideology and pandemic lifestyles: the indirect effects of empathy, authoritarianism, and threat”, by University of Texas Professor of Sociology Terrence D. Hill and his team last year.
Using data gathered from across the US for the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey, Hill’s team tested the effects of declared political conservatism on pandemic behaviors, factoring in empathy, authoritarianism, and threat perception.
“Our results confirm that political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles,” he wrote in the paper. “We also find that this association is partially mediated by lower levels of empathy, higher levels of authoritarian beliefs, and lower levels of perceived pandemic threat.”
However, “We are not saying that political conservatives inherently lack empathy or inherently authoritarian or inherently skeptical of the pandemic. Some political conservatives score high on empathy, low on authoritarianism, and are deeply concerned about the pandemic. Before the pandemic, some studies showed that political conservatism was associated with higher levels of disgust sensitivity (e.g., concern about diseases). These pre-pandemic patterns were seemingly reversed during the pandemic when political elites decided to politicize the pandemic.”
Even so, “Political conservatives tend to engage in riskier pandemic lifestyles, in part, because they are less likely to care about the welfare of others (a motivation for engaging in healthy pandemic lifestyles in the service of public health), more likely to hold authoritarian beliefs (which emphasize the perspectives of one charismatic leader who happens to disagree with public health recommendations), and less likely to perceive the pandemic as threatening to themselves and to the broader society,” Hill said in an interview with PsyPost.
Referencing a number of studies, including the 2018 PSP Bulletin paper above, Amanda Wang of Greater Good Magazine wrote that “These findings add to a growing base of research suggesting that ideological differences are about more than just politics: They may also be deeply intertwined with psychological differences, including the desire to feel certain emotions. Indeed, studies have shown that liberals and conservatives differ in overall levels of emotions like empathy and disgust.
Hasson and colleagues add a subtle but important insight: Ideology is also associated with how much a person might value certain emotions. And when it comes to prosocial emotions—the ones that tie us together—the desire to feel a certain way can influence how we treat other people, both on an interpersonal level and on a broader policy level. If we try to avoid empathizing with certain groups of people—imagining what they feel—then this might reduce our motivation to help them out.”
Then there’s “Empathy and the Liberal-Conservative Political Divide in the US” by Stephen G. Morris, a philosopher at the College of Staten Island, in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology.
“[This] research suggests that a strong connection exists between empathy and liberal political views,” he wrote. “In light of this research, I suggest that empathy can help account for the differences in political attitudes among liberals and conservatives in the U.S. and may even help explain why such attitudes have become increasingly polarized. The analysis provided in this essay aims to further our understanding of how personality traits can be used to predict voter attitudes in the U.S. and beyond.
“I have argued that empirical research on the relationship between empathy and political attitudes indicates that empathy is positively correlated with both liberal ideology in general and specific liberal policy preferences,” he continued. “And while this correlation does not necessarily imply that empathy plays some causal role in determining a person’s political views, a causal explanation along these lines seems the best way to account for the correlation.
“...the difference in empathy among liberals and conservatives appears to correspond in degree to their engagement in politics. Given studies suggesting a large discrepancy in empathy among the most politically active liberals and conservatives, this discrepancy could help explain the extensive political polarization that characterizes contemporary U.S. politics.”
What do we make of all of this?
There might be a temptation for the liberal to feel smug when reading these findings, vindicated by the science that conservatives dismiss and decry. But to indulge in such smugness is to be as dismissive as the conservatives themselves.
Yes, the truth of this research is that when conservative majorities are in control of our legislative and judicial institutions, we are turning control over our well-being to the people who care the least about it. Yes, that is dangerous, and in no one’s best interests, not even the best interests of conservatives.
But the answer is not to oppose conservatives for their lack of empathy. In their minds, they have the right amount of empathy, and liberals – the bleeding hearts – have way too much.
The reason all of this has become a problem is called out elsewhere in this book, in the essay “Sly’s Crew”: we tend to gather into social and political groups that reflect our own image back to us. We enter into cognitive clusters of like-mindedness, and when we do, we weaken ourselves and one another.
What is called for here is not liberal dominance of our institutions based on their greater levels of empathy; it’s the pursuit of greater balance, a return to the days when members of both groups – members of all groups – worked together for the greater good.
Put another way: liberals, reserve some of that excess empathy for your conservative friends...
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