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buravirgil · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 10:09 pm Post subject: The Manipulation of Empathy

__The Dark Side of Empathy__(The Atlantic)
How caring for one person can foster baseless aggression towards another
Paul Bloom Sep 25, 2015

You can see this process at work in research published last year by the psychologists Anneke Buffone and Michael Poulin. Subjects were told about a competition between two students in another room of the lab. Half of the subjects read an essay in which one of the students described herself as being in distress (“I’ve never been this low on funds and it really scares me”); the others read an essay in which she was mellow (“I’ve never been this low on funds, but it doesn’t really bother me”). The subjects were then told that they were going to help out in a study of pain and performance, wherein they would get to choose how much hot sauce the student’s competitor would have to consume.

Keep in mind that this competitor didn’t do anything wrong; he or she had nothing to do with the student’s anxiety about money. Nonetheless, the subjects chose to give more hot sauce to this other person when the student was described as distressed. Their empathy drove aggression, even when it made no moral sense.

Also, before the study was done, Buffone and Poulin gave all of their subjects a test that scans for specific genes that make people more sensitive to vasopressin and oxytocin, hormones that are implicated in compassion, helping, and empathy. As predicted, there was a greater connection between empathy and aggression in those subjects that had those genes—that is, more empathic people were more aggressive when exposed to the suffering of strangers.

__The Dark Side of Empathy__
Teachers tend to exhibit empathy and the physiological mechanisms behind that surprised me.

johnslat · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 11:42 pm Post subject:

Dear buravirgil,

Interesting - since in my case, I know that empathy can fuel aggression towards bullies.

And that's OK with me. Very Happy

wangdaning · Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 3154

It is always interesting to consider how you would react. I have been dragged in the mud so many times I think I would act the same way regardless. Is it true, I don't know, and honestly would not be able to say. I am fairly consistent, and I would be more likely to give to the student not distressed, if I were to give at all.

Seems the flaw in the study is asking students about money.