A series of experiments led by Pennsylvania State University psychologist C. Daryl Cameron found that most individuals prefer to opt out of the cognitive effort empathy requires, especially if they don’t know the other person well:
…it’s harder to empathize with someone who feels distant or unknown than with a close loved one. “The more shared experiences you have with someone, the more of a rich, nuanced representation you can draw on,” Cameron says. But empathy for someone whose experience feels alien—the person who disagrees with you online, the man in a tent outside the subway or even a cousin who spouts extremist views—is a different matter. A host of disquieting unknowns arises: Is identifying with this person going to put you in danger? Will it compel you to sacrifice something important, such as time, money, tranquility?
When such anticipated costs overwhelm people, they’re more prone to withdraw altogether rather than trying to understand where the other person is coming from. “We are quite adept at learning how to manage our emotional environments to cultivate what we want to feel,” Cameron says. “Empathizing with a stranger, taking on their experiences—either negative or positive experiences—people find it difficult, they find it costly. And the more they feel that way, the less they opt in.”
Harvard social psychologist Erika Weisz points out there is hope though:
…another way to nudge people toward empathy—and keep them there—is to embed them in communities where empathy is a baseline expectation. “People want to increase their empathy if you tell them, essentially, it will help them socially,” Weisz says. “That is a perfectly reasonable leverage.” Unlike empathy skills training, which teaches specific methods of relating to others, Weisz’s approach involves building communities that value and reward empathetic behavior. It draws on a kind of constructive peer pressure.
