Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society

Since the late 1960s, researchers have surveyed young people on their levels of empathy, testing their agreement with statements such as: “It’s not really my problem if others are in trouble and need help” or “Before criticizing somebody I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.” But if researchers set up a conflict, people get into automatic empathy overdrive, with their own team. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an “excess of empathy.

Source: www.kqed.org