Empathy and Morality

Empathy and Morality

EDITED BY HEIDI L. MAIBOM
1
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors vii

1. Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about
Empathy1
Heidi L. Maibom
2. Empathy-Induced Altruism and Morality: No Necessary Connection 41
C. Daniel Batson
3. Empathy and Morality: A Developmental Psychology Perspective 59
Tracy L. Spinrad and Nancy Eisenberg
4. Empathy, Justice, and Social Change 71
Martin L. Hoffman
5. Empathy, Emotion Regulation, and Moral Judgment 97
Antti Kauppinen
6. At the Empathetic Center of Our Moral Lives 122
K. Richard Garrett and George Graham
7. Empathy and Moral Deficits in Psychopathy 138
Abigail A. Marsh
8. Are Empathy and Morality Linked?: Insights from Moral Psychology,
Social and Decision Neuroscience, and Philosophy 155
Giuseppe Ugazio, Jasminka Majdandi, and Claus Lamm
9. On Empathy: A Perspective from Developmental Psychopathology 172
R. Peter Hobson and Jessica A. Hobson
10. Empathy in Other Apes 193
Kristin Andrews and Lori Gruen
vi C O N T E N T S
11. Psychological Altruism, Empathy, and Offender Rehabilitation 210

Tony Ward and Russil Durrant
12. Empathy and Morality in Ethnographic Perspective 230
Douglas Hollan
References251
Index297
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Kristin Andrews is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at

York University.
C. Daniel Batson is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at
the University of Kansas.
Russil Durrant is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Cultural
Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.
Nancy Eisenberg is Regents Professor in the Department of Psychology at
Arizona State University.
K. Richard Garrett is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Bentley University.
George Graham is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Georgia
State University.
Lori Gruen is Professor of Philosophy, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies, and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University.
Jessica A. Hobson is Senior Research Fellow in the Behavioural and Brain
Sciences Unit of Institute of Child Health at University College London.
R. Peter Hobson is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology in the Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit of the Institute of Child Health at University College London and the Tavistock Clinic.
Martin L. Hoffman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology
at New York University.
Douglas Hollan is Professor of Anthropology and Luckman Distinguished
Teacher at UCLA, co-director of the FPR-UCLA Culture, Brain, and Development Program in Mental Health, and an instructor at the New Center for
Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.
Antti Kauppinen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at
Trinity College Dublin.
viii
LIST OF CONTR IBUTORS
Claus Lamm is Professor and Head of the Social Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience Unit of the Department of Basic Psychological Research and
Research Methods at the University of Vienna.
Heidi L. Maibom is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati.
Jasminka Majdandi is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Social Cognitive
and Affective Neuroscience Unit of the Department of Basic Psychological
Research and Research Methods at the University of Vienna.
Abigail A. Marsh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at
Georgetown University.
Tracy L. Spinrad is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Family
Dynamics at Arizona State University.
Giuseppe Ugazio is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience Unit of the Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods at the University of Vienna.
Tony Ward is Professor in the School of Psychology at Victoria University of
Wellington.
Introduction: (Almost) Everything

You Ever Wanted to Know about
Empathy
HEIDI L. MAIBOM
The term empathy denotes a range of emotional responses we have to what others
feel or the situation they are in, such as sympathy, empathic anger, or compassion,
in addition to some form of appreciation of their psychological state. It also sometimes denotes a purely cognitive state of understanding another. Depending on
the subject area and the aims of the theorist, empathy may be more narrowly
defined. However, many classical empathy scalessuch as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Bryants Index of Empathy, or the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathymeasure not simply someones sympathy toward others, but
also her tendency to react emotionally to them, to catch their emotions, to be distressed when others are seriously hurt, and to take their perspective (Bryant 1982,
Davis 1983b, Mehrabian & Epstein 1972). Philosophers tend to be less ecumenical
about their definition of empathy and typically insist that affective empathy is
an emotion-matching, other-oriented and other-caused emotional state (Coplan
2011, Darwall 1998, Maibom 2007, Sober & Wilson 1998). Some psychologists think
of empathic concern as the prototype of empathy. Empathic concern is an other-
oriented emotion that need not match the emotion the other person is experiencing
as long as it is congruent with her welfare (Batson 2011). This empathic concern
E M PA T H Y A N D M O R A L I T Y
is what many philosophers and psychologists talk of as sympathy (Darwall

1998, Eisenberg 2000, Sober & Wilson 1998).
The rather diverse use of empathy has given rise to some despondency
among theorists, who often claim that the term has such a broad usage that it
is almost impossible to capture (see Coplan & Goldie 2011a).1 People therefore
typically specify what they take the term to mean. It is a sound approach, and
one I shall take here. However, the rumors about the impossibly diverse usage
of empathy are exaggerated. In practice, almost nobody talks of an emotion
as empathetic unless the agent is aware that it is caused by the perceived, imagined, or inferred emotion or plight of another, or it expresses concern for the
welfare of another. Martin Hoffmans characterization of an empathic emotion as an emotion that is more appropriate to the state or situation of someone
other than the person who experiences it best captures the various usages of
the term (Hoffman 2000). Within the domain of empathy-related emotions,
there are many important differences in emotional directionality, quality, and
so on, but this does not change the fact that these emotions are intimately
connected, making empathy studies a more coherent field than we are led to
believe. Of course cognitive empathy is not an emotion, but an understanding
of others. Typically, however, it involves perspective taking or imaginatively
engaging with others in their situation. That is, in cognitive empathy we are
re-centering our thoughts so that they may be said to be more reflective of
those of a person in that situation than of the situation we are in ourselves.
Hoffmans basic idea, then, is extendable to all forms of empathy.
Most think that it is possible to have cognitive empathy without affective
empathy. I can think of anothers emotions without thereby experiencing these
emotions myself. Is the reverse true? It is widely agreed that to be able to affectively empathize with others, we need only a cursory understanding of the
nature of others emotional states and of the fact that they are states of another. Shaun Nichols, for instance, argues that we need only be able to tell that
the other is in distress or pain to be able to empathize with their distress and
pain (Nichols 2001). Similarly, Frans de Waal and Stephanie Preston understand empathy in terms of a perception-action model (see below), which also
involves little cognitive sophistication (Preston & de Waal 2002). At the same
time, it is evident that any sophisticated empathizing requires more advanced
cognitive capacities. How much is debated. At the extreme end, we have Peter
1. I am going to ignore the origin of the term empathy here. I dont think it helps much with
the current debate. Suffice it to say that the term was coined by Edward Titchener (1909) as
a translation of the German Einfhlung to denote an emotion that Theodore Lipps (1903)
famously associated with understanding works of art. For an excellent historical overview of
the uses of the term, see Karsten Stueber (2006).
Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy
Goldie who maintains that to empathize, I must be aware of the other as a

centre of consciousness distinct from myself, I must have a substantial characterization of the other person, and I must have a narrative that I can imaginative reenact (Goldie 2000, 195). But such a stringent account leaves out what
most people would call empathy and most of what the psychological literature
regards as empathy. Probably the cognitive sophistication that most have in
mind when they think of developed empathy lies halfway between Nichols
minimal position and Goldies pregnant one.
1. A FFECT I V E EM PAT H Y A N D EM PAT H Y- R EL AT ED

EM OT I O N S
It is typical to distinguish between emotional contagion, empathy, sympathy,

and personal distress. The below is representative of how many philosophers
and psychologists think of these constructs (Maibom 2012a, Sober & Wilson
1998):
(Affective) Empathy
S empathizes with Os experience of emotion E in C if S feels E for O as a
result of: believing or perceiving that O feels E, or imagining being in C.
Sympathy
S sympathizes with O when S feels sad for O as a result of believing or perceiving that something bad has happened to O, or S feels happy for O as a
result of believing or perceiving that something good has happened to O.
Emotional Contagion
Ss feeling E is a case of emotional contagion if S feels E as a result of believing that O feels E, perceiving that O is T-ing, or of imagining being in the
C of O.
Personal Distress
S is personally distressed by Os experience of emotion E in C if S feels E
not for O, but for herself (S)as a result of believing or perceiving that O
feels E, or imagining being in C, OR as a result of believing that something
bad has happened to O.
S refers to the subject who experiences the emotion, O to some other person
who is the source of the emotion S experiences, E to an emotion, T-ing is a
bodily expression typically associated with an emotion (e.g., smiling or crying)
and C is a circumstance or a situation. To say that S feels E for O is to say that

the E that S experiences is empathic; it reflects Ss awareness that she is not feeling the emotion directly or for herself, but she is feeling it for O.
These emotional reactions are deeply interpersonal insofar as they are
caused by some awareness of what is happening to someone else, although
emotional contagion may (typically) happen below the threshold of conscious
awareness. To distinguish them from one another, one needs to ask whether:
(i) the emotion is experienced directly (for the self) or for someone else, (ii)the
object of the emotion is the others emotion or their welfare, and (iii) what
the subject feels aims to match what the object (the other person) feels or not
(emotion matching). In empathic distress, one feels distress for the other; in
personal distress, one feels distress for the self. In empathy the focus is on what
the other is feeling or might reasonably be expected to feel, whereas sympathy is directed at the others welfare, regardless of what he is feeling. Empathy
aims to match the emotion that the other experiences or could reasonably be
expected to experience in her situation. By contrast, the affective quality of
sympathy only matches in the broadest possible terms the welfare of the other:
sadness or some similar emotion when the other person is negatively affected
by what is happening to him, and happiness when he is positively affected by
his circumstances.
Emotional contagion is often thought to be the most basic emotional reaction to the emotions of others that is still empathic in nature. It is said that
we catch others emotions, for example, their mirth, sadness, or anxiety. The
term catch is meant to reflect the fact that the process is often relatively automatic and involuntary. Reactive crying in infants is often thought to be the first
expression of emotional contagion (Simner 1971, Sagi & Hoffman 1976, Martin
& Clark 1982). Reactive barking in dogs may be the canine equivalent (see also
contagious yawning in chimpanzees, Campbell & de Waal 2011). Many think
that mature empathy develops out of this basic tendency to feel what others feel.
Yet emotional contagion need contain little awareness of the other as experiencing the emotions that are caught this way. Perhaps it doesnt even involve any real
understanding that the other is a minded or feeling other. If I catch your mirth,
for instance, I might just end up feeling happy without much thought about why
that is. In my mind, spending time with you makes me happy. Of course, I am
also capable of thinking of you as a minded other, but that is orthogonal to the
issue of what is involved in emotional contagion. Emotional contagion appears
to play an important role in social relationships beyond that of understanding
or feeling with or for the other. For instance, people who mimic one another
report liking each other more (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson 1994).
Often we are aware that we feel what we feel because of what another feels;
we feel sad because she feels sad. Some people, like Eisenberg, would regard
this as empathy proper. I talk of empathy proper as an emotion that is felt for
the other in addition to with them, but it is important to stress that the feeling
for that I have in mind is not meant to include concern as a feeling or attitude felt separate from, and in addition to, the particular emotion that is felt
for the other (empathic anger, say). The extent to which feeling for, as I am
using the expression here, connotes concern for another is the extent to which
such a feeling or attitude is implicit in the fact that one feels an emotion that
is more appropriate to the situation of the other than to ones own. Feeling
for is to be understood broadly so as to include cases where I am angry with
a person because that person wronged you where, in a sense, you are neither
the object nor the subject of my emotion. What makes it a case of empathetic
anger is that I am feeling it not directly as a sort of objective moral anger, but
rather I feel it on your behalf.
I take it that what distinguishes empathy from personal distress is that
whereas in personal distress the distress is felt for oneself just as in ordinary
distress, in empathic distress it is felt for the distressed other. Described in
this way, empathic distress seems to be a development of the emotional contagion of distress. Personal distress, on the other hand, may be just caught
distress, or another development of emotional contagion, though what would
differentiate the two is unclear. It is therefore tempting to think of emotional
contagion as the original affective state that underlies all empathy, personal
distress, and, as we shall see, sympathy. This may ultimately be what Preston
and de Waal have in mind with their perception-action model (though the
model includes many interesting details glossed over here). According to this
model the attended perception of the objects state automatically activates the
subjects representation of the state, situation, and object, and . . . activation
of these representations automatically primes or generates the associated autonomic or somatic responses, unless inhibited (Preston & de Waal 2002, 4).
Note, however, that in this model what causes empathy is seeing the affect of
the other. In mature persons, thinking of the others thoughts, feelings, or of
their situation is a cause of empathy, as is imaginatively engaging with her
perspective.
Setting aside for the moment the phylogeny and ontogeny of empathy, it
seems that what transforms emotional contagion into other-related emotions
is cognition. Cognitive capacities and/or activities morph contagious distress
into empathic distress, for instance. That is, we may get to feel an emotion
by catching it, while being aware that the other person is experiencing this
emotion, and thus thinking that we are feeling what we are feeling because he
is feeling what he is feeling. This thought process might be what transforms
contagious distress into empathic distress. That is, this might be what transforms the emotion, whichever one it happens to be, from being directly felt
to being empathic. With experience, such transitions become relatively automatic. This is speculative, of course.
It is also often thought that sympathy is a development either out of emotional contagion or empathy (Eisenberg 2000, Hoffman 2000). Hoffman (2000)
sometimes talks of it as a later developmental state compared to empathy. For
Nancy Eisenberg (2000), sympathy typically is a reaction to the emotional
arousal caused by empathy, cognition, or perspective taking. For someone like
Max Scheler (1973), sympathy is only made possible by the subjects prior empathizing with the other. By contrast to empathy, sympathy is not emotion
matching but welfare directed. We sympathize with someone in a bad situation because of her situation, in relative independence of what she feels about
it. Sympathy is often thought to be the most sophisticated of the empathic
emotions because it moves beyond the feelings of the subject and considers her
wellbeing (Hoffman 2000, Darwall 1998). Sympathy is typically thought of as
sympathy with someone in a bad situation, and consequently as a sad emotion.
Sympathy expresses concern for the other; hence it is often called empathic
concern (Batson 1991 & 2011, Davis 1983b). This concern can presumably
also express itself in happier ways, for instance as happiness when good things
happen to someone.
I have talked about sadness and happiness as affective descriptors of sympathy, but it is not quite clear how to think of the affective quality of sympathy.
Daniel Batson describes what we call sympathy here and he calls empathic
concern as feeling sympathetic, kind, compassionate, warm, softhearted,
tender, empathetic, concerned, moved, and touched (Batson 2011, 103). The
affective quality here is significantly softer than that of personal distress,
which is described as alarmed, bothered, disturbed, upset, troubled, worried,
anxious, uneasy, grieved, and distressed (Batson 2011, 103). However, if personal distress differs from empathetic distress only in its objectthe self as
opposed to the otherand not in the emotion that is felt, then empathy and
sympathy typically differ in their affective quality when the target person is
in a distressing situation. Empathic distress will be unpleasant and strongly
negative whereas sympathy (empathic concern) is less aversive and has a more
tender tone. It is unclear, however, whether researchers generally agree with
Batson on the description of the affective quality of sympathy. David Sloan
Wilson and Elliott Sober, for instance, think of sympathy as sadness, which
expresses something more negative than Batsons list, yet is not as aversive as
the distressed reaction (Sober & Wilson 1998).
What to think of personal distress is a very interesting question in this literature. People rarely talk of distress, but contrast the concerned sympathetic
orientation with the self-oriented one typical of personal distress. However, in
an intriguing study, Batson and colleagues (Batson, Early, & Salvarini 1997)
found that all subjects experience a mix of sympathy and distress for the self
and for the other when confronted with a subject in need.2 These reactions can
be manipulated by instructionsinstructions concerning what perspective to
take on the situationso that the subject feels more or less of each of them.
Personal distress, therefore, is rarely felt in isolation from other empathy-
related emotions. Furthermore, most subjects describe their reaction to others
in need as involving distress for the other in addition to feeling distress directly (or: for themselves). This confluence of emotional reactions, at least on
self-report measures, is the cause of some concern when it comes to conceptualizing empathic emotions in neatly separate categories. Such concern may be
allayed somewhat by noting that many emotions are seldom felt in isolation,
particularly in isolation from related emotions. For instance, people rarely feel
just shame or just guilt. People tend to feel both shame and guilt (Tangney &
Dearing 2002; Deonna, Rodogno, & Terroni 2012). Yet, theories of shame and
guilt are built on such evidence; the emotion that subjects report feeling more
of is typically assumed to be the relevant one in such systematizations. This
tendency may be little more than a continuation of common practice where we
tend to describe ourselves and others as experiencing one emotion at a time,
despite the fact that we often experience several at the same time. Having said
that, I think it is possible that our common practice leads to seriously distorted
theories of individual emotions. But this points to larger methodological concerns about the study of emotions that cannot be dealt with here.
Although the directionality or focus of personal distress is important to
distinguish it from empathic distress (self vs. other), its motivational aspect
is what most interests theorists. Batson famously claims that sympathy (his
empathic concern) leads to altruistic motivation and personal distress leads
to egoistic motivation. In other words, people who feel sympathy for others
will help these people out of an ultimate concern for their wellbeing, whereas
people who feel personally distressed by the distress of others will help ultimately to reduce their own distress. Less abstractly, people who are personally
distressed are more likely to leave the distressing situation without helping the
person in need than people who feel sympathy if escape is easy and if helping
the other is not very costly. By and large, personal distress is regarded as an
2. This is one of Batons most used scenarios. Katie Banks is a senior at the university (where
the study is being conducted). Her parents and sister have recently been killed in a car crash
leaving her as the sole caretaker of her surviving siblings: a brother and a sister. However, she
is struggling to finish her final year at university while taking care of two children. She is very
concerned that if she does not complete her degree, she will be unable to find a job that pays
enough for her to be able to continue taking care of her siblings and that she will therefore
have to put them up for adoption. Katie needs someone to help her with her studies to get her
through the year (Batson, Early, & Salvarini 1997).
unhelpful emotion. Yet some think it is a normal reaction to situations that are
very distressing (Eisenberg & Fabes 1990). If the other is in great distress, the
typical response is personal distress. Hoffman and Eisenberg talk of empathic
over-arousal (Eisenberg & Fabes 1992, Hoffman 2000). Most people agree that
sympathy either involves or causes altruistic or prosocial motivation. There is
more disagreement about empathy. Some think that an empathic emotion involves the motivational aspect of that emotion itself, only directed at the other
(Maibom 2007). So, for instance, if anger involves being motivated to aggress
against the person who angered one, empathic anger involves the motivation
to aggress against the person who angered the person we empathize with. But,
as Giuseppe Ugazio, Jasminka Majdandzic, and Claus Lamm point out in their
contribution to this volume, there has been precious little research on whether
empathy proper involves or causes prosocial motivation.
Distress at others distress is not well researched. The focus is typically
on whether the subject feels sympathy or personal distress for the person in
need or in distress. But this leaves out a truly empathetic feeling, where the
person feels distress for the other person. Most of Batsons experiments do not
distinguish between personal and empathic distress, since self-report scales
measure only the subjective feelings related to distress, no matter what its
directionality. Most of the psychology literature is the same; it focuses on the
type of emotion and assumes that if there is much distress, it is of the personal
kind. One reason may be that some theorists think that empathic distress,
when strong enough, becomes overwhelming and turns into personal distress (Hoffman 2000, Eisenberg & Fabes 1992). Perhaps personal distress is
a pretty normal reaction to dramatic situations, e.g. accident victims, but for
ethical reasons, peoples reactions to very dramatic situations are not well researched. Elsewhere, I have suggested that we think of empathic distress and
personal distress as two sides of the same coin (Maibom 2012). One cannot
be distressed for the other without being distressed oneself. There is nothing
about this that implies, strictly speaking, that this distress should be thought
of as direct or personal. However, because I actually feel distress in addition to
being aware that the other person is distressed, I do think of myself as feeling
distress too. This is why some people avoid others in distress. This fits with
Batson and colleagues observation that most people describe themselves as
feeling distressed both for themselves and for the victim. What makes the
difference is how the two are balanced. Thus, it seems quite plausible that the
cognitive focus of the individual makes a substantial difference to how she
conceptualizes her distress. We may say that someone who feels more distress for the victim than for herself is experiencing empathic distress, but it
is worth keeping in mind that such distress is accompanied by a degree of
personal distress.
It is clear from the foregoing discussion that the literature on empathy and
empathy-related emotions is heavily slanted toward the feelings of those in
need: pain, distress, sadness, and so on. These are typically thought to be the
emotions most relevant to generating moral thought and action in others.
However, despite the dearth of research on other types of empathy, most
people assume that empathy is not an emotion in its own right but a way of
feeling emotions (Batson 2012, Decety & Svetlova 2012, Haidt 2012, Maibom
2007, Prinz 2011a,b). Recently, there has been an increase in the study of other
empathic emotions. Neuroscience studies famously found that empathic pain
or distress activates brain areas that overlap with the areas that are activated
when the person feels pain or distress for herself (Singer et al. 2004, Cheng
et al. 2007). It has now been found that disgust (Wicker et al. 2003; Jabbi,
Bastiaansen, & Keysers 2008), fear (Gelder, Synder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani. 2004), anger (de Greck et al. 2012), anxiety (Prehn-Christensen, Wiesner,
Bergman, Wolf, & Jansen 2009), pleasure (Jabbi, Swart, & Keysers 2007), embarrassment (Krach, Cohrs, de Echeverria Loebell, Kircher, & Sommer 2011),
and sadness (Harrison et al. 2006) activate overlapping brain areas when the
person is feeling the emotion directly (or for themselves) and when they feel
it for others (for a review, see Bernhardt & Singer 2012).3 In social psychology,
there are now a handful of studies on empathic embarrassment (Miller 1987;
Stocks, Lishner, Waits, & Downum 2011). Whether this is evidence of empathy
or emotional contagion is not always clear. Studies of so-called empathic fear
(Gelder, Snyder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani 2004) may be better interpreted
as finding fear contagion. It is associated with strong activation of actionoriented areas, suggesting a defensive orientation that one would not expect
from a truly empathic emotion. It stands to reason that the primary function
of fear contagion would be defensive and that, therefore, it should be hard to
transform contagious fear into empathic fear. It is, in fact, not at all clear that
just any emotion can be felt empathically, nor is it obvious that a contagious
emotion has the same probability of being transformed into an empathic one
no matter how it is caught, even if the subject is aware of its source.
2. R O U T ES TO EM PAT H Y
So far I have considered (affective) empathy as a reaction to either the distressing situation or the distressed subject regardless of how the situation or the
3. There are other findings of overlap, but in phenomena that may less straightforwardly be
called empathic emotions, such as in touch (Blakemore, Bristow, Bird, Frith, & Ward. 2005,
Keysers et al. 2004), reward (Mobbs et al. 2009), and social exclusion (Masten, Morelli, &
Eisenberger 2011). See Boris Bernhardt and Tania Singer (2012) for an authoritative review.
10
subject is represented. But the way in which the person accesses the others
situation or emotional state is hardly irrelevant to the subsequent empathic reaction. For instance, evidence from neuroscience indicates that when we imagine someone experiencing an emotion, we activate fewer brain networks that
overlap with the activation when we experience that emotion for ourselves,
than when we observe someone experience that emotion (Lamm, Decety, &
Singer 2011).
There are 3 main routes to affective empathy: witnessing the person in the
situation (perceptual route), believing that the person is in a certain situation
or is experiencing a certain emotion (inferential route), or imaginatively engaging with her point of view (imaginative route) (Maibom 2007). The latter is
often known as perspective taking. Hoffman talks of more routes, but from
a conceptual standpoint, these three are the most important ones. The first
route is often thought to be the most basic one. It is the oldest phylogenetically and ontogenetically, and the one most widely shared with nonhuman
animals according to Preston and de Waal. The perception-action model of
empathy is the one most compatible with this route. Preston and de Waal say
that: (2002,4):
A Perception-Action Model of empathy specifically states that attended
perception of the objects state automatically activates the subjects representations of the state, situation, and object, and that activation of these representations automatically primes or generates the associated autonomic and
somatic responses, unless inhibited.
Alvin Goldman has something similar in mind when he talks of low-level mindreading, and some neuroscientists conceptualize this process as subserved by
mirror neurons (e.g., Iacoboni 2008). What is essential to this route to empathy is that the empathizer has perceptual access to information about the subjects welfare or emotional state. This form of empathic relating to others has
an immediacy to it and is not well understood as essentially involving complex
inferences. Instead, it is thought that automatic imitation with afferent feedback is responsible for this type of empathy or that mirror neurons are directly
responsible (e.g., Goldman 2006).
The role of mirror neurons in understanding other minds is heavily debated. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when the agent performs
an action, such as grasping, and when she sees another person performing
the same action, that is, grasping. It might therefore be thought that mirror
neurons contribute to seeing actions as being actions, not just meaningless
gestures, and actions of particular kinds. Action individuation, however,
recruits areas of the brain that do not contain mirror neurons as such, but
11
whose activation are probabilistically related to the firing of such neurons

(Umilit etal. 2001). As a result, people often talk of the mirror neuron system
as including not only mirror neurons but also neurons whose firing is probabilistically related to that of mirror neurons. More expansively, people talk
of mirroring processes if the same brain areas are activated when observing
someone experiencing an emotion and when experiencing the emotion oneself (e.g. Iacoboni 2008).4
Some argue that mirroring gives us a direct experiential grasp of the minds
of others (Gallese, Keysers, & Rizzolatti 2004), others that it causes certain
types of mindreading (Goldman 2009), and yet others that the best mirroring
can possibly do is create representations of an agents motor-intentions but
not her intentions for performing the action (Jacob 2008). Goldman thinks
mirroring contributes to ascribing emotions to others (cognitive empathy).
Others, such as Iacoboni (2008), believe mirroring plays an essential role in
truly understanding how others feel. As we have seen, a number of affective
empathic emotionsfor instance pain, disgust, fear, anger, and sadness
engage areas of the brain similar to those that are activated when the subject
experiences these emotion nonempathically, that is, directly or personally. It
is important to keep in mind, however, if human mirror neurons are localized
mainly in similar parts of the brain to those of the macaque, namely, those
concerned with visual processing, then they are unlikely to play a significant
role in most empathic reactions. So-called mirroring does not imply the operation of mirror neurons.
The second route to empathy is through belief or knowledge. The prototype
of such situations are ones in which we have no direct perceptual access to
what the person is feeling or their situation. This knowledge might be acquired
by the testimony of others or by simple inference. If we know Bill has lost
his job, we infer that he is upset about it. It is quite plausible that this route is
less potent than the other two. That is, it may be less likely to lead people to
experience empathy or it may invoke less strong a reaction. That is not to say
that knowing that someone is in pain, say, does not typically make people feel
bad for that person. In perspective-taking studies of empathy, the group that
is given no instructions to relate one way or another to the story of a person
in need still experiences empathy or sympathy for that person (Batson 2011).
4. Goldman provides the following very helpful definition of mirroring, as it is most commonly used: A neural process or event E is a case of mirroring just in case E is the activation
in an observer of a neuron or neural system that (1) results from observing a targets behavior
or behavioral expression and (2) would, in a normal case of such behavior, match or replicate
an activation in the target of a corresponding neuron or neural system that the observed
behavior would manifest (Goldman 2009, 236).
12
The third route is what is sometimes known as perspective taking. Perspective taking involves the imagination. When we take someones perspective, we imagine what it is like for her or what we would feel were we in
her situation. This is also known as simulation or high-level mindreading.
In Goldmans offline simulation account, we imagine being in someone
elses situationadjusting for differences in beliefs, desires, and so on when
neededsee what we would think, feel, want, or intend to do, then ascribe
those psychological states to the person we are trying to understand (Goldman 1989). The seeing part of this operation is the interesting one, and is
central to offline accounts of simulation. The idea is that our psychological
system is a machine of sorts that can operate on actual stimuli or on pretend stimuli. Our imagination feeds this system with pretend stimuli, and
then the system processes these stimuli as it would actual stimuli and produces the same results, only in pretend mode, as it would were it operating
on actual stimuli. For instance, if I imagine missing my flight by 5 minutes,
Iimagine being more annoyed than if I imagine missing it by 20 minutes, just
as I would be in real life. Other accounts of simulation dont have the same
interpretation of decision making as an almost automated system and rely
more on the idea of effortful reasoning. In all cases, however, the idea is that
we use the same system to make decisions ourselves and to predict others
decisions, thoughts, and so on.
There are reasons to be hesitant about offline accounts. The first is the concern that this type of simulation is merely a glorified form of projection. We
see the other as a fragment, or reduplication, of ourselves (per Lipps 1903a).
The often voiced concerns that we are bad at adjusting our psychological interior so as to be able to produce accurate simulations are extensions of this
consideration. There is a fair amount of evidence that we can, in fact, empathize with and understand others going through experiences that we have
not gone through, and who are significantly different from us (Buccino et al.
2004; Lamm, Meltzoff, & Decety 2009). Some people take this to be reason
to reject the idea that mirror neurons are responsible for us understanding
others intentions (Goldman 2006). The second worry concerns our ability to
engage our psychological system by means of the imagination to create the
desired results. There is much evidence that we are not very good at forecasting our reactions to counterfactual scenarios (Maibom forthcoming). This is
particularly true when those reactions involve, or are strongly influenced by,
visceral and affective states. We underestimate the effects of hunger and thirst
on our preferences (Read & van Leeuwen 1998, Van Boven & Loewenstein
2003), overestimate our ability to withstand pain (e.g., Christensen-Szalanski
1984), ignore the effects of embarrassment on our actions (Van Boven, Loewenstein, Welch, & Dunning 2012), and generally imagine being more morally
13
upright (Latan & Darley 1970, Milgram 1963) and braver than we actually
are (Woodzicka & LaFrance 2001).5 This suggests that the imagination cannot
recreate the situation in the sort of detail that is required for us to have similar
reactions to such representations as we do to the perceptual representations of
the situation. Most likely, the imagination works with more abstract, naked
representations of events, which are highly useful for a variety of purposes.
But it cannot recreate the situation in such a way as to simply recreate in us
reactions that we would have to actually being in the situation. Our perceptions trigger implicit memories about such situations and create visceral and
affective reactions, which are hard to predict on the basis of more naked and
sparse cognitive representations of the situation. This suggests that there is an
important difference between empathizing in the situation and empathizing
in the imagination (Maibom forthcoming).
It is in general a mistake to think of empathic reactions as being largely rote
and the result of an automatic process. There is a rapidly expanding literature
on empathy modulation by cognitions, in part from the social neurosciences.
Jean Decety, Tania Singer, and Claus Lamm all insist that empathy is never automatic, but always modulated by the relationship between the empathizer and
the subject, what the empathizer knows about the subject, and so on (Decety
2011, Singer & Lamm 2009). Empathy is affected by attention, attitude toward
the subject, knowledge about the experiences of the other, and so on. For instance, if a person is asked to count the fingers of a subject who experiences
painful stimuli to the hand, there is no activation of the insular and cingulate
cortices, which are typically activated during empathic pain (Gu & Han 2007).
And we already know from Stotland and Batsons work that asking a subject to
pay attention to factors other than the persons feelings often reduces empathy
(Stotland 1969, Batson 1991). Another interesting thing to note is that Batsons
imagine-self versus imagine-other instruction set was used with subjects in
some experiments and differential activation was found. Imagine-self instructions activated more areas with overlap with the emotion felt by the subject
than the imagine-other did. The latter activated more theory of mind related
areas (Lamm, Batson, & Decety 2007).
Empathy depends heavily on the relationship between the empathizer
and the person empathized with. This is unlikely to come as a shock to anybody. Hume, himself, maintained that we feel more for those close to us
in affection, time, and place (Hume 1739/1978). But there is now relatively
good experimental support of the idea. Friends are empathized with more
than strangers (Meyer et al. 2013), ingroup members more than outgroup
members (Tarrant, Dazeley, & Cottom 2009; Gutsel & Inslicht 2010), and
5. For a fuller list of failures to forecast, see Maibom forthcoming.
14
those who are deemed to be fair are empathized with more than self-serving,
unfair persons (Singer et al. 2006).
3. I N D I V I D UA L D I FFER EN C ES
Just as empathy depends on the situation of the person, her relationships to the
other, her attention, and so on, there are significant interpersonal differences
in empathy. Some mental disorders are characterized by deficient empathy,
such as autism, psychopathy, and narcissism, but even within the population at
large, there are significant differences in the extent to which people experience
empathy. Nancy Eisenberg, for instance, has documented empathy differences,
particularly in children. Some children are more prone to experience empathy
than others, who are more prone to experience personal distress (Eisenberg
et al. 1988, Eisenberg & Fabes 1990, Eisenberg & Spinrad this volume). These
differences correlate with differences in prosocial behavior, social adjustment,
popularity, and so on.
Psychopaths are famous for lacking empathy. It is one of the diagnostic criteria of The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare 2004).6 Criminal psychopaths
display a truly astounding disregard for the plight of their victims, suggestive
of impaired empathy (Hare 1993). Furthermore, their justifications for why
harmful actions are wrong involve welfare justifications far below the norm
(Blair 1995). A popular explanation of their moral deficit is that it is due to
their deficient (affective) empathy or sympathy (Blair 1995, Nichols 2004).7
Physiological evidence has typically been taken to support the idea that
psychopaths lack empathy. Christopher Patrick and colleagues found that
psychopaths have reduced startle reflex to pictures of others in distress compared to controls (Patrick, Cuthbert, & Lang, 1994). Startle reflex, however, is
a broad indicator of fear or anxiety more generally, and thus is insufficient to
show reduced empathy (and cannot, by its nature, distinguish between empathy and personal distress). Patrick and colleagues also found that psychopaths
show the same abnormal startle reflex in response to directly threatening
images (Levenston, Patrick, Bradley, & Lang 2000), which suggests that the
deficit represents a generalized disorder in the initiation of defensive action
from an orienting response. So psychopaths impaired negative reactions to
others distress may be due to the fact that they experience less fear, anxiety,
6. One of the most used diagnostic tools of psychopathy.
7. Technically speaking, Shaun Nichols argues that psychopaths have an impaired Concern
Mechanism. He chooses that term to avoid deciding whether empathy or sympathy or both
play the role in sociomoral regulation that he is concerned with.
15
or distress in response to seeing others in distress than nonpsychopathic individuals. James Blair and colleagues found that psychopaths have reduced
palmar sweating to pictures of people in distress compared to nonpsychopaths
(Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith 1997). But since skin conductance tests measure
arousal only and not, for instance, valence, the results can be interpreted in
terms of deficient empathy, sympathy, emotional contagion, compassion, pity,
personal distress, fear, shock, or stress. There is some reason to think that skin
conductance, like the startle reflex, captures personal distress and anxiety/
shock/stress more than empathy, sympathy, or their compassionate cousins
(e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, Schaller, Miller, Carlo et al. 1991). Many of the pictures
used in skin conductance tests are dramatic, picturing extreme distress (weeping, grieving) or scenes of death and mutilation. The more distressed someone
is, the more likely witnesses are to feel personal distress, to the point where
personal distress is experienced more than empathic concern (Eisenberg et al.
1988, Hoffman 2000, Figley 2002).
By contrast to physiological tests, some more recent studies do not find the
expected negative correlation between affective empathy and psychopathy.
Although they did find that offenders were less empathic, both cognitively
and affectively, Gregor Domes and colleagues (2013) found no difference between psychopathic and nonpsychopathic inmates. David Lishner and colleagues report that people scoring high on psychopathy do not differ from
people scoring low in psychopathy in emotional contagion or sympathy (empathic concern) (Lishner et al. 2012). If anything, high psychopathy scorers
were more sympathetic toward those in need. Another study with a college
sample found that people scoring high on coldheartedness were able to show
perspective-taking ability and show empathic concern as well as, or perhaps
even better than people who score low of PPI-SF-I8 (Mullins-Nelson, Salekin, & Leistico 2006, 139140). There are also important sex differences, with
female psychopaths appearing to have fewer affective empathy deficits (Sutton,
Vitale, & Newman 2002),9 even in studies that show such empathy deficits in
8. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF) is the short version of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI). Both are self-report measures meant to be used with
non-forensic populations (Lilienfeld & Andrews 1996, Lilienfeld 2004). The PPI-SF has two
subcomponents. PPI-SF-I factor of psychopathy highlights Stress Immunity, Social Potency,
Fearlessness, and Coldheartedness, and PPI-SF-II focuses on Impulsive Nonconformity,
Blame Externalization, Machiavellian Egocentricity, and Carefree Nonplanfulness. This
factor structure is meant to recapitulate Factor 1 vs. Factor 2 classification of the Psychopathy
Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), or that between primary vs. secondary psychopathy.
9. Steven Sutton, Jennifer Vitale, and Joseph Newman found that highly anxious female psychopaths do not exhibit abnormal startle reflex, suggesting that they have an intact stress
response to distress in others (Sutton, Vitale, & Newman 2002).
16
children and adolescents with psychopathic tendencies (Dadds et al. 2009,

Isen, Raine, Baker, Dawson, & Bezdjian 2010).10 Jean Decety, Laurie Skelly,
and Kent Kiehl have found mixed results when testing psychopaths on empathy measures (Decety, Skelly, & Kiehl 2009). Though they did find decreased
activation in some brain areas in psychopaths compared to nonpsychopaths
(pariacqueductal gray, vmPFC, and OFC), they found high activation in the
anterior insular cortex (AIC), an area that has most consistently been associated with emotional empathy. They interpret the results as supporting the
idea that AIC is more involved in the cognitive aspect of empathy. However,
Yawei Cheng, An-Yi Hung, and Jean Decety (2012) show that adolescents high
in callous-unemotional traits process empathy-arousing stimuli abnormally,
particularly in the early stages, but that they nevertheless have intact sensorimotor resonance, supporting the idea that that part of the affective response
to others in distress is intact in psychopaths.
Though psychopaths are assumed to have intact cognitive empathy, some
studies report distinct impairments, and a recent meta-analysis shows very
small but significant impairments in emotion recognition (Wilson, Juodis &
Porter 2011). Blair and colleagues found impairment in recognition of facial
expressions of fear and sadness in children with psychopathic tendencies, but
this finding has not been replicated with adult psychopaths (Blair, Jones, Clark,
& Smith 1997). Adult psychopaths have difficulties only with the recognition
of fear (Blair 2005, Iria & Barbosa 2009, Marsh this volume). Some studies
show sex offenders also have deficits in the recognition of the facial expression
of fear; they often mistake it for surprise (Hudson et al. 1993). Empathy with
fear may be impaired in psychopaths due to their own fear deficit. Since they
experience diminished fear compared to nonpsychopaths, they often do not
experience much of a physiological reaction to imagining fearful situations
and their pain threshold is high, one would expect that their understanding of,
and ability to feel with and for people who are afraid, would also be impaired.
This certainly fits with the various accounts that link perception of an emotion with the capacity to experience it (Goldman & Sripada 2005, Preston & de
Waal 2002), and is an option explored further by Abigail Marsh (this volume).
Of course, lack of fear may itself cause a number of the deficits associated with
psychopathy, including the moral ones. It might, for instance, lead to an abnormal pattern of decision-making.
10. Dadds and colleagues use a measure of empathy, the Griffith Empathy Measure, which
does not differentiate between emotional reactivity, contagion, personal distress, or empathy.
Pajer, Leininger, and Gardner (2010) report that girls with conduct disorder (correlated with
later diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder) did not show difficulties in identifying
facial affect in others.
17
People with autism11 have traditionally been thought to lack empathy as well,
cognitive and affective. Simon Baron-Cohen makes much of this fact (BaronCohen 2004 & 2012). Others, however, argue that though people with autism
may have impaired affective empathy, this is only because of their deficient
mindreading abilities; their ability to feel concern for others in distress is relatively intact (Nichols 2001). Children with autism do tend to pay less attention to others, spend less time looking at their faces, and so on, with the result
that they are less likely to pick up on information about what others think or
feel (Gopnik & Welman 1994, Baron-Cohen 1995) and use this information
to modulate their behavior (Hobson & Hobson this volume). But other studies do show robust distressed responses to others in distress (Blair (1999a+b),
Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya 1992, Bacon, Fein, Morris, Waterhouse, &
Allen 1998, Jones, Happ, Gilbert, Burnett, & Viding 2010). Self-reports from
autistic individuals like Temple Grandin and Shaun Barron also demonstrate a
true concern for the wellbeing of others (Grandin & Barron 2005). Having said
that, there are clear differences in the empathic relating to others that is seen in
people with autism and what they call neurotypicals. Peter Hobson and Jessica Hobson (this volume) argue that individuals with autism have a reduced capacity to identify with the attitudes and experiences of others. In an interesting
departure from mainstream thought about empathy and autism, they maintain
that the most significant aspect of empathy is the information that it yieldsnot
the affective engagementabout others subjective mental states. Because they
lack such information, children with autism experience less guilt about hurting
others than normally developing children. The issue is that they have problems
understanding that others exist as persons, that is, as being with inner lives.
One explanation of why people with autism have deficient empathy is that their
mirror neuron system is impaired, and this hypothesis is supported by a number
of studies (Dapretto, et al. 2006, Williams. Whiten, Suddendorf, & Peretti 2001).
But there are complications. First, meta-reviews of studies of impaired mirror
neuron functioning in people with autism show conflicting results (Hamilton
2013). There is therefore not, as of now, conclusive evidence that mirror neuron
function is reduced in autism. Second, adolescents high in u
nemotional-callous
traits do not have reduced mirror neuron functioning, at least not if mu wave
suppression is an accurate measure of such functioning (Cheng, Hung, & Decety
2012). This suggests that intact mirror neuron functioning is not a prerequisite
for cognitive empathy, and that it is not sufficient for affective empathy either.
In brief, we need to know more about mirror neurons in order to be able to link
their activity to empathy differences among groups of individuals.
11. I use the term broadly to capture both high-performing people with autism and people
diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome.
18
Two other populations are known for empathy deficits: people with narcissism and people with borderline personality disorder. The data from people
with borderline personality disorder are very complex: some demonstrate
heightened sensitivity to the emotional expressions of others (Lynch et al.
2006), some show reduced empathy to the same phenomena (Hagenhof, Franzen, Gerstner, Koppe, & Sammer 2013), some suggest deficient understanding
of what others think or feel (Harari, Shamay-Tsoori, Ravid, & Levkovitz-2010),
and others show no difference in empathic accuracy (Flury & Ickes 2006). Like
people with autism, it is thought that the affective empathy of people with borderline personality is intact (Harari, Shamay-Tsoori, Ravid, & Levkovitz 2010;
New et al. 2012). One should note that the evidence suggests good functioning on the relevant subscales of the IRI, which measure sympathy (empathic
concern) and personal distress. People with borderline personality disorder
may have a tendency to hypermentalize (Sharp et al. 2013)that is, draw tenuous, wide-ranging conclusions on limited groundsand their apparent deficits in affective empathy may be due to their difficulties in regulating mood
and anger. Narcissism, though talked about much, is a condition most studied
within the area of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy (but see Ronningstam
1998). Some of the key features of narcissism are lack of concern or empathy
for others, extreme self-absorption and self-aggrandisement. Many of these
traits are shared with psychopathy (Hart & Hare 1998).
Lastly, there is the issue of individual differences in empathy in the nonpathological population. Not everyone has the same capacity to empathize,
nor is it the case that they exercise that capacity to the same extent. Most
famous, perhaps, is the supposed malefemale difference. According to popular thought and many scientific writings, women are simply more empathetic
than men, perhaps because of their mothering instinct. However, the actual
data are much more equivocal (Maibom 2012b). The majority of studies find
no sex/gender differences in cognitive or affective empathy generally. Sometimes differences are found along sex/gender lines; but rather than reflecting
some deeper differences between male or female individuals, such differences
are often a manifestation of the desire to live up to stereotypes. Women are
supposed to be more empathetic than men, and so they present themselves as
being so on questionnaires where it is clear that empathy, broadly speaking,
is measured (Eisenberg & Lennon 1983; Graham & Ickes 1997; Ickes, Gesn,
& Graham 2000). Perhaps men also represent themselves as less empathetic
on such measures. However, once it is less clear what is measured, men and
women typically score the same on tests of dispositional empathy (see below).
For instance, physiological tests show few differences (Eisenberg & Lennon
1983), though there is evidence of a small difference between males and females when it comes to the tendency to experience personal distress (Skoe
19
2010, Yang, Decety, Lee, Chen, & Cheng. 2009). Highly publicized theories
of malefemale differences, such as Brizendines The Female Brain, BaronCohens extreme male brain hypothesis of autism, and the fetal testosterone
hypothesis have all been discredited, along with most of the hyped studied
from neuroscience (Bluhm 2012, Fine 2010, Grossi & Fine 2012, Jordan-Young
2010, Jordan-Young & Rumiati 2012).
When it comes to empathy in the situation, there are typically few differences also. Batson found almost no malefemale differences in sympathy (empathetic concern) and personal distress in his many studies on the
empathy-a ltruism hypothesis (Batson 2011). Though there may be some difference in motivation to think about others thoughts and feelings favoring
women, men are as accurate in their understanding of others psychological states when they are offered financial rewards (Klein & Hodges 2001).
One might think that this is a significant difference between the sexes, but
the tendency is explicable in other terms. Power makes a significant difference in interpersonal understanding; those with more power tend to think
less of the feelings and other mental states of those with less power (Snodgrass 1985; Galinski, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfield 2006; Lammers, Gordjin,
& Otten 2008). Thus, here may be more situational factors explaining what
has traditionally been taken to be internal characteristics of individuals (see
Bluhm & Maibom forthcoming). Tests of women and mens ability to discern
emotional states from facial expressions also show mixed results; some show
superiority in men for the recognition of certain emotions, others in women
(see Maibom 2012b for an overview). Tests specifically of perspective-taking
abilities have also failed to find consistent and significant differences (Skoe
2010, Derntl et al. 2010).
Eisenberg has studied individual differences in the tendency to experience sympathy versus personal distress in children. She believes that there
are modest sex differences, favoring girls, in empathetic and sympathetic
responding overall, but suggests that this is likely to be due to socialization
(Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky 2006). Parental sympathy is correlated with
childrens sympathy in a sex-sensitive pattern (boys sympathy is correlated
positively with their fathers sympathy and girls sympathy is positively correlated with their mothers sympathy). There also seems to be some relation with
disciplinary practices, with parents who are exacting of their children, use
reasoning techniques and are not overly harsh or punitive raising more empathetic children (for an overview, see Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky 2006, and
Spinrad & Eisenberg, this volume). The tendency to experience sympathy and
to engage in certain types of prosocial behaviors appear to be correlated in a
relatively stable fashion over time, but this holds for spontaneous sharing, not
for spontaneous or compliant helping (see Eisenberg 2005).
20
Another important factor in shaping differences in empathy between people

is culture. Douglas Hollan, in his contribution to this volume, outlines the
importance of culture in forming what he calls complex empathy, namely
the thinking about and feeling for others that go beyond basic recognitional
capacities. Here marked differences appear across cultures that are intricately
linked to societal organization (Hollan & Throop 2011). The importance of
cultural differences in empathy has also been noted by people concerned with
moral orientation across cultures. The almost overriding concern for avoiding
harm and providing care found in the West and in Western ethical theory is
not accorded the same importance in at least some Eastern cultures. Richard Shweder famously points to the importance of community- and divinitybased considerations in Indian communities (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, &
Park 1997). Haidt (2012) has gone further and argued that many Americans,
namely those that are politically conservative, are just as concerned with a
broad range of moral transgressions as people in the South Asian cultures
studied by Shweder. What liberals tend to see as a lack of empathy is instead
an expression of empathy balanced against other central concerns. Shweders
and Haidts views both point to the importance of culture in the use, expression, and importance of empathy, sympathy, and compassion.
One problem with interpreting the empirical evidence concerning empathy
and empathy-related emotions is that there are a number of measures, many
of which differ significantly in what aspects of empathy-related thought and
emotion they focus on. So let us briefly consider how empathy is measured in
the empirical literature.
4. M E AS U R I N G A FFECT I V E EM PAT H Y
Measures of empathy test for either dispositional or situational empathy. Dispositional empathy is understood as a personality or character trait, and is
measured almost exclusively using self-report indices. Some dispositional indices measure cognitive empathy, for instance Hogans Empathy Scale (Hogan
1969), whereas others test for affective empathy, as does Bryants Index of Empathy (Bryant 1982). Some researchers conceptualize empathy as a set of different, but closely related emotional and cognitive capacities, and therefore
construct more complex indices, for example the Interpersonal Reactivity
Index, which measures empathy, sympathy, emotional contagion, perspective taking, and fantasy (Davis 1983b). Situational empathy is the feeling of
empathy or sympathy in a particular situation. Historically, both dispositional and situational empathy have been measured by self-reports, but because self-report scales are not very reliable, researchers such as Eisenberg and
21
Fabes code physiological responses and facial expressions instead of, or in addition to, self-reports. Others think that these measures are no better than
self-reporting, and therefore continue to rely on such measures (Batson 2011).
There are, however, good reasons to take self-reports with a grain of salt. Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson (1977) demonstrate that people often have
relatively little access to their mental processes, but are likely to confabulate if
pressured. Empathy self-reporting has been found to be influenced by social
desirability, desire for positive self-evaluation, and stereotyping (e.g., Cialdini
et al. 1987, Eisenberg & Lennon 1983). Above, we saw that many sex differences
were due to people attempting to live up to stereotypes, but there are other
curious results, such as the fact that violent sex offenders have been found to
score high on sympathy (empathic concern) on the Interpersonal Reactivity
Index (Curwen 2003). As it stands, however, most tests of empathy rely on selfreport measures.
Some of the better-known studies, such as those by Batson and Eisenberg,
are of situational sympathy contrasted with situational personal distress. Typically, self-report indices are deployed and subjects are asked to rate how much
they feel of one emotion or another on a Likert scale (e.g., Batson, Duncan,
Ackerman, Buckley, & Birch 1981; Eisenberg et al. 1988). Batson often uses an
index consisting of 28 adjectives, 10 characteristic of sympathy (empathetic
concern), 10 of personal distress, and 8 neutral ones. Subjects who report feeling sympathetic, kind, compassionate, warm, softhearted, tender, empathetic,
concerned, moved, and touched are taken to feel sympathy (empathic concern), whereas those who feel alarmed, bothered, disturbed, upset, troubled,
worried, anxious, uneasy, grieved, and distressed are thought to experience
personal distress (Batson 2011, 103).
Eisenberg has used physiological measures, most commonly heart rate,
skin conductance, startle reflex, and facial expressivity. Ordinary people have
increased skin conductance to images of people in distress and to directly
threatening images (Anieskiewicz 1979; Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith 1997).
Skin conductance measures intensity of arousal, which is normally interpreted
as fear, anxiety, or stress. Eisenberg interprets increased skin conductance to
others in distress as personal distress (and to a lesser extent sympathy), but all
we can say with certainty is that it reflects an aversive emotional reaction to
others in distress, whether it is personal distress, empathetic distress, stress,
and so on. (Eisenberg 2005). Something similar is true of the startle response.
Normal subjects usually show an increase in startle reflex when exposed to
pictures of people in distress (Patrick, Cuthbert, & Lang 1994). But like increased skin conductance, the startle reflex is associated with fear or anxiety. It
might, therefore, measure contagious, personal, or empathetic distress. Heart
rate deceleration is taken to signify sympathetic arousal because physiological
22
studies have associated it with an intake of information and an outward focus

of attention (Cacioppo & Sandman 1978), and because it is a very common
response to sad or sympathy-inducing films or clips (Eisenberg et al. 1988,
Eisenberg & Fabes 1990). Heart rate acceleration, on the other hand, is typically interpreted as personal distress (Eisenberg et al. 1988), but has also been
found to correlate with: responses to pictures of others distress (Liew et al.
2003), reactions to others being in fearful situations (Eisenberg et al. 1988) and
concern for others (Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Robinson, & Bridges 2000).
Physiological measures, therefore, are good indicators of emotional reactions,
mostly aversive, to others in distress. On their own, however, they are not very
precise indicators of what emotions are experienced.
Eisenberg and colleagues have also pursued the use of facial expressions
as indicators of subjects empathy-related emotional experiences (Eisenberg &
Fabes 1990). These have been more successful with children than with adults
(Eisenberg et al. 1988). The evidence suggests that facial expressions of sadness
and sympathy are more common for sympathy inductions than for distress
inductions. Facial expressions of distress, however, were equally common for
either sympathy or distress inductions. This suggests that sympathy and personal distress are often felt together in response to others sad situations, just
like the self-report data from Batson indicates (Batson, Early, & Salvarini 1997;
Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky 2006).
People who score high on dispositional measures are more likely to experience empathy and sympathy in the situation, though the effect is not as big
as one might expect (Davis 1983a) and the type of scale used makes a bigger
difference than one would like (Eisenberg et al. 1989). Part of the problem is
disagreement about how to think of empathy, and the consequent fact that typically many different emotional reactions to others are being measured under
the rubric empathy. Hogans Empathy Scale (1969) measures mainly cognitive empathy. It has items that tap into perspective taking, such as As a rule,
I have little difficulty in putting myself into other peoples shoes (1969, 310),
but also items that are hard to associate with any current view of empathy such
as I frequently undertake more than I can accomplish and It is the duty of a
citizen to support his country, right or wrong (reverse scored). The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis 1983b) and the Basic Empathy Scale (Jolliffe &
Farrington 2006) measure both cognitive and affective empathy. But where the
Basic Empathy Scale is applied as a whole, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index
has four subscalesempathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy, and personal distressthat can be applied separately. The Empathic Concern subscale
of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index seems to measure only sympathy, but the
Basic Empathy Scale and Bryants Index of Empathy (Bryant 1982) do not include sympathetic items and do not distinguish between empathy, emotional
23
contagion, or personal distress (e.g., I usually feel calm when other people are
scared [reverse scored], Jolliffe & Farrington 2006, 593). The Questionnaire
Measure of Emotional Empathy (Mehrabian & Epstein 1972) is even less precise
in its measurement. This is particularly true of reverse scored items. If I score
high on I become more irritated than concerned when I see someone in tears
and I dont get upset just because a friend is acting upset, am I lacking in empathy, sympathy, emotional contagion, or personal distress (Mehrabian & Epstein
1972, 528)? Knowing the precise measure used is therefore of crucial importance
when evaluating research on so-called dispositional affective empathy.
5. B EH AV I O R A L EFFECTS: C U R B I N G AG G R ES S I O N
A N D PR O M OT I N G H EL PI N G
One reason empathy has become as important a topic as it has in recent years
is that it supposedly encourages people to be nicer, more helpful, more understanding, less aggressive, and so on. It is generally agreed that only affective empathy or sympathy has these positive behavioral effects, with cognitive
empathy playing the role of focusing the affect appropriately. The body of literature falls largely within two camps: that concerned with aggression and
violence, and that concerned with helping and altruism.
It is widely assumed that there is a well-established connection between aggression and low affective empathy or sympathy (Marshall, Marshall, Serran,
& OBrien 2009; Baron-Cohen 2012). However, in their 1988 meta-review, Paul
Miller and Nancy Eisenberg found low to modest correlations between low affective empathy or sympathy and aggressive, antisocial, and externalizing behaviors, and only on dispositional measures, not for facial affect, experimental
inductions, or picture/story measures. Many later studies find no such correlations (Cohen & Strayer 1996; Bush, Mullis, & Mullis 2000). Empathy, sympathy, and personal distress have been found to be both positively (Curwen
2003) and negatively associated with sex offending (Marshall et al. 2009), but
some studies find no effect (Geer, Estupinan, & Maguno-Mire 2000).12 Those
who believe that sex offenders have empathy deficits disagree about whether
this deficit is general or specific to their victims (Varker, Devilly, Ward, &
Beech 2008). Sex offenders may only experience deficits in empathizing with
their own victim group (Fernandez, Marshall, Lightbody, & OSullivan 1999).
This suggests that it is not lacking ability to empathize that facilitates aggression, but that offenders inhibit their tendency to empathize when faced with
12. These results are mostly based on self-reports using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index,
Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy, or Hogans Empathy Scale.
24
their victims. Tony Ward and Russil Durrant engage with these issues in their
contribution to this volume. For other types of offending, there is evidence
both for and against the idea that empathy, sympathy, or emotional contagion
reduces aggression (Bush, Mullis, & Mullis 2000; Jolliffe & Farrington 2004,
2007; Lardn, Melin, Holst, & Lngstrm 2006).
In noncriminal populations, the idea that empathy reduces aggression has
been investigated mostly in children and adolescents. Paul Hastings and colleagues and Ari Kauklainen and colleagues found that low affective empathy
or emotional contagion correlates with behavior problems in children (Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Robinson, & Bridges 2000; Kauklainen et al. 1999).
But affective empathy and bullying have been found to be both negatively and
positively correlated, and not at all (Jolliffe & Farrington 2006; Gini, Albiero,
Benelli, & Alto 2007). Empathic emotions also appear to play a different role in
men and women. Gianluca Gini and colleagues found that sympathy was negatively related to bullying only for boys (Gini et al. 2007). By contrast, Darrick
Jolliffe and David Farrington reported a negative relation between empathy
or emotional contagion and bullying among girls only (Jolliffe & Farrington
2006). Jesse Loudin and colleagues have evidence that affective empathy correlates negatively with relationship aggression for male but not for not female
college students (Loudin, Loukas, & Robinson 2003). Jolliffe and Farrington
(2007) found an inverse relationship between empathy, particularly affective
empathy, and offending, but only for men. However, they did find that among
female offenders, women who commit violent crimes have lower affective empathy than women who commit nonviolent ones (the same pattern does not
hold for male offenders). This discrepancy could be due to the self-presentation
issues that plague self-report measures, small sample sizes for one sex, or it
may be that aggression operates differently in men and women.
Eisenberg and Miller (1987b) found that empathic responses, broadly conceived, correlate significantly, though not greatly, with prosocial behavior. The
measure of empathy used matters greatly; sympathy shows a relatively good
correlation with helping behavior whereas personal distress does not (Eisenberg, Losoya, & Spinrad 2009). Mark Davis (1994) also reports positive and
stable correlations between situational and dispositional sympathy and prosocial behavior, although the evidence for situational sympathy and prosocial
behavior is stronger. Against those who argue that all motivation is, ultimately
speaking, egoistic, Batson has presented evidence that sympathy-induced motivation to help is not caused by the desire to reduce aversive arousal, to avoid
negative social evaluation, or to achieve rewards, such as empathic joy (1991,
2011). This body of evidence is generally well respected, though some still
doubt that Batson has ruled out all plausible egoistic alternatives, for instance
that anticipated guilt, rather than empathy, motivates helping (Davis 1994;
Sober & Wilson 1998; Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010). Having said all that, if
25
the cost of helping is high, sympathetically aroused subjects only help more
than controls if they have no easy way of escaping the situation where they are
exposed to the others distress (Batson, OQuinn, Fultz, Vanderplas, & Isen
1983). This pattern is the typical one for subjects experiencing more personal
distress than sympathy in response to another in need (Batson 1991, 2011).
Batson thinks personal distress induced helping is caused by egoistic motivation to reduce the distress. Eisenberg and Fabes (1990) found that people who
tend to experience personal distress help others in need less than those who
do not. However, personal distress, as measured by increased heart rate, has
been found to correlate with concern for others and good emotional regulation
(Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Robinson, & Bridges 2000; Liew et al. 2003.).
It is worth noting, in this context, that psychopaths are deficient in personal
distress (Maibom forthcoming).
Although research on empathic responding concentrates on sympathy and
personal distress, more research is now conducted on how empathic emotions affect behavior. As already discussed, neuroscientists have found that the
empathic variation of many emotions activates areas of the brain that overlap with the areas activated during the (non-empathic) experiencing of those
emotions. Thus empathic pain activates many of the same areas of the brain
as pain does, and the same holds for a range of other emotions (see above).
Not much research has been done on the behavioral effects of such emotions.
Makiko Yamada and Jean Decety (2009) suggest that since pain is experienced
as unpleasant and signals a threat in the environment, empathic pain is likely
to activate the threat-detection system and, therefore, to produce more of an
aversive reaction than a sympathetic one. De Gelder and colleagues suggest
that reacting with fear to the fear of others prepares the subject for flight or
other defensive action because it involves activation of fear-related motor areas
(de Gelder, Snyder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani 2004). We might therefore
interpret the motivational effect as the motivation to flee. What we are not able
to determine with any certainty is whether the fear, or the pain for that matter,
should be thought of as a contagious or an empathic emotion. Elsewhere, Isuggest that the fact that we are aware that we are feeling what we are feeling
because somebody else is feeling that way can modulate the motivation associated with that emotion. For instance, we become motivated to do something so
that the subject is not in a dangerous position or is not in pain (Maibom 2007).
It is possible that certain emotions, such as pain or fear, are never empathically
felt given the high survival value of acting directly on that emotion, fleeing the
situation for instance. It is equally possible that empathic fear typically coincides with direct fear, and that the resultant motivation is the result of balancing personal safety versus ones motivation to help the other person to safety.
The evidence for the motivational effects of empathic emotions is better in
social psychology. Here there is decent evidence that empathic angert ypically
26
felt when someone is mistreatedhas distinct behavioral effects: it increases

the desire to help the victim and punish the perpetrator (Vitaglione & Barnett
2003). Empathic anger typically co-occurs with sympathy, but the two have
contrasting effects on motivation; empathic anger increases, whereas sympathy decreases, the desire to punish the offending person. Batson has provided
evidence that in many cases what we call righteous anger or moral outrage
is really empathic anger (Batson et al. 2007, Batson, Chao, & Givens 2009).
There is also good evidence that people can be empathically embarrassed, but
it has not (yet) been found to be correlated with prosocial motivation (Miller
1987; Stocks, Lishner, Waits, & Downum 2011).
6. T H E E VO LU T I O N A N D D E V ELO PM EN T O F EM PAT H Y
(I NT H R EE E ASY PA R AG R A PH S)
Most of the literature on the evolution of empathy or sympathy is really about

the evolution of altruism (Sober & Wilson 1998). Typically, empathy or sympathy is assumed to be the vehicle of altruistic motivation. Charles Darwin, himself, pointed to sympathy as one of the most important moral sentiments, and
he believed those sentiments would motivate us to altruistic action (Darwin
2004/1871, Richards 2003).13 De Waal argues that the capacity to be vicariously
affected by the feelings of others is found widely in the animal kingdom and
is associated with prosocial and altruistic motivation. Kristin Andrews and
Lori Gruen explore this in their contribution to the volume, though they focus
more on understanding than on feeling. De Waal thinks that, depending on
the cognitive sophistication of the animal in question, emotional contagion
can morph into empathy or sympathy (de Waal 2006). De Waal hypothesizes
that the capacity for vicarious distress emerged with parental care. Elliott
Sober and David Sloan Wilson link parental care to altruistic motivation. Dan
Batson (2009a) argues that sympathy (empathic concern) is a development out
of parental care or concern also. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (2010), too, associates child
rearing practices with the evolution of empathy, only in her case she thinks it
was more important for the child to be able to understand the caregiver than
the other way around.14 However, Hrdy is more concerned with perspective
taking and cognitive empathy than with affective empathy.
13. However, since he was inspired by Hume and Smith, it is likely that he really had empathy
in mind.
14. Hrdys fascinating reconstruction of parental behavior has it that human infants typically
spend long periods of time with caregivers that are not their parents. This puts pressure on
the child to understand others and how to affect them in such a way as to receive what she
needs or wants.
27
As discussed above, the first sign of empathy-related responding is reactive

crying in infants. Despite such early signs of sensitivity to the distress of others,
most children do not show empathic responding to others until 12 to 18 months
of age (Eisenberg 2000). Overall, young children are not very responsive to
distress in their peers (Howes & Farver 1987; Phinney, Feschbach, & Farver
1986). Empathic responding to others seems to increase with age, and is related
to the ability to take anothers perspective (Zahn-Waxler, Cole, Welsh, & Fox
1995; Robinson, Zahn-Waxler, & Emde 2001). Ways of responding increase in
sophistication with increased self-understanding and the development of other
cognitive capacities (Hoffman 2000). Children who are more empathetic or
sympathetic are better socially adjusted and are more popular than children
who are less empathetic or sympathetic (Eisenberg & Miller 1987a+b, Eisenberg & Fabes 1990). Aggressive tendencies also appear to be modulated somewhat by empathy or sympathy, but not until around age 6 (Gill & Calkins 2003,
Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Robinson, Bridges 2000). Prosocial behaviors
in response to others in distress appear before (Hoffman 2000).15
As we will see in the next section, empathy is often related to morality. The
literature on child development often posits a solid link between empathy and
moral responding. Some people simply assume that empathy is, itself, a moral
emotion and that, therefore, the capacity for empathy is required for full moral
development (Tangney & Dearing 2002). Others see empathic responding as
being a necessary precursor to other moral emotions (Blair 1995, Hoffman
2000). For instance, Hoffman (2000) thinks of empathy-induced transgression
guilt as central to moral development. Jesse Prinz (2011a, 2011b) has objected
that empathy is not necessary for moral development, and that sadness produced by parental punishment and love withdrawal plays a more important
role in moral development. But whether or not empathy is necessary for all
kinds of moral development, it certainly seems to play an important role in
such development.
7. EM PAT H Y A N D M O R A L I T Y
Historically, so-called sympathy played an important role in Adam Smiths

(1759/1976) and David Humes (1777/1975) moral philosophies. Both talked of
the fellow feeling by which we feel the afflictions of others by communication. We may therefore suppose that what they referred to as sympathy is what
we have hitherto described as affective empathy. For Hume, empathy lies at
15. For more extensive overviews of empathic development, see Eisenberg 2000; Eisenberg,
Spinrad, and Sadovsky 2006; Spinrad and Eisenberg this volume; Hoffman 2000.
28
the foundation of our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, which

are moral sentiments. When we see someone be kind to someone else, for
instance, we tend to feel approbation toward that person. If we were simply
disinterested observers of human affairs, it is hard to explain why we should
feel such approbation. If, on the other hand, we suppose that we are by nature
inclined to feel with our fellow human beingsto experience pain or pleasure
when they dowe can see why kindness toward others should affect us. The
same is true of feelings of disapprobation, only here we disapprove of agents
acting in ways that are disadvantageous or harmful to someone else. For instance, if we see one man hit another, we typically feel a sense of disapprobation. Again, the way to understand this is that we are not indifferent to the
suffering of the man who is hit. His pain is communicated to us through the
fellow feeling that binds humankind together, and we therefore disapprove
of the person who is causing him pain.
Approbation and disapprobation are ways to talk of many types of
emotions that we experience in response to others. My disapprobation may
consist in moral outrage, resentment, or pity, and admiration or empathic joy
would be forms of approbation. Depending on the interpretation of Hume,
judgments of right and wrong simply are feelings of approbation or disapprobation, describe such feelings, or express them. Some also believe that bona
fide moral beliefs could be associated with such sentiments (see Cohon 2010).
Today people would say that Hume was an internalist about moral judgment.
Internalism holds that it is the essence of judgments of right and wrong or
good and bad that when one makes them, one is thereby motivated to act on
them (Smith 1994). Hume evidently thought something like this, and since he
also thought that only the passions could motivate, moral judgments had to be
passions, or descriptions or expression of passions. An emotion like empathic
distress, then, does not directly give rise to a moral judgment, but the ability to
empathize with others distress is the foundation for such emotions as moral
outrage at the person who caused their distress, which either is or is expressed/
described by the corresponding moral judgment.
One concern with a view of moral judgments based ultimately on empathy is that empathy is fragile and biased. For instance, we feel more empathy
for those close to us spatially, temporally, and affectionately. Batson, Hoffman, and Ugazio, Majdandi, and Lamm all discuss the importance of such
limits to empathys or sympathys moral status (this volume). Hume, himself,
thought that moral judgments must ultimately be based in empathy, but from
a common point of view. By adopting such a point of view, we overcome at
least some of the limitations inherent in empathy. Some, like Smith, talk of an
ideal observer, meaning an observer who is not affected by the biases inherent
in an individual point of view (Smith 1759/1976). Antti Kauppinen explores
29
these issues in more detail here in an attempt to overcome some of the more
recent criticisms of the idea that empathy is central to morality. Another way
of dealing with the parochialism of empathy is explored by Richard Garrett
and George Graham (this volume), who stress the potential of empathy to be
experienced for all persons.
Broadly Humean (or Smithean) views of morality have become very popular in recent decades, primarily because of renewed interest in affect and emotion (Damasio 1994, LeDoux 1998) and an increasing skepticism about the
role of reason in moral judgment (Haidt 2001, Prinz 2009). But few accounts
accord empathy the fundamental role in moral orientation toward others that
Hume and Smith did. One that comes close is James Blairs Violence Inhibition Mechanism account of moral development (Blair 1995). Building on
Seymour Feshbachs theory of aggression inhibition and similar ideas from
the study of animal behavior (Feschbach 1964, Lorenz 1966), Blair suggests
that the disposition to have an aversive emotional response to others distress
is a developmentally necessary precursor to the development of moral emotions, the ability to see some actions as being morally right or wrong (make
criterial moral judgments), and aggression inhibition. The Violence Inhibition
Mechanism is either an innately specified structure or the result of early
socialization aimed at making the child retreat from distress signals in others.
This mechanism responds to distress in others by initiating withdrawal from
the source of the distress signal. Following Mandler (1984), Blair suggests that
interruption of ongoing activities produces an aversive emotional response,
which with time is interpreted as a moral emotion, that is, guilt, remorse, pang
of conscience, sympathy, or empathy. Blair understands empathy as a response
to imagined, rather than perceived, distress in others, and therefore as requiring rather mature cognitive and perspective-taking capacities. The moral
emotions are more direct products of the Violence Inhibition Mechanism and
do not require as much cognitive mediation. The child eventually learns to
associate the negative emotional response produced by the operation of this
mechanism with situations, actions, and events in such a way that she becomes
less violent, comes to see certain actions as moral or immoral, and acts more
empathetically toward others.
A malfunctioning Violence Inhibition Mechanism has significant downstream effects on individuals, particularly on their moral functioning. This is
particularly clear in the case of psychopaths, Blair thinks. Psychopaths have deficient moral emotions, impaired empathic responses to others, little moral understanding, and few qualms about harming others. Though Blair no longer talks of
a Violence Inhibition Mechanism, his basic idea remains the same. The defective
neural wiring associated with the emotional responses characteristic of empathy
plays a central role in psychopaths moral deficit (Blair, Mitchell, & Blair 2005).
30
Whereas the tendency to feel what others are feeling because they are feeling it was foundational to Humes and Smiths view of morality, for Blair it is
the tendency to retreat from others in distress combined with the consequent
activation of the autonomous nervous system that is foundational to moral
development and responding. Socialization and interpretation play a major
role in the development of moral emotions, and empathy is not taken to be
a primitive response to others, but a learned and heavily cognitively elaborated one. Where Blair puts emotions at the center of moral development, it
is notable that they are not basic to his picture; the withdrawal response is.
Probably Blair is influenced by the behaviorist tradition of ethology here, and
is trying to avoid getting embroiled in discussions about animal emotionality. Recent results from animal studiessome of which Andrews and Gruen
discuss in their contributionsuggest that a more robust interpretation of affective capacities and emotional resonance is reasonable in many nonhuman
animals. Another way in which Blair stands out is that his foundational emotional reaction is an aversive reaction to others accompanied by, or subsequent
upon, a withdrawal response. This is best interpreted as personal distress, an
emotion that most of the empathy/sympathy literature agree is not morally
useful. Eisenberg, for instance, has data that suggests that the tendency to feel
personal distress correlates positively with behavior problems in boys (Fabes
et al. 1994). But whereas much of the literature on the behavioral effects of
empathy or sympathy is focused on helping behavior, Blairs primary concern
is inhibition of aggression. And there is some reason to think that the psychopaths who have less impaired empathy, sympathy, or personal distress are more
violent than the callous-unemotional types.16
Shaun Nichols also puts an empathetic response to others at the center of
morality. He has argued that the operation of a so-called Concern Mechanism is central for the capacity to make what he calls core moral judgments
(Nichols 2004). They constitute a central class of moral judgments that proscribe harm to others and that are typically shared cross-culturally, though
there is, of course, significant variation. The capacity to make core moral judgments consist in the ability to recognize that harm-based violations are very
serious, authority independent, generalizable and that the actions are wrong
because of welfare considerations (2004, 7). Judgments that harmful actions
16. Researchers often talk of primary and secondary psychopaths. Primary psychopaths are
the ones who have more pronounced emotional-interpersonal deficits. Secondary psychopaths are high on Factor 2 of PCL-R, that is, behavioral and lifestyle issues. But some studies suggest that the latter are more violent (Hicks, Markon, Patrick, & Krueger 2004). This
suggests that violence correlates more with emotional dysregulation than with absence of
vicarious emotional responses, in line with the importance someone like Eisenberg puts on
regulation (Spinrad & Eisenberg this volume).
31
are wrong are the result of two factors: the operation of the Concern Mechanism and the fact that the action is proscribed by a norm. Nichols uses the
term concern to denote either sympathy or empathetic distress (which he
calls second-order contagious distress), or both.
The Concern Mechanism is similar to Blairs Violence Inhibition Mechanism. Like it, the Concern Mechanism responds to distress in others. But
unlike the Violence Inhibition Mechanism, whose function it is to interrupt
ongoing behavior (retreat), the function of this mechanism appears to be to
produce altruistic behavior. Nichols leans heavily on experimental evidence
for altruistic behavior, particularly that produced by Batson. This leads to the
somewhat curious fact that though the main function of the Concern Mechanism is to lend the affective oomph to judgments that harm is wrongmake
them categoricalits output is primarily conceptualized in terms of helping
behavior (approach).
It stands to reason that the desire to help someone who has been harmed is
connected to an appreciation that harming others is wrong. But, as Hoffman
(2000) points out, there is an important difference between what we might
call bystander empathy and empathy with ones own victims. Furthermore,
Batsons examples of people in need are almost exclusively of people who are
victims of misfortune, not victims of violence.17 Relying on the data that sympathy leads to altruistic motivation may not, therefore, serve Nichols as well
as he thinks. If the concern is to explain why we are hesitant to harm others,
Blairs focus on retreat and aversive emotional reactions to distress seems more
apposite (personal distress, perhaps empathic distress).18 Sympathy-induced
altruism seems better suited to ground the sense of obligation to help those in
need. Of course, most of Batsons cases are typically not of a severity so that
people think they are required to help, merely that it would be a good thing to
help. Moral philosophers would call such actions supererogatory (i.e., morally good), but not morally required.
17. Notice that in Batsons (1991) Katie Banks scenario, Katies misfortune is not the result
of anyones wrongful actions. So by relying on this literature Nichols succeeds in basing his
theory on quite solid empirical grounds, but he also changes the topic in such a way that it is
no longer clear how he addresses the concern of central interest to both him and Blair: judgments of harmful actions.
18. If, indeed, it is the oomph provided by the emotions that back moral norms that lend them
their categoricalness, then one might wonder whether the oomph of a truly aversive emotional response like empathic or personal distress might not lend a more powerful oomph
to harm norms than the relatively weaker and calmer sympathy (empathetic concern) that is
the operative emotion in most of the studies Nichols relies on. This suspicion is reinforced by
considering that the exemplar emotion in his story of the genealogy of norms is disgustalso
a quite powerful aversive emotion.
32
Like Blair, Nichols holds malfunction of the mechanism he proposes responsible for psychopaths moral deficits. According to Nichols, psychopaths
can say and think things like it is wrong to harm others, but these acts are
unaccompanied by (actual or potential) empathic reactions. Without the capacity to experience concern for the suffering of others, one cannot make true
moral judgments. Furthermore, one will not be properly motivated by harm
norms either. Concern imbues harm norms with categorical oomph and with
their motivational component. Nichols view, then, is a form of internalism
about moral judgment.19
Whereas both Blair and Nichols see their proposals as dealing with morality as a whole or, at least, with the core of morality, other people maintain
that empathy-related emotions are very relevant to morality, but only to parts
of it. Jonathan Haidt (2012) maintains that compassion is what he calls the
characteristic emotion of one of his moral foundations. He thinks of moral
judgment as the result of the operation of innately specified modules concerned with different aspects of communal life. One such module or foundation concerns care/harm. When triggered by someone in distress or need,
it typically produces compassion.20 The circumstances under which such a
module operates are subject to substantial cultural modification, although its
characteristic concerns are innate. Haidts conceptualization of compassion is
compatible with what we have here described as sympathy. For Haidt, moral
judgments are typically the culmination of an intuitive processultimately
of the operation of a moral foundations moduleand emotions are a form
of intuition. To put things differently, a moral judgment that it is wrong to
harm another derives from the operation of a harm/care module, which typically produces an emotional reaction associated with compassion/sympathy/
concern.
Michael Slote (2010) elaborates his ethics of care by placing empathy at the
center of moral approval and disapproval. But where Hume seemed to think of
moral emotions of approbation and disapprobation springing from the more
basic tendency to feel what others feel, Slote regards empathy as playing a more
direct role in moral judgment. The chill of moral disapproval and the warmth
of moral approval are both derived from an empathetic reaction to agents. The
person toward whom approval or disapproval is felt is the agent, note, not the
patient. This makes it harder to understand how empathy is supposed to play
the role proposed by Slote since an agent who mistreats another or performs
some other immoral action rarely feels a chill while doing so (cf. DArms
19. He calls it empirical internalism about core moral judgment (cf. Nichols 2004, 109115).
20. Mild stimulation of the module might not be sufficient to produce the emotion itself, but
merely the relevant intuition, for example, that inflicting the relevant harm is wrong.
33
2011). Typically, empathy is thought to be foundational to morality because it

makes us care for victims.
Stephen Darwall (1998) argues that sympathy is foundational to our notion
of a persons good or wellbeing, including our own. Neither reason, nor selfinterest requires us to be concerned for our own good or wellbeing, let alone
for that of others. When we sympathize with someone, however, we are concerned for the wellbeing of that person for her own sake. That is, we are negatively affected by bad things happening to her and positively by good things.
And we are typically motivated by those sentiments. But this capacity to be
concerned for someone for her sake is special to sympathy and helps form the
foundational concept of ethics, namely that of the good of a person.
In Empathy and Moral Development Hoffman says: For me, empathy is
the spark of human concern for others, the glue that makes social life possible (2000, 3). In brief, our primitive, automatic, and involuntary capacity
for (affective) empathy is evoked by seeing others harmed or hurt. With increasing cognitive sophistication empathy can be evoked by thinking of or
imagining victims or their situations. The first germ of moral judgment lies
in this basic emotional reactivity to what is done to others. Using appropriate disciplinary tactics, parents help their children form associations between
transgressions, empathic distress, and guilt. Resultant guilt-scripts are important moral regulators of behavior. Empathy by itself, however, is not a moral
motive. Empathy with the right socialization forms the basis for the development of moral motives, understood as motives that have an obligatory quality,
are experienced as self-originated, dispose one to feel guilt at contemplating
harming others, and make one consider others needs even when they conflict with ones own (2000, 9). While empathic and sympathetic distress play
a large role in moral development, Hoffman also accords a significant role to
empathic anger felt toward transgressors. Eisenberg, too, thinks that empathic
respondingprimarily sympathyplays an important role in moral development, as evidenced by its positive relation to prosocial behaviors and moral
judgmentsespecially care-related moral judgmentsand its negative relation to aggression (e.g., Eisenberg 2005). As others, however, she cautions that
perspective taking and moral reasoning also play important roles in such development. For both Hoffman and Eisenberg, but particularly for Eisenberg,
regulation of the empathy-related response is crucial. The ideal response from
a moral perspective falls in the mean; too little leads to absence of concern for
others, whereas too much leads to self-centered distress.
The idea that empathy is central to the ability to make at least some
moral judgments is scattered across the literature in less worked out forms.
For instance, the literature on the moral and legal responsibility of psychopaths often makes references to deficient affective (Deigh 1995) or cognitive
34
empathy (Levy 2007). One sees versions of the following argument (Glannon
1997, Mei-Tal 2004):
1. Empathy is necessary for providing depth to, or true understanding
of, moral judgment.
2. Psychopaths lack empathy.
3. Therefore psychopaths cannot make true moral judgments
There are various reasons to be skeptical about the argument as it stands
(Maibom 2008). First, not all criminal psychopaths lack empathy (as we saw
above). Second, even in Blairs original (2005) study some psychopaths gave
welfare justifications of why it is wrong to harm others, and later studies found
no reduced tendency for psychopaths to make such justifications (Dolan &
Fullam 2010). Third, psychopaths perform fine on certain types of moral judgments (Glen, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, & Haidt 2009; Aharoni, Atenenko, & Kiehl
2011). Finally, this line of reasoning ignores other explanations for psychopaths deficient morality, namely that they have substantial, albeit subtle, reasoning and decision making deficits (Maibom 2005).
So far, we have mainly considered how empathy-related emotions are connected with moral judgment. Since many of the views discussed also hold
internalism about moral judgment, empathy is thereby involved in moral motivation also. Indeed, it is often thought that it is the implication of empathy
that makes the moral judgments motivational, because (only) emotions motivate. However, some accounts focus more on empathys motivational contribution than on its contribution to criterial moral judgment. Empathy or
empathy-related emotions are often tied to morality by means of their connection to altruism. Many think that sympathy or empathy produce altruistic
motivation. Altruistic motivation is an ultimate desire, that is, a desire that is
not itself based on another desire, for the good of another (Sober & Wilson
1998, Batson 2011). Altruism seems to be a moral feature par excellence. Traditionally, most accounts concerned with how to account for morality from
an evolutionary perspective have focused on the evolution of altruism. One
of Darwins concerns about his theory of evolution by natural selection was
whether it was able to explain the existence in humans of a moral sense, which,
at least in part, compels people to act altruistically or for the good of the group
(Darwin 2004/1871). And so, though the connection between altruism and
morality is rarely made explicit, it is implicit in many accounts (Trivers 1971).
And there is little reason to deny that at least some altruistic actions are moral
and that at least some moral norms require us to act altruistically. It is important to be aware, however, that altruistic motivation or action is not the
same as moral motivation or action. No one is clearer about this than Batson
35
who, in his contribution, warns against any confusion of the two and reflects
further on their connection.
8. S K EP T I C I S M S, O R: AG A I N ST EM PAT H Y
Recently, a number of people have voiced concern that the importance of

empathy-related emotions to morality has been greatly exaggerated. Most
famous, perhaps, is Jesse Prinzs insistence that not only is empathy not necessary for moral judgment, moral motivation, or moral development, but it is
also not an emotion that should be cultivated to enhance peoples moral sensibilities (Prinz 2011a, 2011b). His view is not that emotions are not central to
moral judgment, for he argues that they are constitutive of such judgments. His
skepticism concerns the role of empathic emotions. Prinz points to judgments
that victimless crimes, such as necrophilia, consensual sibling incest, or the
desecration of someones grave with no living relatives, are wrong. Such judgments, he says, are unlikely to be constituted by empathic responses in any
interesting sense. But where one might find this convincing enough, one might
still believe that judgments concerning the wrongness of harming others necessarily or essentially involve empathic emotions. The idea is certainly compelling. Is it not evident that our ability to anticipate the suffering of the other,
and therefore our own suffering, is essential to recognizing the wrongness of
causing harm? Furthermore, as Blair and Nichols maintain, welfare justifications seem centrally connected to moral judgments of the wrongness of harm.
It should be noted that the argument for empathy being in some sense essential to moral judgment only seems compelling to people of a nonrationalist persuasion, and rationalism has a long history in ethics. The most famous
rationalist is, perhaps, Immanual Kant. Kant argued that moral judgments
are grounded in pure practical reason and that the prototype of an individual
moral judgment is the culmination of a process of (practical) reason (Kant
1785/1993). For a variety of reasons, some better than others, the Kantian view
has gone out of fashion among most empirically oriented moral psychologists
and philosophers. However, Jeanette Kennett (2002) argues that people with
autism have intact reverence for reason and this is why they do not engage
in the sort of immoral behavior we see in other people lacking in empathy,
such as psychopaths, even though they too have empathy deficits. Respect
for reason, therefore, grounds their moral judgments that harming others is
wrong. The most common objection to Kennett is that people with autism are
most impaired in the cognitive aspect of empathy and are relatively spared
in their capacity to experience contagious emotions and distress in response
to the distress of others (e.g., Blair 1996 & 1999a, Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, &
36
Yirmiya 1992; Bacon, Fein, Morris, Waterhouse, & Allen 1998). The main
stumbling block people with autism face when it comes to empathizing with
others is their deficient ability to recognize their emotions. By contrast, the
typical diagnosis of psychopathy is that they can recognize such emotions in
others, but they do not empathize with them (but see Marsh in this volume for
a different take). Together this suggests that the intact affective capacities of
people with autism are responsible for their relatively intact moral judgments
and comportment, not reverence for reason.
Although McGeer (2008) thinks that people with autism have relatively
intact emotional resonant capacities, she nevertheless thinks there is something to Kennetts analysis of autistic morality as one dominated by rules,
structures, and so on. She gives this preoccupation a sentimentalist reading,
however, and argues that what is characteristic of autism is that individuals
have intact one out of three characteristic moral concerns, namely concern
with cosmic structure and cosmic position (McGeer 2008, 251). Whether
she believes that such concern give rise to a characteristic range of moral judgments and not others is not clear. The obvious interpretation of her, however,
is that concern for the wellbeing of othersmost likely embodied in empathy and sympathyforms an essential element of ordinary moral judgments
related to harm. If that is right, people with autism may judge that harming
others is wrong, but such judgments have a different basis, presumably in more
absolute principles.
Others have found the idea that cosmic structures, principles, or laws
ground harm norms generally more compelling. Justifications of the Hindu
and Buddhist principle of nonviolence, ahimsa, vary greatly. However, Mahatma Gandhi argued that we should obey, or submit to, this higher law, which
he called the law of humanity (Gandhi 1991, 238). One reason Gandhi appealed to this principle was most likely to persuade his followers of satyagraha,
the idea of nonviolent resistance against oppressors, enemies, and so on. It
is, of course, notoriously hard to empathize with those with whom we are in
conflict. Conflict, desire, self-interest, hatred, and anger all either reduce or
inhibit a persons tendency to empathize or sympathize with another. Recall
that many sex offenders have intact empathy except for their victim group.
Many refuse to consider the suffering of nonhuman animals because of their
commitment to eating animal flesh. In both cases, desire for what another
can offer us blocks any empathetic response we might otherwise have. Worse,
when we are in conflict with others we typically want to harm them and rarely
sympathize or feel for them. In such cases, what grounds our judgment that it
is wrong to harm others, let alone motivates us not to?
Whereas Gandhi suggested adherence to the law of ahimsa, popular culture
often voices a concern that harming others can lead to loss of ones integrity,
37
ones principles, ones innocence, ones soul, ones sanity, or cause one to move
over to the dark side (Miami Vice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, and
Angel). While one might argue that welfare considerations are at play, it is not
the welfare of the other that is in question. It is largely ignored, if considered
at all. The focus is on the self, but not in a self-interested way incompatible
with morality. People dont refer to punishment as a deterrent. They refer to
the integrity of the agent, to his or her moral integrity, to her purity, and
to the difficulty of living with the knowledge of having taken anothers life.
Nevertheless, some might object that all such reasons are, at bottom, selfish
and therefore incapable of counting as moral motives or moral reasons. But,
as Bernard Williams has so forcefully argued, it is hard to see how it could be
immoral or morally self-indulgent not to want to perpetrate evil. Williams
has in mind the typical consequentialist scenarios where we are faced with the
choice of killing the one to save the many. If we do nothing, many will die,
but not by our hand. There is nothing morally questionable, Williams insists,
about refusing to kill the one because one does not want to be a murderer
(Williams 1981b).
The concern not to do evil, to be a good person, and so on is also at the
forefront of the moral landscape of Star Wars, which is partly based on
Joseph Campbells reflections on the myth of the heros journey across cultures (Campbell 1949). It is not empathy or sympathy that informs Luke Skywalkers understanding that killing the Emperor would be morally wrong;
it is not concern for the Emperors welfare, but fear of moving to the Dark
Side. The Dark Side requires little explanation; it is evident that it is bad in
itself. However, it is also portrayed as annihilating choice and autonomy. Luke
understands that he is in danger of losing his soul or, perhaps, his integrity.
To quarrel with the moral quality of such considerations seems to me to be
churlish.
Returning for a moment to the idea of cosmic law and structure, another
obvious alternative to empathy grounding harm norms is respect or concern
for Gods will, Gods commands. Many people take themselves to believe that
the moral wrongness and rightness of many actions are the result of the commands of God. However, Larry Nucci famously found that children from very
religious backgrounds do not think that moral norms, including harm norms,
can be altered by God. Even if God permitted hitting, it would still be wrong
to do so (Nucci 1986, Nucci & Turiel 1993). In other words, Gods will is a red
herring when it comes to morality.
One should be hesitant to draw wide-ranging conclusions from these studies. First, the relation between the good and the will of gods is a very old and
thorny problem dating back at least as far as Plato, who discussed it in the
Euthyphro. Is what is good good merely because God wills is, or does God
38
will it because it is good?21 It is far from certain that ordinary individuals

particularly children and adolescentsgrasp the problematic raised by Nuc
cis questions. It is, for instance, quite possible that the adolescents think it
inconceivable that God would allow hitting others (innocent others). This
suspicion is reinforced by the observation that subjects did not accept that
the dictates of religious authority would be discrepant with their own moral
evaluations (Nucci & Turiel 1993, 1490).
Second, more recent evidence suggests that religious people differ from nonreligious individuals in their moral reasoning style. The religious people that
Lene Arnett Jensen studied did not justify harm norms in terms of welfare, but
in terms of Gods command or Gods authority (Jensen 1997). She argues that
this shows that a divinity-based moral orientation is fundamentally different
from a nonreligious autonomy-based one. Furthermore, Jared Piazza (2012)
found that by comparison to nonreligious people, religious ones prefer rulebased moral arguments, which simply reaffirm the wrongness of that class
of action (it is wrong to lie), over consequentialist moral arguments, which
make reference to the subjects welfare (she could get fired).
Whether all these considerations concern moral judgment particularly or
also moral motivation I leave to the reader to determine. Suffice it to say that
people also have concerns about the motivational power of empathy when it
comes to moral judgments (where they understand the two to be separable).
Batson, for instance, has pointed out that there are sometimes conflicts between empathy-induced altruistic motivation and moral motivation (see this
volume). Others, such as Prinz, have argued that other moral emotions, such
as moral indignation, are often more powerful in motivating the right action.
But few people argue that empathy, on its own, is necessary for moral judgment or motivation. And once we restrict our focus to the role of empathy
in motivating harm norms, it is hard to be too dismissive. As we have seen,
when we countenance harming our enemy, empathy may be a relatively weak
motivator. There are other considerations that can give substance to our judgments that it is wrong to harm, and no doubt other things that can motivate
us not to do so. However, it seems highly plausible that in many, if not most,
casesparticularly when we consider others harmedempathy plays a central
role in our judgments (and motivation). Without the influence of empathyrelated affect, morality might be unrecognizable to us. Many contributors to
this volume make suggestions about how empathy or sympathy help form our
moral outlook or shape our moral motivations without thereby adhering to
21. This is a slight rephrasing of Socrates question in 10a: The point which I should first wish
to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy
because it is beloved of the gods.
39
anything as strict as the idea that without empathy we would have neither
moral judgment nor moral motivation.
9. F U T U R E D I R ECT I O N S I N T H E E X PLO R AT I O N
O F EM PAT H YS R O L E I N M O R A L I T Y
I have focused on harm norms in the preceding section for two reasons.
First, most people who argue that empathy, sympathy, compassion, or other
empathy-related emotions play an essential role in moral judgment focus on
judgments concerning the wrongness of harming others (Nichols 2004, Blair
1995). Second, empathy is most charitably viewed as relating to victims, not to
victimless crimes. One problem that researchers working in moral psychology are facing is the considerable variation in what is regarded as moral.
Some moral philosophers have a very narrow notion of the moral, and many
academics find it hard to accept that purity norms should be considered as at
all relevant to morality. Like Haidt points out in his acute analysis of the difference between liberals and conservatives in the United States, liberals tend
to think of only harms, rights, and justice norms as properly moral. Broader
conceptions of morality, however, accept that norms pertaining to authority,
purity, and group organization also belong to the moral realm at least when we
conceive of this descriptively (Haidt 2012).22
The domain of what we may call private morality has, as a matter of historical fact, been largely ignored in the ethical tradtion. It is commonly assumed that what happens within the householdshort of sexual and physical
abuseis outside the realm of legality, if not outside that of morality. When
moral issues are discussed, the issues typically concern how we should act
toward relative strangers and what we might call gross moral norms: murder,
injustice, and abuse of various kinds. But most of our important moral decisions are decisions about how to act toward those with whom we have close
personal relationships, and it is here that empathy-related emotions may have
their greatest importance (Maibom 2010). The Ethics of Care tradition has
helped bring this neglected area into focus (e.g., Gilligan 1982, Koehn 1998),
and it is within this tradition that we find one of the more sustained defenses of
the importance of empathy for morality (Slote 2007). It is also abundantly clear
from the work of Eisenberg and colleagues that the good social relationships
22. That is to say, a number of people take the norm of loyalty to be as much a moral norm as
the norm that one should not hurt others gratuitously. Whether we should care about purity,
authority, and group norms I leave to the side here, as do most currently working in moral
psychology.
40
that come from empathy-related responding to others are invaluable for the
wellbeing of the individual and those around her (e.g., Eisenberg 2005). One
does not need to subscribe to this ethical outlook in order to see that empathy and sympathy may play a tremendously important role in acting ethically
toward those with whom we have closer personal relationships. Feminists at
least have questioned views of morality that are narrowly focused on public
life, but leave out close personal relationships as largely irrelevant to morals
(Gilligan 1982, Noddings 1984).
Another role for empathy-related emotions is highlighted by the carefully
balanced approaches of Spinrad and Eisenberg as well as Kauppinen in this
volume. It is tempting think of empathy as a relatively rote factor producing
certain responses in subjects largely in isolation from other characteristics of
the subject. But what these authors point to is the importance of so-called
emotional regulation. Other authors, too, have pointed to the importance
of self-regulation in aggression inhibition. For instance, Roy Baumeister is a
great proponent of the old-fashioned idea of self-control or self-regulation.
With colleagues, he has conducted a variety of studies showing the effects of
self-regulation on aggression inhibition (Stucke & Baumeister 2006). With this
in mind, one might find that empathy plays an important role in morality, but
that its role is modified by a host of factors that cannot be ignored in a moral
psychology.
What we are in need of, it seems, are more nuanced explorations of the
exact role empathy-related emotions play in regulating human relationships.
This volume contributes to this important project. With few exceptions, all
agree that empathy or empathy-related emotions play an important role in our
moral orientation toward others, be it in our moral judgment, our moral understanding, or our moral motivation, but also that they only play a limited
role if unaided by regulation, cognition, culture, and so on.
Empathy-Induced Altruism
andMorality
No Necessary Connection
C. DA N I E L B AT S O N
The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation (Batson, 1987, 2011). To understand this deceptively simple
hypothesis, it is necessary to be clear about what is meant by both empathic
concern and altruistic motivation.
EM PAT H I C C O N C ER N
In the hypothesis, empathic concern refers to other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of a person in need. This
other-oriented emotion has been named as a sourceif not the sourceof
altruism by Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin,
Herbert Spencer, and William McDougall, as well as by several contemporary
psychologists.
Four points may help clarify what this emotional state involves. First, congruent refers not to the specific content of the emotion but to its valence:
42
positive when the perceived welfare of the other is positive, negative when the
perceived welfare is negative. For example, it would be congruent to feel sad or
sorry for someone who is upset and afraidor, like the Good Samaritan (Luke
10:33), to feel compassion for the unconscious victim of a mugging. Second,
although the term empathy is broad enough to include feeling empathic joy at
anothers good fortune (Smith, Keating, & Stotland, 1989; Stotland, 1969), not
all empathic emotion is hypothesized to produce altruistic motivation, only
empathic concern felt when another is perceived to be in need. Without need,
there is no impetus for change.
Third, empathic concern is not a single, discrete emotion but includes a
whole constellation. It includes feelings of sympathy, compassion, softheartedness, tenderness, sorrow, sadness, upset, distress, concern, and grief. Fourth,
empathic concern is other-oriented in the sense that it involves feeling for the
otherfeeling sympathy for, compassion for, sorry for, distressed for, concerned for, and so on. Although feelings of sympathy and compassion are inherently other-oriented, we can feel sorrow, distress, or concern that is not
oriented toward someone else, as when something bad happens directly to us.
Both other-oriented and self-oriented versions of these emotions may be described as feeling sorry or sad, upset or distressed, concerned or grieved. This
breadth of usage invites confusion. The relevant psychological distinction lies
not in what emotional label is used but in whose welfare is the focus of the
emotion. Is one feeling sad, distressed, concerned for the other, or feeling this
way as a result of what has befallen oneselfincluding the experience of seeing
another suffer?
In recent years, the term empathy has been applied to a range of phenomena
other than the feeling-for described above (see Batson, 2009, for an overview).
It has been used by different researchers to mean:

Knowing anothers thoughts and feelings.

Adopting the posture or matching the neural response of another.
Coming to feel as another feels.
Feeling distress at witnessing anothers suffering.
Imagining how one would think and feel in anothers place.
Imagining how another thinks and feels.
A general disposition (trait) to feel for others.
Each of these phenomena is distinct from other-oriented empathic concern.

The empathy-altruism hypothesis makes no claim that any of these other phenomena produces altruistic motivation, except if and when that phenomenon
evokes empathic concern.
Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality
43
A LT R U I ST I C M OT I VAT I O N
The term altruism is also used in multiple ways. In the empathy-altruism hypothesis, altruism refers to a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing anothers welfare. So defined, altruism can be juxtaposed to egoism:
a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing ones own welfare.
In each of these definitions, ultimate refers to meansend relations, not to a
metaphysical first or final cause, and not to biological function. An ultimate
goal is an end in itself. In contrast, an instrumental goal is a stepping stone
on the way to an ultimate goal. If a barrier to reaching an instrumental goal
arises, alternative routes to the ultimate goal will be sought. Should the ultimate goal be reached bypassing the instrumental goal, the motivational force
will disappear. If a goal is ultimate, it cannot be bypassed in this way (Lewin,
1938). Both instrumental and ultimate goals should be distinguished from unintended consequences, results of an actionforeseen or unforeseenthat are
not the goal of the action. Each ultimate goal defines a distinct goal-directed
motive. Hence, altruism and egoism are distinct motives, even though they
can co-occur.
Altruism and egoism have much in common. Each refers to a motivational
state; each is concerned with the ultimate goal of this motivational state; and,
for each, the ultimate goal is to increase someones welfare. These common
features provide the context for highlighting the crucial difference. Whose
welfare is the ultimate goal, another persons or ones own?
This motivational definition of altruism should be distinguished from two
other common uses:
As helping behavior, not motivation. Some scholars set aside the issue of motivation, simply equating altruism with costly helping behavior. This definition
has been common among developmental psychologists and primatologists
(e.g., de Waal, 2008). It has also been common among evolutionary biologists,
who have defined altruism as behavior that reduces an organisms reproductive fitnessthe potential to put its genes in the next generationrelative to
the reproductive fitness of one or more other organisms. Using this definition,
evolutionary biologists can speak of altruism across a very broad phylogenetic
spectrum, ranging from social insects to humans (Alexander, 1987; Dawkins,
1976; Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971; Wilson, 1975). However, as Sober and
Wilson (1998) pointed out, it is important to distinguish between evolutionary
altruism and psychological altruism. Evolutionary altruism is behavior that
reduces ones reproductive fitness. Psychological altruism is motivation with
the ultimate goal of increasing anothers welfare. Sober and Wilson emphasize that evolutionary altruism is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce
44
psychological altruism. The empathy-altruism hypothesis concerns psychological altruism.

As helping in order to gain internal rather than external rewards. Other
scholars define altruism as a particular form of helpinghelping in order to
gain internal rather than external rewards. This use does consider the motivation for benefiting others, but it reduces altruism to a special form of egoism.
By this definition, which is quite common among behavioral economists (see
Fehr & Zehnder, 2009), benefiting another as a means to benefit oneself is altruism as long as the self-benefits are internally rather than externally administered. If you help someone in need in order to gain a good feeling, to avoid
guilt, or to reduce your aversive arousal caused by witnessing his or her suffering, then your motivation is altruistic. By the definition I am using, these
ultimate goals are not altruistic. They are forms of egoism.
E V I D EN C E O F EM PAT H Y- I N D U C ED A LT R U IST I C M OT I VAT I O N
Given the stated definitions of altruism and egoism, helping a person in

needeven at great cost to selfmay be altruistically motivated, egoistically
motivated, both, or neither. To know which, we must determine whether removal of the need is (a) an ultimate goal and any self-benefits are unintended
consequences (altruism) or (b) an instrumental means to reach the ultimate
goal of benefiting oneself (egoism). Three possible self-benefits of empathyinduced helping have been identified, producing three egoistic alternatives to
the empathy-altruism hypothesis: (a) aversive-arousal reductionreducing
the empathic concern caused by witnessing another in need; (b) punishment
avoidanceavoiding empathy-specific material, social, and self-punishments;
and (c) reward seekinggaining empathy-specific material, social, and selfrewards. Advocates of the empathy-altruism hypothesis do not deny that
relieving an empathy-inducing need is likely to enable the helper to reduce
aversive arousal, avoid punishments, and gain rewards. However, they claim
that these benefits to self are not the ultimate goal of empathy-induced motivation, only unintended consequences. Advocates of the egoistic alternatives
disagree. They claim that one or more of the self-benefits is the ultimate goal
of the motivation produced by empathic concern.
Complicating matters, we often do not know what our ultimate goals are;
we can pursue goals of which we are unaware. As a result, we cannot trust selfreports regarding motivation; we need behavioral experiments. There are now
published reports of more than 35 experiments designed to test the empathyaltruism hypothesis against one or more of the egoistic alternatives (see Batson,
2011, for a review). Results of these experiments have consistently patterned as
45
predicted by the empathy-altruism hypothesis and have failed to support any

of the egoistic alternatives. To the best of my knowledge, there is no plausible
egoistic explanation for the cumulative evidence from these experiments. This
evidence has led me to concludetentativelythat the empathy-a ltruism hypothesis is true, that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. Further, this altruistic motive can be surprisingly powerful.
I S EM PAT H Y- I N D U C ED A LT R U I S M M O R A L?
Websters defines moral as: 1. of or concerned with principles of right or wrong

conduct. 2. being in accordance with such principles (1990, p. 589). I assume
principles is used broadly hereto include standards, ideals, norms, rules,
and so onand that principles can be either abstract (Love your neighbor,
Tell the truth) or concrete (Take only half of the remaining ice cream),
explicitly stated or not, unconditional or conditional, universal or relative,
reason based or not.
Many people assume that empathy-induced altruism, if it exists, is moral.
Indeed, considerable empirical evidence seems to support such an assumption. Not only is there extensive evidence that empathic concern increases
helping and other prosocial behaviors (see Batson, 2011; Eisenberg & Miller,
1987, for reviews) but there is also evidencemore limited and tenuousthat
it decreases aggression and other antisocial behaviors (see Miller & Eisenberg,
1988, for a review). This evidence not withstanding, there are reasons to doubt
the assumption that empathy-induced altruism is moral.
First, logically, the assumed link between altruism and morality is usually
based on the juxtaposition of each to self-interest (cf. Mansbridge, 1990). As
defined above, altruism involves other-interest rather than self-interest. Moreover, self-interest is often equated with selfishness, which is, in turn, considered by many to be the epitome of immorality (Campbell, 1975; Wallach &
Wallach, 1983). It may seem to follow, then, that if altruism is not self-interest
and self-interest is not moral, altruism is moral. But, quite apart from whether
self-interest should be equated with immorality (Rawls, 1971, and many others
have challenged this equation), to say that A (altruism) is not B (self-interest)
and B is not C (moral) does not mean that A is C. To say that apples are not
bananas and bananas are not cherries does not make apples cherries.
Second, empirically, to find that empathy-induced altruism can increase
moral, prosocial behavior and decrease immoral, antisocial behavior does not
rule out the possibility that it may also, at times, do the opposite. The observed
correlations are not so strong as to suggest the relation is always positive, nor
have all relevant situations been examined. Rather, because the focal question
46
for many researchers has been whether empathy can increase moral action
certainly a worthwhile question to asklittle attempt has been made to test
whether it might also, at times, increase immoral action.
Third, theoretically, the empathy-altruism hypothesis claims an invariant
relation between an emotional state (empathic concern) and a motive (altruism); it does not claim an invariant link to behavior (Batson, 1987, 1991, 2011).
Altruism and moral motivation are distinct motives, each with its own ultimate goal: for altruism, the ultimate goal is to increase anothers welfare; for
moral motivation, to promote some moral standard, principle, or ideal (e.g.,
be fair, do no harm, produce the greatest good for the greatest number, do
unto others . . .). Simply because these two motives often promote the same
behavioracting morallydoes not mean that they are equivalent or even
linked.
As with altruism and egoism, I am defining moral motivation in terms of its
ultimate goal, not its consequences. People frequently apply the label moral to
any motive that produces an outcome judged moral. But such usage muddies
the conceptual waters because it directs attention to the behavioral surface
rather than the underlying psychological process. As Kurt Lewin (1951; also
Cassirer, 1910/1921) argued long ago, scientific understanding and explanation needs to follow the example of Galileo and probe processin the present
case, the goal(s) soughtrather than simply classify consequences. Elsewhere,
I have distinguished four general classes of motives, each with a distinct ultimate goal, that might lead a person to act in a way judged moral: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and, to have another ism, principlismmoral motivation
(Batson, 1994, 2011, in preparation). Action judged moral may be an instrumental means to pursue self-interest (egoism), as when one is kind to court
kindness in return. Or such action may be intended to increase another individuals, or a groups, welfarethat is, motivated by altruism or collectivism
with morality an unintended consequence. Only for principlism is promoting
a moral standard, principle, or ideal the ultimate goal, so only it deserves the
label moral motivation. Egoism, altruism, and collectivism will produce moral
behavior only to the degree that, given the circumstances, this behavior is the
best way to reach the motives ultimate goal. Each is only tangentiallyand
unreliablymoral.
Focusing specifically on empathy-induced altruism, this motive can lead me
to act in a way judged moralproviding succor, redressing injustice. But altruism and morality can also be at odds. Imagine, for example, an employer who
believes in fairness and who must decide which of two employees to promote.
Employee A is clearly better qualified and more deserving, but the employer
feels sorry for Employee B, whose mother recently died. Fairness pulls in one
direction; empathy-induced altruism in the opposite. If sufficiently strong,
47
empathy-induced altruism may lead the employer to act unfairly, violating a

personally held moral standard.
This process-level analysis leads to the suggestion that, as a motive, empathy-
induced altruism is neither moral nor immoral; it is amoral. Sometimes, it
will encourage people to act in accord with their moral principles; at other
times, to violate them. Far from thinking of this behavioral inconsistency as
an empirical embarrassment, as a surface-level analysis might, the variation is
embraced as a theoretically based prediction.
I M M O R A L I T Y FR O M EM PAT H Y- I N D U C ED A LT R U IS M
When will empathy-induced altruism lead a person to violate his or her moral
principles and act immorally? When four conditions are satisfied: (a) a person
has an opportunity to affect the welfare of more than one person; (b) not everyones welfare can be fully served; (c) the person holds a moral standard
that specifies what action is right; and (d) empathy felt for one or more of the
affected individuals produces altruistic motivation that promotes a different
course of action. In such a situation, if the empathy-induced altruism is stronger than the motive to do what is right, it will lead the person to violate his or
her moral standard.
Employing this logic, colleagues and I have conducted over a half-dozen
experiments that provide evidence that empathy-induced altruism, much like
self-interested egoism, can conflict with and, at times, overpower moral motivation. The first two were reported by Batson, Klein, Highberger, and Shaw
(1995).
Assigning Workers to Tasks

In the first experiment, 60 female introductory psychology students were, ostensibly randomly, placed in the role of a Supervisor. As Supervisor, they were
to assign two Workersother introductory psychology students whom they
would never meetto tasks. One of the tasks had positive consequences. For
each correct response, the Worker performing this task would receive 1 raffle
ticket for a $30 gift certificate. The other task had negative consequences. For
each incorrect response, the Worker would receive an uncomfortable electric shock, two to three times the strength of static electricity. To make the
moral principle of procedural fairness salient, before Supervisors assigned the
tasks they all read: Most Supervisors feel that flipping a coin is the fairest way
to assign the tasks, but the decision is entirely up to you. You can assign the
48
Workers however you wish. A coin was provided for Supervisors to flip if they
chose. The Workers would not know how the tasks were assigned, only which
task was theirs.
Supervisors either did or did not receive communication from one of the
Workers, designated simply as Participant C. The communication was in the
form of a note in which Participant C described something interesting that
had happened to her recently. Participants were told that the note was written
before C had any knowledge about the nature of the research and that she did
know her note would be read by the Supervisor (so it could not be perceived as
an attempt to play on the sympathy of the Supervisor).
Participant Cs note revealed that she had recently been dumped by her boyfriend. It ended: Ive been real down. Its all I think about. My friends all
tell me that Ill meet other guys and they say that all I need is for something
good to happen to cheer me up. I guess theyre right, but so far that hasnt
happened. It was assumed that participants would think that giving C the
positive-consequences task (raffle tickets) might cheer her up, whereas assigning her to the negative-consequences (electric shocks) would not. Of the 40
participants who read the note, half were instructed to remain objective and
detached while reading (low-empathy condition), and half were instructed to
imagine how the student writing the note felt about what was described (highempathy condition). Self-reported emotional response following reading the
note confirmed the effectiveness of this manipulation.
How did Supervisors go about assigning the Workers to tasks? All 20 participants in the no-communication condition (who read no note) reported using
a random method (flipping the coin). Consistent with this report and with a
standard of procedural fairness, 50% of the Supervisors in this condition assigned Participant C to the positive-consequences task. In the communication/
low-empathy condition, 17 of the 20 Supervisors reported using a random
method (flipping the coin); the other three said they assigned C to the positive
consequences without flipping the coin. In spite of these three, the net result
was the same as in the no-communication condition: 50% assigned C to the
positive-consequences task.
Results were quite different in the communication/high-empathy condition.
There, only 10 of the 20 Supervisors reported using a random method. Of these
10, five (50%) assigned C to the positive consequences. The other 10 all assigned
C to the positive consequences without flipping the coin. The overall percentage assigning C to the positive-consequences task in this condition, 75%, deviated significantly from the 50% that procedural fairness would dictate.
When later asked an open-ended question about the fairest way to assign
the tasks, 18 of the 20 participants in each experimental condition said that
flipping the coin (or use of some other random method) was most fair. Only
49
one person in each communication condition said that assigning C to the positive consequences without flipping the coin was most fair. Yet in spite of what
they said was fair, half of those in the communication/high-empathy condition showed partiality to the participant for whom they had been led to feel
empathic concern. And when asked whether the way they assigned the workers was morally right, those in this condition who showed partiality said the
way they assigned was less right than did those who used the coin.
Playing God
In a second experiment, the consequences of showing partiality were more
severe. Participants were placed in the awkward position of, in essence, playing
God. Each of 60 introductory psychology students (30 men, 30 women) heard
an interview with Sheri Summers, a 10-year-old child with a slow-progressing
terminal illness. They then were given an unexpected chance to help Sheri by
moving her off a waiting list and into an immediate-treatment group ahead
of other children who either had more severe terminal illnesses or had been
waiting longer for treatment, an act contrary to standards of fairness and maximizing utility. Empathic concern for Sheri was manipulated by the perspective from which participants were instructed to listen to the interview. Once
again, those in the low-empathy condition were to remain objective, those in
the high-empathy condition to imagine Sheris feelings. And once again, subsequent self-reports indicated this manipulation was effective.
Most participants in the low-empathy condition acted fairly, declining the
opportunity to move Sheri into the immediate-treatment group ahead of children with more severe illnesses, or who had been waiting longer. Only 33%
chose to move her. Those in the high-empathy condition were far more likely
to do so; 73% chose to move Sheri into the immediate-treatment group. In this
experiment, as in the preceding one, effects of the empathy manipulation on
behavior were mediated by reported feelings of empathic concern and, in turn,
the relative strength of empathy-induced altruism and moral motivation.
Results of these two experiments support the idea that empathy-induced altruism can lead us to violate our moral standards. In each experiment, participants not induced to feel empathic concern for one of the individuals in need
tended to uphold their standards. Participants induced to feel empathy tended
to favor the individual for whom they felt empathic concern. It was not that
the high-empathy participants who showed partiality abandoned their principles; they agreed with other participants that partiality was less moral than
impartiality. However, they were willing to go against their moral standards to
benefit a person for whom they had been led to care.
50
Partiality in Social Dilemmas

In a second series of experiments, colleagues and I have found that empathy
felt for one person in a social dilemma can lead participants to violate the
Utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. A social dilemma arises when: (a) a person has a choice about how to allocate scarce resources (time, money, energy) and, regardless what others do, (b) to allocate
the resources to the group provides the greatest good overall, but (c) to allocate
the resources to a single individual (oneself or another group member) is best
for that individual, and yet (d) if all allocations are to separate individuals,
each individual is worse off than if all allocations are to the group. Examples of
social dilemmas abound in modern society. They include recycling, car pooling, reducing pollution, voting, contributing to public TV or to the local symphony, and so on.
I mentioned in the previous paragraph the possibility that one could allocate
resources to another individual in the group. Interestingly, in prior research
on and discussions of social dilemmas, this possibility had never been considered. Guided by the assumption of universal egoism that underlies game
theory, it was taken for granted that the only individual to whom one would
allocate scarce resources would be oneself. Yet the empathy-altruism hypothesis predicts that if you feel empathy for another member of the group, you
will be altruistically motivated to benefit that person. And if you can allocate
resources to him or her, then rather than two motivesegoism (maximize
your own welfare) and principlism (provide the greatest good for the greatest
number)a third motive is also in play: empathy-induced altruism. It too can
conflict with the common good.
How often do we feel empathy for others in a collective? Frequently. Indeed,
it is hard to think of a real-world social dilemma in which we do not. Empathy
is likely to play a role every time we try to decide whether to spend our time
or moneyor whether to appropriate scarce common resourcesto benefit
ourselves, the common good, or another individual for whom we especially
care. A father may resist contributing to public TV not to buy himself a new
shirt but because he feels for his daughter, who wants new shoes. An executive
may retain an ineffective employee for whom he or she feels compassion to the
detriment of the company. Whalers may kill to extinction and loggers clearcut, not out of personal greed but to provide for their families.
To test whether empathy-induced altruism can indeed hurt the common
good in a social dilemma, Batson, Batson et al. (1995) conducted two studies. In each, undergraduate participants faced a dilemma in which they could
choose to benefit themselves, the group as a whole, or one or more other group
members as individuals. In Study 1, empathy for another group member was
51
induced through experimental manipulation; in Study 2, the level of empathic

concern was determined by self-report. In each study, participants who experienced high empathy allocated more resources to the person for whom
they felt empathy, reducing the overall collective good. Once again, this research provides evidence that empathy-induced altruism and motivation to
act morallythis time, motivation to provide the greatest good to the greatest
numberare distinct motives that do not always pull together.
Still, you may doubt that altruism is a serious threat to the common good.
Most people would say that altruism, even if it exists, is weak compared to selfinterest (egoism). I think empathy-induced altruism can be a serious threat.
In fact, when ones action is public, altruism can be a more serious threat to
the common good than is self-interest. There are clear social norms and sanctions to inhibit pursuit of ones own interests at the expense of what is fair and
best for all (Kerr, 1995): selfish and greedy are stinging epithets. Norms
and sanctions against showing concern for anothers interests, even if doing
so diminishes the common good, are far less clear. To show favoritism toward
another individual, especially an individual in need, is not likely to be called
selfish or greedy. One may be accused of being a pushover, soft, or a bleeding heart, but these terms carry an implicit charge of weakness, not greed.
To test the idea that, when ones behavior is public, altruism can be a more
serious threat to the common good than is egoism, Batson et al. (1999) conducted two experiments using a modified dilemma situation. In each experiment, some participants chose between allocation of resources to the group
as a whole or to themselves alone (egoism condition). Some chose between
allocation to a group of which they were not a member or to a member of
this group for whom they were induced to feel empathy (altruism condition).
Finally, some chose between allocation to the group of which they were not a
member or to a member of this group without empathy being induced (baseline condition). When the decision was private, allocation to the group was
significantlyand similarlylower in the egoism and altruism conditions
compared to the baseline. However, when the decision was public, allocation
to the group was significantly lower only in the altruism condition. These results indicate, first, that both egoism and altruism can be potent threats to the
common good and, second, that anticipated social evaluation is a powerful
inhibitor of the egoistic but not the altruistic threat. These results have wideranging implications. How do whalers and loggers stand up to moral censure
for over-depletion of natural resources? Easily. They are using these resources
not for themselves but to care for their families.
If empathy-induced altruism poses a threat to the common good, why
are there no sanctions against it, as there are against egoism? Perhaps this is
because society makes one or both of two assumptions: Empathy-induced
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altruism is moral. Empathy-induced altruism is weak. There is now rather

clear evidence that each of these assumptions is wrong.
Two Different Perspectives on Anothers Situation;

TwoDifferentMotives
In his classic studies on empathy, Ezra Stotland (1969) identified two different forms of perspective taking. He found that (a) imagining what ones own
thoughts and feelings would be if one were in the situation of a person in need
(an imagine-self perspective) and (b) imagining the thoughts and feelings of
the person in need (an imagine-other perspective) both led to increased emotional arousal compared to adopting a cool, objective perspective. However,
the emotions aroused by the two imagine perspectives were not the same.
An imagine-self perspective produced a mix of self-oriented personal distress (feeling tense, upset, etc.) and other-oriented empathic concern (feeling
sympathetic, compassionate, etc.). An imagine-other perspective produced
relatively pure empathic concern. (For further evidence of this difference in
emotions produced by these two forms of perspective taking, see Batson, Early,
& Salvarini, 1997.) Consider the effects of each on morality.
Imagine-self. Moral prescriptions such as the Golden Rule (do unto others
as you would have others do unto you) seem to assume that an imagine-self
perspective will stimulate moral motivation. Consider a situation in which research participantsrather than assigning two other participants to tasks
assign themselves and another participant, with one task clearly more desirable
than the other. If these participants are induced to imagine themselves in the
other participants situation prior to making the assignment decision, then,
following the Golden Rule, they should be more likely to use a fair method
(e.g., flip a coin) rather than simply give themselves the better task. After all,
that is how they would like to be treated were the other assigning the tasks.
Imagine-other. Results from a number of experiments, including those
discussed above, have indicated that adopting an imagine-other perspective
toward a person in need evokes empathic concern for that person, which according to the empathy-altruism hypothesis should evoke altruistic motivation, not moral motivation. If so, participants induced to imagine the others
feelings prior to making the task assignment should not become fairer. Rather,
they should be more likely to give the other participant the positive consequences directly, without flipping the coinmuch as a person motivated by
self-interest should take the positive consequences without flipping.
Effects of perspective taking on task assignment. To test these predictions, Batson et al. (2003) had some participants who were about to make a
53
self-versus-other task assignment first perform a brief imagination exercise,

whereas other participants did not. Among those who did the exercise, half
were asked to imagine yourself in the place of the other participant for one
minute and then write down what they had imagined (imagine-self condition); the other half were asked to imagine how the other participant likely
feels, then write (imagine-other condition).
Compared to those given no imagination exercise, the imagine-self perspective had only a limited (and not statistically significant) effect on the fairness of
the task assignment. (In a follow-up experiment in which the other participant
was at an initial disadvantage, an imagine-self perspective did significantly
increase fairness.) The imagine-other perspective had a dramatic effect. It did
not increase fairness (i.e., use of the coin); rather, it increased the number of
participants who assigned the other to the positive-consequences task without
flipping the cointo 73%. (Without an empathy induction, only 10 to 30% of
those who do not flip typically assign the other the positive.) In this condition, giving the other the positive consequences was significantly positively
correlated with reported empathic concern felt for the other (r = .60), whereas
choosing to flip the coin was significantly negatively correlated with reported
empathic concern (r = .53). These results are quite consistent with the idea
that an imagine-other perspective produces empathy-induced altruistic motivation, not moral motivation. Once again, the two motives seem quite distinct.
A C LO S ER LO O K AT M O R A L M OT I VAT I O N
It is perhaps not surprising that most moral philosophers have argued for
the importance of a motive for moral action other than egoism. But many
since Kant (1785/1993) have also argued against altruism and collectivism.
Consistent with the research above, they reject appeals to altruism, especially
empathy-induced altruism, because feelings of empathy, sympathy, and compassion are too fickle and circumscribed. Empathic concern is not felt for
everyone in need, certainly not to the same degree. Similarly, collectivism is
circumscribed by the interests of the group. Moral philosophers typically call
for motivation with a goal of promoting some universal and impartial moral
standard, principle, or ideal (but also see Williams,1981).
For example, John Rawls (1971) famously argued for a principle of justice
based on the allocation of goods to the members of society from an initial
position behind the Veil of Ignorance, where no one knows his or her place in
societyprince or pauper, laborer or lawyer, male or female, Black or White.
Allocating from this position eliminates partiality and seduction by special
interest. A universal, impartial principle of justice much like Rawlss was the
54
basis for Kohlbergs (1976, 1984) Post-Conventional or Principled moral reasoning, the highest level in his stage model of moral development.
Universalist views of morality have not gone unchallenged. Writers like
Lawrence Blum (1980), Carol Gilligan (1982), Nel Noddings (1984), and Joan
Tronto (1987) have called for recognition of forms of morality that allow for
special interest in the welfare of certain others. In opposition to an ethic based
on fairness and justice, these writers propose an ethic of care. Sometimes, care
is proposed as an alternative principle to justice, either as a substitute or in dynamic tension with it. At other times, care seems to be an alternative to principled morality altogether. If care is an alternative principle, then it too may
evoke a form of moral motivation (principlism), motivation to promote a principle of care or doing no harm (Baron, 1996), with which empathy-induced
altruism may conflict. If, however, care is a special feeling for another individual, then it is a form of altruism.
One way to distinguish care based on altruism from care based on principle
is to consider Kants (1785/1993) second formulation of the categorical imperative. This formulation states that we should never treat any person only as a
means but always as an end. To act on altruistic motivation, that is, to act with
the others welfare as an ultimate rather than an instrumental goal, is to treat
the other as an end. If successful, such action accords with the persons-as-ends
imperative. But, as noted earlier, such action is not morally motivated because
the altruistic goal is to increase the others welfare, not to promote some moral
standard, principle, or ideal. It is not enough that ones action be consistent
with principle; the action must be carried out to promote the principle. Treat
others as ends must be the ultimate goal (whether implicit or explicit), not
simply a consequence.
Acting to promote some principle or ideal provides a motive for acting morally that transcends reliance on self-interest and on interest in and feeling for
the welfare of certain other individuals or groups. Standards that are universal
and impartial do not play favorites. This is true of the Utilitarian principle of
the greatest good for the greatest number (Mill, 1861/1987); it is true of any
principle that satisfies the first formulation of Kants (1785/1993) categorical
imperative (the principle can be willed to be a universal law); it is true of Rawlss (1971) criterion for justice (allocation of goods and opportunities behind
the Veil of Ignorance); it is true of a principle to do no harm; and it is true of
the Golden Rule.
Promoting principle is not, however, problem free, even as a motive for
acting morally. The major problem with moral motivation is corruptibility; it
seems quite vulnerable to rationalization. We can be quite adept at justifying
to o
urselvesif not to otherswhy acting in a way that benefits us or those
we care about does not violate our moral principles: Why, for example, the
55
inequalities in the public school systems of rich and poor districts in the United
States are not really unjust (Kozol, 1991). Why we have the right to a disproportionate share of the worlds natural resources. Why storing our nuclear waste
in someone elses backyard is fair. Why watching public TV without contributing, or why foregoing the extra effort to recycle, is not wrong. Why attacks by
our enemies are atrocities, but attacks by our side are necessities. The abstractness and multiplicity of moral principles make it easy to convince ourselves
that the relevant principles are those that just happen to serve our interests.
Most of us think of ourselves as highly moral (Sedikides & Strube, 1997;
Van Lange, 1991). Yet when our own interest is best served by violating avowed
moral principles, we often find ways to do just this. We mange to see ourselves
as fair, honest, and caringor at least not unfair, dishonest, and uncaring
while avoiding the cost to self of actually being so. Moral principles are affirmed, but motivation to uphold these principles seems weak.
A number of psychological processes may contribute to this weakness. First,
people may conveniently forget to think about their moral principles if such an
omission serves their interests (Bersoff, 1999). Second, people may actively rationalize (Tsang, 2002), convincing themselves that a given principle does not
apply either to the specific others whose interests conflict with their own (moral
exclusionStaub, 1990) or to the specific situation (moral disengagement
Bandura, 1991, 1999). Third, people may deceive themselves into believing
that they acted morally even when they did not (moral hypocrisyBatson,
Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, 1997). Fourth, moral principles
may be internalized only to the degree that they are experienced as oughts
but not wants (Batson, 2002, in preparation; Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone,
1994). Our skill in deflecting the thrust of the principles we espouse may help
explain the weak empirical relation between (a) avowal of moral principles
and (b) moral action (Blasi, 1980; Eisenberg, 1991; Emler, Renwick, & Malone,
1983; Erkut, Jaquette, & Staub, 1981; Sparks & Durkin, 1987).
O R C H EST R AT I N G M OT I V ES
Empathy-induced altruism and moral motivation are distinct goal-directed

motives. Each has strengths, but each also has weaknesses. The greatest good
may come from strategies that orchestrate these motives so that the strengths
of one can overcome the weaknesses of the other. Think once again about principles of fairness or of the greatest good. These principles are universal and
impartial, but motivation to uphold them seems corruptiblevulnerable to
oversight, rationalization, and self-deception. Empathy-induced altruism is a
potentially powerful motive with a strong emotional base. But it is limited
56
in scope, producing special concern for particular persons. Perhaps if people

can be led to feel empathy for the victims of injustice, or for those with special needs, this will bring together the unique strengths of these two motives.
Desire to uphold standards, principles, and ideals may provide perspective
and reason; empathy-induced altruism may provide emotional fire and a force
directed specifically toward seeing the victims suffering enda want to accompany the moral ought. The combination may discourage oversight and
rationalization (see Solomon, 1990).
This orchestration of empathy-induced altruism and moral motivation may
seem to echo Martin Hoffmans idea of empathy-based morality, especially
when he says:
My hypothesis is that abstract moral principles, learned in cool didactic contexts (lectures, sermons), lack motive force. Empathys contribution
to moral principles is to transform them into prosocial hot cognitions
cognitive representations charged with empathic affect, thus giving them
motive force. (Hoffman, 2000, p. 239)
In spite of sharing Hoffmans hypothesis, I believe that our views are importantly different. He speaks of embedding empathy in morality and of bonding empathic affect to a moral principle. Such language suggests that empathy
becomes inextricably linked to morality, that rather than independent motives
that may cooperate or conflict, empathy-induced altruism and morality necessarily work in harmony. The research reviewed above contradicts this optimistic assumption. Although empathy-induced altruism can lead a person to
act in a way judged moral, it can also lead the person to violate his or her own
moral standards. Altruism and morality have no necessary connection. The
challenge is to orchestrate altruistic and moral motives so they complement
one another.
E X A M PL ES
Let me close with a few concrete examples of orchestration of empathy-

induced altruism and moral motivation. A careful look at data collected by
Samuel and Pearl Oliner and their colleagues (Oliner & Oliner, 1988) suggests
that such orchestration occurred in the lives of a number of rescuers of Jews
in Nazi Europe. Involvement in rescue activity frequently began with concern
for a specific individual or individuals for whom compassion was feltoften
individuals known previously. This initial involvement subsequently led to
further contacts and rescue activity, and to a concern to do right that extended
57
well beyond the bounds of the initial empathic concern. In several cases, most
notably in the French village of Le Chambon, the result was dramatic indeed.
Such orchestration also seems to have occurred at the time of the bus boycott in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s. The horrific sight on TV news of a
small Black child being rolled down the street by water from a fire hose under
the direction of local policeand the emotions this sight evokedseemed to
do more to arouse a concern for racial equality and civil rights than hours of
reasoned moral suasion.
In these two examples, orchestration was not planned; it occurred as a result
of unfolding events. At other times, the orchestra has a human conductor.
Intentionally creating confrontations designed to induce empathic concern
seems to lie at the heart of the nonviolent protest in the face of entrenched oppression practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Such orchestration can also be found in the writing of Jonathan Kozol.
Deeply troubled by the savage inequalities in public education between rich
and poor communities in the United States, Kozol (1991) clearly documents
disparities, pointing out the injustice. But he does more. He takes us into the
lives of individual children. We come to care about their welfare and, as a result,
to care about setting things right. Kozols goal is not simply to get us to feel; he
wants to get us involved in action to improve funding for schools in poor communities. He pursues this goal by orchestrating empathy-induced altruism and
moral motivation. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852/1929) used much the same orchestration strategy to galvanize opposition to slavery in Uncle Toms Cabin.
However difficult it may be in practice, coordinating altruism and moral
motivation by inducing empathy for victims of immorality is theoretically
straightforward. Yet this is not the only possible way to combine these two motives. The story of wise King Solomon presents a far more subtle example of the
use of empathy-induced altruismand the partiality it inducesin the service of doing right. Recall that two women came before Solomon. One claimed
that when the others infant son died, the bereft mother switched her dead son
for the first womans live one. The other woman claimed that the dead son was
the first womans and the live son hers.
So the king [Solomon] said, Bring me a sword, and they brought a sword
before the king. The king said, Divide the living boy in two; then give half
to the one, and half to the other. But the woman whose son was alive said
to the kingbecause compassion for her son burned within herPlease,
my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him! The other said,
It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it. Then the king responded:
Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.
(1Kings 3:2427 NRSV)
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Thus did Solomon execute justice (1 Kings 3:28). It is hard to imagine a more
successful orchestration of empathy-induced altruism and moral motivation.
Orchestrating these motives is a promising strategy for promoting action
on behalf of both those suffering immoral treatment and society at large. It
appears capable of producing dramatic results. Yet it is rarely even considered.
The assumption that empathy-induced altruism is necessarily moral has prevented us from recognizing the importance of such a strategy. With this assumption no longer tenable, new challengesand possibilitiesarise.

A Developmental Psychology Perspective
TRACY L. SPINRAD AND NANCY EISENBERG
The constructs of empathy and sympathy have been considered important

emotional aspects of morality, particularly with regard to how such emotions contribute to moral values and moral behavior (Batson, 1991; Eisenberg, Fabes & Spinrad, 2006; Hoffman, 2000). Understanding these aspects
of morality in children may have important implications for childrens
sense of responsibility, compassion, and later humanitarian conduct. Thus,
it is important to take a developmental approach to understanding moral
behavior in children; understanding the development, correlates, and origins of such behavior are critical in order to develop ways to promote such
characteristics.
In this chapter, definitional issues with respect to empathy and empathy-
related responding and the links between such responses and moral behavior
are discussed first. Next, the development of empathy and prosocial behavior
is considered. We then briefly cover some correlates of empathy, sympathy, and
prosocial behavior. We conclude this chapter with a discussion of the origins
Work on this chapter was partially supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child
Health and Development (1R01HD068522).
60
of empathy and prosocial behavior, focusing on the role of temperamental differences in emotion and regulation, and we suggest areas for further study.
D EFI N I T I O N A L I S SU ES A N D R EL AT I O N S
TO M O R A L B EH AV I O R
Given the importance of empathy, we have argued that it is useful to differentiate between empathy and its related responses (i.e., sympathy, personal distress; see Eisenberg, Fabes & Spinrad, 2006). Empathy is defined as an affective
response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of anothers
emotional state or condition and is very similar to or the same as what another
person feels or would be expected to feel. For example, upon viewing someone
who is sad, if an individual also feels sad, she would be experiencing empathy. Sympathy is an other-oriented emotional response stemming from the apprehension of anothers emotional state but does not involve feeling the same
emotion as the other (or what the other is expected to feel); rather, sympathy
reflects feelings of sorrow or concern for the other. Thus, if a young girl views
a sad boy and feels concern for him, she is experiencing sympathy. Although
sympathy likely stems from empathy, it may also stem from cognitive perspective taking or accessing relevant information from memory.
Empathy also can sometimes lead to personal distress rather than sympathy. Personal distress reflects a self-focused, aversive affective reaction, such
as anxiety or discomfort, upon the apprehension of anothers emotion. This
reaction may stem from empathic overarousal, but it also may stem from other
emotion-related processes, such as shame or guilt or from retrieving certain
information from mental storage (i.e., through an association between cues
related to anothers sadness and distressing memories from ones own past).
Thus, empathy, sympathy, and personal distress involve different emotional
experiences and at least some cognitive processing.
It is important to distinguish between empathy and its related responses
because these emotions are viewed as having different moral motivations and,
consequently, different behaviors, particularly altruistic behavior (Batson,
1998). Prosocial behavior has been defined as voluntary behavior intended
to benefit another, including behaviors such as helping, sharing comforting,
and volunteering (see Eisenberg Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). Prosocial behavior
can be motivated by a variety of factors including egoistic concerns (e.g., rewards or social approval), other-oriented concerns (e.g., sympathy), or moral
values (e.g., the desire to uphold internalized moral values). Altruism is generally defined as prosocial behavior motivated by concern for another or moral
values as opposed to hedonistic and other nonmoral reasons (see Eisenberg,
Developmental Psychology Perspective
61
Fabes, &Spinrad, 2006). Because the motivation for prosocial behaviors in a

given context is often unknown, we use the broader term of prosocial behavior
throughout this chapter.
Sympathy is viewed as associated with the desire to reduce the other persons distress, and as such, it is viewed as an emotion fostering prosocial action.
On the other hand, personal distress reactions are thought to lead to egoistic, rather than other-oriented, concerns and the motivation to make oneself,
rather than the other person, feel better (Batson, 1991). Personal distress reactions, therefore, would be associated with egoistic motivations and would lead
to prosocial behavior only in a situation in which it is the easiest way to reduce
ones own distress (e.g., in a situation in which one cannot escape from the
others distress cues).
Indeed, researchers have demonstrated the predicted relations between prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding. Using a variety of methods,
sympathy has been positively related to prosocial behavior in children and
adults (Batson, 1998; Eisenberg, Fabes, Schaller & Miller, 1989; Zahn-Waxler,
Robinson, & Emde, 1992; Knafo, Zahn-Waxler, Van Hulle, Robinson, & Rhee,
2008). In a recent study of Mexican-American college students, sympathy was
positively related to a number of types of prosocial behavior (Carlo, McGinley,
Hayes, & Martinez, 2012). In addition, personal distress reactions generally
have been negatively related or unrelated to prosocial actions (Eisenberg &
Fabes, 1990; Knafo, Zahn-Waxler, Van Hulle, Robinson, & Rhee, 2008; Roberts & Strayer, 1996; Zahn-Waxler, Cole, Welsh, & Fox, 1995).
D E V ELO PM EN T O F EM PAT H Y A N D PR OSO C I A L B EH AV I O R
In understanding the development of prosocial behavior in young children,

researchers have nearly exclusively relied on Hoffmans (2000) developmental
theory. In this theory, a series a phases from self-concern to more empathic,
other-oriented concern were delineated. Specifically, in the first stage of global
empathy, infants may exhibit rudimentary forms of empathic response, seen
in newborns contagious crying. Around the end of the first year of life, infants
enter the phase known as egocentric empathy. This phase is reflected in infants
seeking comfort for themselves when confronted with anothers distress. Hoffman argued that infants respond to others distress and actual distress in the
same way because infants are unable to differentiate self from other. In the
second year of life, toddlers enter the phase known as quasi-egocentric empathy. It is during this period that toddlers develop a sense of self as separate from
others and are capable of experiencing concern for another, rather than seeking comfort for themselves. However, these prosocial behaviors may involve
62
giving the distressed person what they themselves find comforting (e.g., getting ones own mother for a distressed peer rather than the peers mother). As
children cognitively mature, they are able to understand that anothers needs
may differ from their own, and this period is known as veridical empathic distress. By later childhood, children may experience empathy toward people who
are not physically present, such as if they hear about someone in distress, and
around ages 910, children can experience empathy for anothers life condition or general plight.
Consistent with Hoffmans model, empathy has been related to improvements in cognitive functioning, particularly the ability to pass mirror selfrecognition tasks (Bischof-Kohler, 2012; Zahn-Waxler, Schiro,
Robinson,
Emde, & Schmitz, 2001). However, there is a growing debate regarding
whether infants experience empathy somewhat earlier than Hoffman proposed (Brownell, 2013; Davidov, Zahn-Waxler, Roth-Hanania, & Knafo, 2013;
Geangu, Benga, Stahl & Striano, 2011). One reason to question Hoffmans developmental model is that scientists have recently shown that infants demonstrate selfother differentiation using implicit measures earlier than when
toddlers typically pass mirror self-recognition tasks. For example, children
begin to demonstrate an understanding of others intentions, goals, and desires
between 9 and 12 months (Woodward, 1999; 2003) and have shown the ability
to make judgments about others moral character as young as 3months of age
(Hamlin & Wynn, 2011; Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007; 2010; Hamlin, Wynn,
Bloom, & Mahajan, 2011). Further, whereas few researchers have attempted to
study prosocial behavior and empathy in very young toddlers, Roth-Hanania,
Davidov, and Zahn-Waxler (2011) showed that 8- and 10-month olds occasionally showed affective and cognitive concern for others.
There is also evidence that toddlers may demonstrate prosocial behaviors
as young as 1418 months, depending on the type of prosocial behavior. For
example, Warneken and Tomasello (2007) showed that toddlers frequently
behave prosocialy in instrumental helping tasks (e.g., picking up a dropped
object that the experimenter is reaching for), and this finding has been replicated in other work (Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010). Other indices of
prosocial behavior, such as helping others who are distressed or when helping
requires some self-sacrifice (e.g., giving away ones own toys) are less frequent
in younger toddlers and tend to occur later in toddlerhood (Svetlova, Nichols,
& Brownell, 2010).
Despite the lack of consensus regarding the initial onset of empathy in infancy or toddlerhood, there is consistent evidence that young children tend to
increase in prosocial behavior and empathy with age (Knafo, Zahn-Waxler,
Van Hulle, Robinson, & Rhee, 2008; Zan-Waxler, Schiro, Robinson, Emde
& Schmitz, 2001). In a meta-analysis, Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) found that
63
prosocial responding (and empathy/sympathy) generally increased with age.

Mean-level increases were found within the infancy period and across the preschooler to adolescent years. Increases also were found across childhood. Selfdistress reactions tend to decrease with age (Liew et al., 2011; van der Mark, van
Ijzendoorn, & Bakermans Kranenburg, 2002; Zan-Waxler, Schiro, Robinson,
Emde, & Schmitz, 2001). It is important to note, however, that meta-analytic
findings demonstrated that the age increases in empathy across childhood
vary in effect size depending on the method of assessment; larger effects were
found for behavioral and self-report measures than for facial, physiological,
or other-report measures (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). Moreover, despite these
general increases with age, Hay and colleagues have argued that rather than
simply increasing with age, prosocial behaviors become more selective, socially appropriate, and deliberate during the preschool years (Hay & Cook,
2007). That is, prosocial behaviors may be more frequent toward friends versus
non-friends (Costin & Jones, 1992; Howes & Farver, 1987; Moore, 2009) and
toward those who reciprocate versus those who do not (Fujisawa, Kutsukake,
& Hasegawa, 2008; Hay, Castle, Davies, Demetriou, & Stimson, 1999; Olson &
Spelke, 2008).
Although researchers interested in the development of empathy and prosocial behavior have particularly focused on its early development, the limited
data on the development across childhood and adolescence suggest somewhat
complex trends. For example, in a sample of Canadian French-speaking boys,
Kokko, Tremblay, Lacourse, Nagin, and Vitaro (2006) reported that teachers
perceptions of childrens prosocial behavior declined from age 6 to 12. Using
the same sample, Nantel-Vivier and colleagues (2009) showed a general decline in teacher-rated prosocial behavior between 10 to 15 years of age. The researchers also showed a decline in the majority of children in an Italian sample
of boys and girls from 10 to 14 years of age. It is important to note, however,
that this declining trend was found only using teacher-report measures, and a
similar trend was not found when self-ratings were used.
Changes with age in adolescence also have been examined. Based on their
1998 meta-analysis, Eisenberg and Fabes reported that whereas adolescents
exhibited more prosocial behavior than did younger children, there was less
evidence that prosocial behaviors increased during the adolescent period (between ages 12 to 17 or 18). Indeed, some evidence suggests that perhaps prosocial behaviors decline at some points in adolescence and improve at later
ages (Carlo, Crockett, Randall & Roesch, 2007; Luengo Kanacri, Pastorelli,
Eisenberg, Zuffiano & Caprara, in press). Similarly, Eisenberg, Cumberland,
Guthrie, Murphy, & Shepard (2005) found self-reported prosocial behaviors
to increase between 1516 and 1718, declining in the early 20s, and then increasing in the mid-20s.
64
There is also evidence of inter-individual (correlational) stability over time in

childrens empathy and prosocial responding (Eggum et al., 2011; Kienbaum,
Volland & Ulich, 2001; Knafo, Zahn-Waxler, Van Hulle, Robinson, & Rhee,
2008; Robinson, Zahn-Waxler, & Emde, 2001; Zhou et al., 2002; see Eisenberg
& Fabes, 1998). Zahn-Waxler, Van Hulle, Robinson, and Rhee (2008) found
rank-order stability in empathy across the second and third year of life. Empathy and prosocial behaviors also often show stability across context. For instance, positive relations have been found between empathy responses toward
experimenters and toward mothers (Zahn-Waxler, Van Hulle, Robinson, &
Rhee, 2008; Spinrad & Stifter, 2006)
There is, of course, much more to learn with regard to the development of
prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding. The onset of such behaviors is still debated (Davidov, Zahn-Waxler, Roth-Hanania, & Knafo, 2013);
thus, more work identifying empathy in infancy or precursors to empathy is
needed. It is also noteworthy that nearly all of the existing relevant data on
empathy/sympathy with older children and adolescents are self-reported; thus,
it is not clear how empathy and (to a lesser degree) prosocial behavior using
other measures (i.e., observational, behavioral) change with age. In addition,
more longitudinal work, particularly with adolescents and young adults, is
needed to understand trajectories of development across these years.
R EL AT I O N S W I T H SO C I A L C O M PE T EN C E
A N D M A L A D J U ST M EN T
Childrens caring and helpful behaviors are of obvious importance for the quality of social interactions and relationships with others. It is likely that children
who exhibit sympathy have a greater understanding of others feelings and
would be expected to be sensitive, cooperative, and socially appropriate toward
others. Indeed, positive relations of prosocial behavior and empathy-related
responding to childrens social competence have been found. Childrens prosocial behaviors have been linked with having friends, positive social interactions, and popularity (Cassidy, Werner, Rourke, Zubernis, & Balaraman, 2003;
Clark & Ladd, 2000; Eisenberg et al., 1996a; Laible, Carlo, & Raffaelli, 2000;
Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009; Sebanc, 2003; Wilson, 2003). Similar findings have been demonstrated with measures of empathy and sympathy (Coleman & Byrd, 2003; Eisenberg et al., 1996b; Eisenberg et al., 1998; Lerner et al,
2005; Murphy, Shepard, Eisenberg, Fabes, & Guthrie, 1999; Sallquist, Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, & Gaertner, 2009; Zhou et al., 2002). Whereas most
of the studies on the relations between childrens moral emotions and social
skills have been cross-sectional, Zhou and colleagues (2002) demonstrated
65
that childrens empathy was positively related to childrens social competence

concurrently and 2 years later.
In addition, empathy and/or sympathy have been associated with childrens social-cognitive abilities. In particular, it is assumed that children who
understand others emotions are likely to exhibit higher levels of caring and
sympathy for others (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Ensor & Hughes,
2005; Denham & Couchoud, 1991). In one recent investigation, Eggum and
colleagues (2011) showed that understanding others emotions positively predicted some indices of sympathy (i.e., child-reported) and was positively related to later prosocial orientation. Similarly, empathy or sympathy have been
associated with childrens perspective-taking skillsthe ability to understand
anothers thoughts, feelings or situation (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987b; FitzGerald & White, 2003; Roberts & Strayer, 1996; Eisenberg, Zhou, & Koller, 2001),
as well as childrens ability to understand anothers mental state (i.e., theory of
mind; Eggum et al., 2011). These skills would be expected to foster childrens
social competence; thus, it is possible that sympathy is related to childrens
social competence because it is mediated by their social understanding skills.
In contrast to the relations of caring behaviors to childrens positive social
behaviors, children who tend to be low in empathy/sympathy or prosocial reactions have been found to be especially at risk for aggression or externalizing problems (Batanova & Loukas, 2011; Belgrave, Nguyen, Johnson, & Hood,
2011; Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura & Zimbardo, 2000; Carlo,
Mestre, Samper, Tur, & Armenta, 2011; Murphy, Shepard, Eisenberg, Fabes, &
Guthrie, 1999; Wilson, 2003; Zhou et al., 2002). Moreover, deficits in empathy
and remorse are seen as common in individuals with antisocial personality
disorders (Blair, 1999b; Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith, 1997; Frick, 1998). For example, Zhou et al. (2002) demonstrated that children high in empathy tended
to have fewer externalizing problems, even after controlling for levels of childrens externalizing problems two years earlier.
Importantly, the negative relation between aggression and prosocial behaviors may change with age. Gill and Calkins (2003) showed higher levels of empathy in aggressive toddlerswhich may indicate that some level of assertion
is needed to approach an unfamiliar person. Nonetheless, the negative relation between these constructs may be more consistent in the early school years
than at younger ages. Kienbaum (2001) showed girls, but not boys, empathy
to be positively related to aggression in a study of 5-year-olds. Hastings and
colleagues (2000) found empathy was negatively related to problem behaviors
by age 67 but not at age 45. Thus, it is possible that the negative relations
between empathy and aggression or externalizing problems are not evident
until later in development or using measures that do not require some level of
approach behavior.
66
Thus, there is a growing body of literature on the relations of empathy and

prosocial behavior to childrens social competence and low problem behaviors.
It is important to note, however, that the relations of empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior to childrens social competence may be explained
by a third variable. For example, childrens temperamental regulation skills
(i.e., effortful control) have been related to social competence (Spinrad et al.,
2006; 2007; Eisenberg et al., 2003), low problem behaviors (Eisenberg et al.,
2009b, 2010; Eisenberg, Spinrad & Eggum, 2010), and empathy-related responding (see below).
T EM PER A M EN TA L O R I G I N S O F EM PAT H Y- R EL AT ED
R ES P O N D I N G A N D PR O SO C I A L B EH AV I O R
Given the importance of empathy-related development to childrens social

competence and maladjustment, researchers have sought to understand what
might account for individual differences in childrens sympathy and personal
distress. Individual differences in temperament have received considerable attention in this domain. Specifically, two major components of temperament,
emotionality and regulation, have been identified as particularly important
to understanding childrens empathy and related responses. Eisenberg and
colleagues (1994) suggested that individuals who tend to experience intense
and frequent emotions and who are unable to regulate such arousal would be
prone to overarousal in response to anothers distress, and this overarousal
may result in personal distress reactions. On the other hand, individuals who
have the ability to regulate their emotions are expected to experience sympathy, rather than personal distress, because they can prevent themselves from
becoming overly aroused.
Regulation. Childrens emotion regulation has received considerable attention in the literature. Individual differences in effortful control, a construct
that involves the ability to shift and focus attention as needed and to control
behavior as needed, has been viewed as important set of abilities contributing to emotion regulation (Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004). Children high in effortful control would be expected to be able to regulate their emotions and,
consequently, to be prone to express sympathy and prosocial behavior when
confronted with anothers distress.
Indeed, dispositional regulation or effortful control has been has been positively related to sympathy/empathy (Eisenberg et al., 1996b, Guthrie et al.,
1997; Ladd & Profilet, 1996; Murphy, Shepard, Eisenberg, Fabes, & Guthrie,
1999; Panfile & Laible, 2012; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994). For example,
Eisenberg, Michalik, and colleagues (2007) showed that high levels of effortful
67
control and growth in effortful control were related to high levels of sympathy
in adolescence, especially for boys. Similar relations have been found between
emotion regulation and childrens prosocial behavior (Diener & Kim, 2004;
Eisenberg et al., 1996a).
Situational measures of regulation also have been used to understand the
role of regulation in childrens empathy and prosocial behavior. In one recent
investigation, resting RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia) and RSA suppression (reduction in RSA to a challenge) were respectively used as markers reflecting the ability to regulate internal bodily processes and the ability to cope
with challenge in a longitudinal sample of toddlers from 18 to 30 months of
age (Liew et al., 2011). Results demonstrated that resting RSA was positively,
albeit weakly, associated with empathic concern, and RSA suppression predicted higher prosocial behavior over time.
There is also evidence that personal distress reactions are related to relatively
low regulation abilities (Eisenberg, Fabes, et al., 1998; Guthrie et al., 1997; Valiente et al., 2004). For example, the predicted negative relation between personal distress and regulation has been found using physiological measures of
personal distress, such heart rate acceleration (Guthrie et al., 1997). Further,
using parents reports and observed regulation (combined), Valiente and colleagues (2004) showed a negative relation between regulation and personal
distress when viewing an empathy-inducing film. Thus, overall, there appears
to be ample evidence that regulatory processes are involved in childrens experiences of sympathy versus personal distress.
Emotionality. Researchers have also been interested in the role of emotions
and emotional reactivity on childrens moral behavior. As hypothesized by
Eisenberg and Fabes (1992), childrens intense and frequent negative emotions
have been associated with relatively low sympathy (Eisenberg et al., 1996b;
Roberts & Strayer, 1996). Dispositional negative emotionality has been negatively related to prosocial behavior (see Diener & Kim, 2004; Strayer & Roberts, 2004). Thus, emotionality has been shown to be an important correlate of
empathy-related responding; however, distinct emotions (i.e., anger, sadness,
fear, joy) also likely contribute to empathy and prosocial behavior.
Personal distress reactions have been related to childrens fear reactivity,
and researchers have suggested that such findings may be due to fearful childrens tendency to become distressed when confronted with an evocative situation (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Liew et al., 2011; Spinrad & Stifter,
2006; Young, Fox, & Zahn-Waxler, 1999). Liew and colleagues (2011) found
that toddlers fear responses were positively related to personal distress reactions. Similarly, Spinrad and Stifter (2006) found fear in infancy to be related
to higher personal distress reactions toward a strangers simulated distress
8months later.
68
Relations between sympathy or empathy and childrens fear have been

somewhat mixed. Spinrad and Stifter (2006) unexpectedly showed positive associations between fear in infancy and toddlers concerned attention, perhaps
indicating that fear predisposes children to at least some level of attunement
with others emotions. Moreover, researchers have demonstrated that fearful children were likely to experience guilta potential index of moral self
(Kochanska, Gross, Lin, & Nichols, 2002). However, other researchers have
found negative relations or no relations between fear/behavioral inhibition
and empathy in young children (Liew et al., 2011; van der Mark, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2002; Young, Fox, & Zahn-Waxler, 1999).
Thus, it is somewhat unclear whether fearfulness promotes or inhibits childrens empathic sympathy reactions, and the relations may change with age or
measurement.
Few relations between childrens fear and their prosocial tendencies have
been found, although Liew and colleagues (2011) showed that low fearfulness
at 18 months longitudinally predicted 30-month prosocial behavior toward a
distressed experimenter, even after controlling for 18-month helping. Related
to fear, childrens shyness also has been negatively related to childrens prosocial behavior and empathy in children (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994;
Russell, Hart, Robinson & Olsen, 2003; Young et al., 1999). In one study, shyness was negative associated with sympathy for girls, but not for boys (Eisenberg, Fabes, Karbon, Murphy, Carlo & Wosinski, 1996). These findings are
likely due the fact that children often need to approach the distressed victim
when behaving prosocially.
The association between childrens sadness and their empathy and prosocial behavior is also somewhat unclear. It is possible that sadness may evoke
feelings of sympathy and in turn, prosocial behavior. Indeed, in work with
adults, sadness has been positively related to sympathy (Eisenberg et al., 1994).
Edwards and colleagues (2013) showed that sadness predicted higher levels of
preschoolers sympathy across a year, even when controlling for prior levels of
sympathy. These findings suggest that dispositional sadness may increase childrens recognition of anothers sadness, perspective taking, and experiencing
sympathy. This study is noteworthy because it is the only study, to our knowledge, to examine the relations of dispositional sadness to toddlers sympathy
using longitudinal and multimethod data.
Similar to the work on childrens aggression and externalizing problems
noted above, childrens anger and frustration have been inversely related to
prosocial behaviors and empathy-related responding (Carlo, Roesch, & Melby,
1998; Diener & Kim, 2004; Roberts & Strayer, 1996; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Strayer & Roberts, 2004). Thus, intense anger may reflect overarousal and low regulatory skills, undermining sympathy reactions.
69
Finally, childrens positive emotionality is thought to be positively related to

sympathy and prosocial behavior (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). Positive emotionality may foster childrens prosocial behavior, perhaps through
their social competent behavior, or perhaps because content individuals are
better able to focus on others emotions than are those who are burdened by
intense negative emotionality. Indeed, Sallquist, Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum,
and Gaertner (2009) studied positive emotion and positive empathy (feelings
of happiness upon observing anothers joy). Childrens observed positive emotionality and mothers reports of positive emotion were positively related to
mothers reports of young childrens positive empathy.
Eisenberg and Fabes (1992) suggested that emotionality and regulation
may interact to explain childrens sympathy and/or prosocial behavior. That
is, optimally regulated children would be expected to experience sympathy,
regardless of their level of emotional intensity. On the other hand, for children
who are prone to negative emotionality or intense negative emotions, personal
distress reactions would be anticipated unless they have the ability to regulate
their emotions. Consistent with this notion, Diener and Kim (2004) showed
an interaction between anger-proneness and childrens regulatory skills in
predicting prosocial behavior, such that well-regulated children were high on
prosocial behavior regardless of their level of anger-proneness. However, for
children with low regulation skills, higher scores on anger predicted lower
prosocial behaviors. Similarly, Eisenberg et al. (1996b) found that children
highest in sympathy were high in emotional intensity (for both positive and
negative emotions) and well regulated (also see Eisenberg et al., 1998). These
initial findings are intriguing although more support for these ideas is needed.
C O N C LU S I O N S
Research indicates that prosocial behaviors and empathy/sympathy generally

increases with age until mid-childhood or adolescence and that individual differences are related to temperament. Prosocial behaviors and empathy-related
responding are predictive of childrens social competence and low problem
behaviors. There is still much to explore with relation to morality from a developmental perspective.
In thinking about the origins of childrens prosocial behavior and empathyrelated responding, researchers rightly assume that such behaviors are affected
by heredity as well as their relationships with others. Due to space constraints,
these issues have not been considered in this chapter. A future direction for research is to better understand the genetic contributions to childrens empathy
and prosocial responding (see Knafo & Israel, 2010). The ways that parents can
70
encourage caring behaviors in their children also has received considerable attention (see Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006); however, more research focusing on how parenting and/or the environment moderates the contribution of
genetics is needed (Bakermans-Kranenburg & Van IJzendoorn, 2011; Knafo,
Israel & Ebstein, 2011).
Another area for further study is to focus research on the role of culture in
childrens empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior. It is important
to understand whether the development, associations, and origins of caring
generalize to minority populations. For example, the relations of parenting
and childrens regulatory abilities to Indonesian childrens prosocial behaviors have been studied, and they appear to be somewhat similar to those with
children in Western societies (Eisenberg, Liew & Pidada, 2001; 2004). Further,
childrens prosocial behavior and empathy toward members of disadvantaged
groups should be examined. In one recent investigation, European-American
children (ages 513) felt more positive about helping an unfamiliar child from
a racial in-group versus a racial out-group (African-American) as well as a
greater obligation to help a child from the racial in-group (Makariev & Lagattuta, in press). In addition, interactions between minority and majority children may have complex effects on childrens prosocial behavior/sympathy: In
Indonesia, 7th graders from a minority group with at least one friend from
the majority culture were more sympathetic and prosocial (Eisenberg et al.,
2009). The factors that are responsible for childrens empathy toward members
of out-groups (e.g., socialization strategies) and ways that across-group relationships affect prosocial development have clear implications for promoting
moral action in our society.
Finally, it is important to understand whether the tendency for individuals
to care and help others may be explained by a moral personality trait. Very
little is known about the role of empathy-related responding in emergence of a
moral self (Kochanska, Koenig, Barry, Kim, & Yoon, 2010). However, there
is evidence of some consistency in childrens moral motivations and sympathy (see Malti, Gummerum, Keller, & Buchmann, 2009; Malti & Krettenauer,
in press). Moreover, higher levels of childrens and adolescents moral reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas, as (i.e., hypothetical dilemmas about
whether to help another at a cost to the self), as well as other-oriented prosocial moral reasoning, tend to be related to higher levels of empathy and especially sympathy (Eisenberg, Carlo, Murphy, & Van Court, 1995; Eisenberg et
al., 1987; Eisenberg, Zhou, & Koller, 2001). Future research should explore this
possibility and the ways to foster these traits in young children.
Empathy, Justice, and Social

Change
MARTIN L. HOFFMAN
Empathy is no longer just an academic topic. Its in the news. President Obama
decided the Supreme Court needs empathic justices who understand that justice isnt about some abstract legal theory [but also] about how our laws affect
the daily realities of peoples lives and who are capable of understanding and
identifying with peoples hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes. Some extreme conservatives apparently
took this as code for compassion for the poor and higher taxes for every one
else and declared a war on empathy (Froomkin, 2009). His remarks opened
a can of worms that spilled over the mediasee Fish (2009) for over 300 letters
explaining, criticizing, or praising them in the New York Times online.
Besides politics, books and articles regularly appear that suggest how to cultivate empathy, and present it as a solution to the worlds problems. Rifkin
(2010) claims society has evolved over the centuries and we already live in an
empathic civilization, albeit part of a race with entropy (global warming,
climate change, carbon dioxide), which we must win to avoid civilizations collapse and save the planet. Pinker (2011) says we have less violence per capita
than ever before due partly to increased empathy (and self-control, morality,
reason). An obvious counter is there may be more empathy now than before
72
and a big drop in per capita violence, but this means little and provides small
comfort in light of the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust, other genocides,
two world wars and continued warfare hot and cold against nations, terrorism, drugsall in the last century (for a full critique see Snyder, 2012). This
critical line of reasoning led some to conclude that despite many experiments
showing empathy contributes to helping distressed others, it is overrated and
just a sideshow for societys real driving forces (Brooks, 2011). We may ask,
is empathy really overrated, a sideshow? It surely isnt the main event. But it
is not a sideshow: some respected theologians come close to equating it with
God: The true hallmark of Christian living is mercy [which is] . . . entering
into the chaos of someone else (Keenan, 2007).
To throw light on the matter, and perhaps muddy the waters a bit, I review
what we know not about empathys progress through the ages but the processes
involved in its contributions to society and cultural change in the modern age.
I focus mainly on empathic distress, its arousal, and its impact on laws. Laws
are arguably the major vehicle of social change. They are designed to be rational and impervious to the influence of empathy and other emotions. This goes
back, at least, to Platos version of the speech Socrates gave in 399 b.c. as he defended himself against charges of corrupting the young: . . . facing the utmost
danger, I do not think it is right for a man to appeal to the jury or to get himself
acquitted by doing so: he ought to inform them of the facts and convince them
by argument. The jury does not sit to dispense justice as a favor, but to decide
where justice lies, and the oath which they have sworn is not to show favor at
their own discretion, but to return a just and lawful verdict (Plato, 1892).
If empathy affects laws it surely affects other aspects of society, but its impact
on laws alone profoundly affects the countrys political and economic institutions and thus its history. Other vehicles of change, like newspapers, the media,
and religion play a role too, but laws are less a matter of individual choice, and
once enacted they affect everyones behavior. My focus here is laws that had a
significant, enduring impact on social and cultural change. I draw heavily from
my own work on empathy, which has evolved over the years (1976, 2000, 2008,
2011), and is here updated and dealing with empathys arousal, development,
contributions to justice, and its limitations, as well as the law-review literature.
EM PAT H Y-A R O U S A L M O D ES
There appear to be five empathy-arousing modes. Threemimicry, conditioning, direct associationare automatic and preverbal. Twomediated association and perspective-takingare typically voluntary and involve language
and cognition.
Empathy, Justice, and Social Change
73
Mimicry was intuitively understood two and a half centuries ago by Adam
Smith (1759/1976):The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack
rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him
do (pp. 4,10). It was more precisely defined 150 years later by Lipps (1903b) as
an innate, involuntary, isomorphic response to anothers expression of emotion that occurs in two steps operating in close sequence: one automatically,
rapidly, and without conscious awareness changes ones facial expression,
voice, and posture in synchrony with slightest changes in the models facial,
vocal, postural expressions of feeling (Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed, 2000);
the resulting muscle movements trigger afferent feedback to the brain, producing feelings in observers that match the models.
Conditioning. Empathic distress becomes a conditioned response when
ones actual distress is paired with anothers expression of distress. This happens in infancy when a mothers distress stiffens her body and is transferred
to the infant in the course of physical handling. The mothers facial and verbal
expressions of distress accompanying her body stiffening then become conditioned stimuli that can evoke distress in the child even in the absence of
physical contact; and they can generalize to the facial and verbal expressions
of distress by anyone, which can subsequently arouse distress in the infant.
Direct association makes the connection between a victims expression of
distress or cues in the victims situation and the observers own painful past
experience, without requiring conditioning. Having experienced separation
oneself may be all it takes to empathize with someone in the midst a distressing separation. Likewise, only if you have experienced hangover can you empathize with those who wake up in terrible agony because of having drunk
too much; only if you have had children can you adopt a mothers perspective; and only if you have slept outside can you understand a homeless person
(Hakansson, 2003).
Empathy aroused by these modes is passive, involuntary, based on surface
cues, and requires little if any cognitive processing and awareness that the
source of ones distress is anothers pain, not ones own. I describe them here
in detail because they have been neglected in the empathy literature. Though
limited to empathy with simple emotions and victims who are visibly present,
they are important because they allow infants to have an empathic response
whether or not they know the source of their pain is anothers distress. More
important here is that all three modes continue to operate and give empathy
an involuntary dimension throughout life. Most of their limitations are gradually overcome by language and cognitive development, especially selfother
differentiation, which support the cognitively advanced modes and enable empathy with subtle emotions such as sadness, guilt, disappointment in oneself,
and victims who are absent.
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Verbally mediated association. Here the victims distress is communicated

and connected to ones own painful past experience through language, which
makes it possible to empathize with someone who is absent (a letter from the
victim, someone elses description of his plight, a newspaper article).
Perspective-taking. David Hume wrote that because people are constituted
similarly and have similar life experiences, imagining oneself in anothers
place converts the others situation into mental images that evoke the same
feeling in oneself (1751/1957). Adam Smith went more deeply into the experience of empathy: By the imagination we place ourselves in the others
situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, enter, as it
were, into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him
and thence form some idea of the sensations and even feel something which,
though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them (1759/1976, p. 261).
Modern research, begun in the 1950s, reveals three types of perspectivetaking: (a) self-focusedimagining how one would feel if the stimuli impinging on the victim were impinging on oneself (Humes and Smiths type), especially when enhanced by association with similar painful events in ones
own past, and to some extent independent of changes in the victims facial
expression, voice, or posture. A widely televised example is the ex-wife of New
Jerseys former disgraced governor describing how she felt watching the televised scene of the stoic-looking wife standing off to the side as her husband,
the governor of New York, apologized for a sexual indiscretion (Celizic, 2008):
My heart ached for her when I was watching her. I could see the pain in her
face, and I certainly know what that feels like. Shes there physically, but Im
sure shes not absorbing anything thats going on. Self-focused perspectivetaking can produce as much, at times even more, pain than that felt by the
victim (see discussion below of vicarious trauma in therapists). The second
type of perspective-taking (b) other-focusedfocusing ones attention on the
victims feelings, life condition, or behavior in similar situations, sometimes
enhanced by categorical information (stereotypes) and theories of how people
behave in similar situationsseems to arouse less intense empathic distress
than self-focused (Batson, Early, & Salvarini, 1997). This may be because it is
more cognitively demanding and focused more on the others experience and
less on evoking associations with ones own painful past. In the third type (c)
combined self/other focus, one focuses on both the victim and oneself, simultaneously or sequentially. This may be the most frequent mode because people
find it difficult to confine their focus on the other without drifting into their
own thoughts and feelings. It is especially important for empathys contribution in the real world because it benefits from both the emotional intensity
of self-focused and the enlarged scope and sustained attention to the victim
afforded by other-focused. It is instructive to note that although most people
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can take anothers perspective, actually doing so is culture dependent (Wu &
Keysar, 2007).
Just as the preverbal modes enable an automatic primitive empathy, the
higher order modes enable mature empathy to develop, beginning with a
veridical empathy that more or less matches the victims feelings in the immediate situation and progressing to empathy that takes account of his life
condition, situation, personal history, and most important for present purposes, empathy with a victim group or category.
To summarize, the five arousal modes can operate alone or in any combination. Together they enable empathy with whatever distress cues are available:
a victims facial, vocal, or postural cues can be picked up through any or all
modes if one is nearby with a clear view of the victim; situational cues can
be picked up through conditioning and association even if one cannot see or
hear the victim; distress expressed verbally, in writing, or by someone else can
arouse empathy through the more cognitive modes. Multiple modes not only
enable but often compel one to respond to anothers distress empathically
instantly, automatically, with little or no awareness. Even the cognitive modes,
often drawn out, voluntarily controlled and involving reflection, can kick in
immediately if one attends closely to the victim. This multi-determined quality makes empathic distress a reliable response and may explain why it has
consistently been found to motivate helping others, even strangers, in distress
(Eisenberg & Miller, 1987)though not competitors or people one envies or
actively dislikes, in which case one may blame the victim or feel pleasure in his
distress (Hareli & Weiner, 2002). It may also explain why empathy may have
survived natural selection (de Waal, 2012; Hoffman, 1981) and has a hereditary
component (Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, & Emde, 1992).
A note about mirror neurons. In the mid-nineties when a team of Italian researchers noticed that certain brain cells were activated both when a monkey
performed an action and when that monkey watched another monkey perform
that same action, mirror neurons were discovered. Since that time mirror
neurons have also been found to operate in humans, not only for motor acts
and intended motor acts, but also by communicating with the brains limbic
system they operate in relation to certain emotions: similar neural pathways
are activated when one feels disgust and sees the facial grimace of disgust on
someone else (Wicker, Keysers et al., 2003). Some researchers assume the same
is true for other motor-expressive (facial expression, voice, posture) emotions
like pain and anger. If true this would show mirror neurons to be the neural
substrate of mimicry. And some assume future research will show mirror neurons underlie empathy with any emotion.
For now, there are things about empathy in the real world, where causes
of anothers state are often outside the situation or ambiguous, that mirror
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neurons cant easily explain: empathic anger toward an aggressor on behalf

of a victim who doesnt feel anger, empathy with a group like the quotation
below from my students empathy with American slaves, responses like this
from Oliner and Oliners (1988) interviews of Germans who rescued Jews from
the Nazis: I think there was a double feeling: a feeling of compassion for Jews
and anger toward the Germans (p. 118). Mirror neurons also cant explain
empathy with someone whose feelings belie his life condition (a child happily
playing, unaware he is terminally ill). Mirror neuron activation might actually interfere with processing life-condition information about the victim and
thinking of absent or future victims, as in criminal court trials (see below). Finally, what we knew about empathy before mirror neurons discoveryits developmental stages, arousal modes, shaping by casual attribution, biases, and
other limitationswould still apply, as would the external events that arouse
emotions in others that we empathize with. Mirror neurons may be part of
empathic responses but not an explanation or cause.
What then do mirror neurons buy us? Rochat (2001) criticizes psychologists who seem to gain intellectual comfort by increasingly seeking neurosciences molecular and mechanistic high tech stamp of approval. But there is
a good side to this: the idea that all humans share mirror neurons and mirror
neurons cause empathy has helped publicize empathy beyond the university.
As Rochat also notes, knowing monkeys and humans share mirror neurons
helps substantiate evolutionary continuity in empathic feeling. Some neuroscientists suggest that spreading the word about mirror neurons may help
break down barriers between peoples and foster world peace (Iacaboni, 2007).
So, though we always assumed empathy has a solid neural base and mirror
neurons may not do much more than tell us what that base is, knowing there
is a base and what it is might ultimately contribute to positive social change. It
might also have medical value, for example, helping find a cure for autism and
other empathy-deficit disorders.
EM PAT H I C OV ER-A R O U SA L
Empathic distress increases with the intensity of the victims actual distress
but can become so aversiveempathic over-arousalthat bystanders shift attention to their own distress, leave or blame the victim, or think of other things
to turn off the image of the victim (Hoffman, 1978). Strayer (1993) showed
513-year-olds film clips of distressed children (unjustly punished; forcibly
separated from family; disabled child climbing stairs). The subjects empathic
distress and attention to the victim increased with intensity of the victims distress until it reached the level of the victims distress, after which the subjects
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focus shifted to themselves. Bandura and Rosenthal (1966) gave adults watching someone being given electric shocks a drug that intensified their empathic
distress, which they reduced with distracting thoughts and attending to lab
details. People are especially vulnerable to empathic over-arousal when they
feel unable to reduce victims distress or keep their empathic distress within
a tolerable range. Nursing trainees new to hospital wards were so empathically over-aroused by terminally ill patients that they tried to avoid them, but
changed when they found they could improve patients quality of life (Williams, 1989). Similarly, children who exert emotional control and are taught
coping strategies for handling anxiety at home are less vulnerable to empathic
over-arousal, can keep empathic distress within a tolerable range, and maintain their focus on the victims distress (Eisenberg, Fabes, Schaller, Carlo, &
Miller, 1991; Valiente, Eisenberg, et al. 2004).
Empathic over-arousal and vicarious traumatization. I originally advanced
the empathic over-arousal concept to explain bystanders turning away from
victims. This doesnt apply to people who are highly committed (witnesses,
see below) or whose role requires staying and helping (clinicians, nurses, rescue
workers). There is a substantial literature on trauma clinicians compassion
fatigue or vicarious trauma (Figley, 1995; Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995),
which I suggest may be due to empathic over-arousal (Hoffman, 2000, 2002).
I asked 125 clinicians how they felt and coped in their most recent therapy
session with a trauma patient.1 They reported lots of empathic over-arousal
with cognitive disruptions and horrible images, nightmares, and physical
symptoms that were often hard to shake off afterward ( . . . I felt the sadness
re-surge and envelope me . . . almost impossible to concentrate and attend
properly; . . . My neck felt strained, tired, stomach ached, dizzy). Proximal
causes of the empathic over-arousal were patients facial, vocal, and postural
expressions of pain (tears, description of childhood events, crying why dont
they understand how what they do affects me?); vivid trauma narratives that
evoked painful images (I still see the picture I saw as she spoke of the man
who hurt her, he looks so malevolent . . . I imagined her small body size with a
grown adult, her grimace of pain); a calm demeanor that masks intense suffering (Oh my God hes speaking as though he were describing the weather
[drunken father threatened him and mother with gun] . . . hes fully dissociated from the feelings, been wounded so badly). In some cases the clinicians
empathic distress is more intense than the patients distress that evoked it,
though of course not the patients original trauma.
Patients traumas sometimes evoke images and feelings of distress associated
with therapists own past traumas (counter-transference), which can divert
1. Tatiana Freedman helped construct the questionnaire and collected the data.
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their attention from the patient. This can be harmful, but it can also be helpful
when the therapist uses his own trauma constructively, as in these instances:
His pain/suffering [car sideswiped and crashed in wall] have deprived
him of hope. I have felt hopeless in life so I can relate to this. I have overcome hopelessness and I believe he can too. He knows this and in effect he
is both asking me to heal him and teach him how. Because of my experience I feel I can help him do both.
Same thing happened to me [witnessed car-crash death of young
daughter]. Had image of her car crash scene, her smiling child, my crash
scene, my smiling daughter. Patients experience as a whole evokes my
memories, contributes to feelings/images that continue to resonate forever, but its also cathartic, enlightening, and has positive outcomes for
people who have had the trauma. Burnout occurs with people who have
not had trauma: they fear it, so keep distance from those who have.
Told very vividly [repeated abuse in childhood by alcoholic father and
recent beating by husband], was very disturbing. History of physical violence in my own family, so these images keep reverberating with me and
Im trying to use them to get deep understanding of her feelings in her
current situation.
The coping strategies clinicians use to keep empathic over-arousal under
control vary: gaining distance by imagining a patients trauma narrative is
just a movie; splitting ones focus so that one is partly an objective observer;
taking time out by pushing trauma images aside, thinking about other things,
then regrouping; reminding oneself of past successes with patients. They also
use breathing and other relaxation techniques, consult with colleagues and
supervisors, talk it over with their own therapists, spouses, friends (If I cant
get the terrible images out of my mind I seek co-workers for debriefing),
join or start self-help groups, do volunteer community service, start a strenuous exercise routine. One clinician (a witness?see below) took to political
action on behalf of people with her patients problem (Ipictured that terrified child who had been physically and sexually abused, neglected, being
threatened with removal from her foster/adoptive family. I had thoughts of
lashing out at the system, and as result of many such cases, I did work to
change it).
Trauma clinicians empathic over-arousal is part of an ongoing process of
interaction between intense empathic distress and attempts to control it in
order to maintain ones professional focus, keep going personally, and help the
patient. Something similar though less dramatic may happen with any clinician whose patients describe painful though not quite traumatic events. Being
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a clinician is thus a risky business and can be hazardous to ones health (several
in our sample called patient traumas toxic, infectious, like a virus passed
from listener to listener entrenched in mind like a foreign body.). That most
clinicians stay with their patients despite bouts of intense empathic pain suggests clinical interviews are a type of prosocial moral encounter (see Hoffman
2000 for other types), and being a clinician is a moral profession. The same
may be said for other health professionals and caretakers who treat people in
pain on a regular basis.
Empathic over-arousal and vicarious trauma may be experienced by
anyone daily exposed to descriptive news reports of people in pain throughout
the world. This fits the bystander category where one can easily turn away,
but it extends the scope of intense empathic distress and near-empathic-
over-arousal experience to include most Americans and others with access to
the media. This points up the enormous reach of empathy beyond the laboratory. Empathys actual impact on society, mediated by laws, is discussed later.
D E V ELO PM EN T O F M AT U R E A D U LT EM PAT H Y
Empathy is an emotional state triggered by anothers emotional state or situation: one feels what the other feels or may reasonably be expected to feel in
the others situation. Since our topic concerns laws and other change agents
dealing with people in distress (due to violence, fraud, injustice), our focus is
empathic distress. Mature empathic distress has an active metacognitive dimension: one feels distressed but knows its a response to anothers misfortune,
not ones own, and has an idea of how the other feels. This requires a cognitive
sense of oneself and others as separate beings with independent inner states
(feelings, thoughts, perceptions) that are only partly reflected in outward behavior, and with separate identities and life conditions.
Empathy develops naturally as part of the interaction of arousal modes,
selfother differentiation, and language and cognitive development, but also in
response to parents who show affection, model empathic behavior, and use induction discipline (Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996). Before
3 or 4 years one can empathize mainly through the preverbal modes, with
little or no metacognitive awareness.2 Empathy keeps developing along with
reflective selfother differentiation in six or more stages. Ill skip the first three
except the developmental transition most relevant to mature adult empathy.
2. Some infant research suggests selfother differentiation exists in early infancy, possibly at
birth, but this is surely rudimentary, nonreflective, perhaps a step above distinguishing ones
body from the surrounding environment.
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This transition occurs at around 2 years. As part of the childs growing sense
of self and others as separate beings, empathic distress is transformed partly
into sympathetic distress: the child continues to feel empathic distress, more
or less matching the others feeling, but now adds a reactive feeling of sympathetic distress or compassion for the other. From then on, empathic distress has a sympathetic component that gives it a clearly prosocial dimension:
one wants to reduce the others distress, not only ones own empathic distress.
Empathic/sympathetic distress would be a more exact but cumbersome term,
so please note empathic distress past toddlerhood and through life includes
feeling for as well as with victims. (For evidence and analysis of this process see
Hoffman, 2007). What follows is not a strict stage sequence but a loose description of empathys mature development.
Veridical empathy. Beyond toddlerhood children begin having a clear sense of
ones body as a physical entity that exists outside ones subjective self and can be
seen by others. They also become aware that others have inner states independent
of their own, and they can recognize and empathize with anothers feelings, take
anothers perspective, and offer help that fits the others needs rather than their
own. Their empathic ability becomes more complex with the growing awareness
(a) that people can display emotions not felt and feel emotions not displayed and
(b) increased understanding of the causes, consequences, and correlates of different emotions, which allows them to empathize not only with simple but subtle
distress feelings such as disappointment, fear of failing, low self-esteem, desire
for independence, and even fear of losing face if one accepts help.
Empathic distress over anothers life condition. By mid childhood, around
57 years, children show signs of knowing a persons current feelings can be
influenced by past experience (Lagatutta & Wellman, 2001), along with the
emerging conception of oneself and others as continuous persons with separate histories and identities. By 9 or 10 they are aware that others feel joy, anger,
sadness, fear not only in the immediate situation but also in their lives beyond
the situation. And as they get older they respond empathically not only to anothers distress in the immediate situation but also to the other as a full person,
including what they know about his chronically happy or distressful life, met
and unmet goals, which may seem intuitively to be as good an index of wellbeing as his present state. They can thus empathize with someone who is chronically ill, emotionally deprived, hopelessly poor, regardless of his immediate
state. If he seems sad, knowing his life is sad may intensify ones empathic distress; if he seems happy the contradiction may make one stop short and rather
than feel empathic joy one may realize a sad life is a better index of wellbeing
and respond with empathic sadness or a mixture of joy and sadness (Szporn,
2001). Mature empathy is thus a response to a network of cues from anothers
behavior, emotional expression, immediate situation, and life condition.
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Empathy for distressed groups. When children start forming social concepts
and classifying people, they can comprehend the plight not only of individuals
but also groups or classes of people (e.g., chronically ill, homeless, slaves, victims and survivors of natural disasters, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, war,
terrorism, prejudice, unfair laws). They are thus able to empathize not only
with an individuals but also with a groups distressing life condition (empathy narrative). The two may go together, as when empathy generalizes from an
individual to a group, for example from the famous photograph over a dozen
years ago of a burned baby in a firemans arms, to all Oklahoma City bombing
victims. Indeed, it may be difficult to empathize directly with an abstract mass
without first empathizing with an individual victim and then generalizing to
the group. This is also an example of what I call media-enhanced empathic distress for a group, which must figure largely in any theory of empathys spread
throughout society.
As with a single victim, one can empathize with a groups life condition that
contradicts the groups behavior: When I read accounts of slaves in America
who were extremely religious and joyful in religious ceremonies, I feel sort
of happy that they were doing something that gave them a sense of joy, even
ecstasy, but I am reminded that they were oppressed and this is a false sense
of joy or hope in the midst of a distressing, unfair life. I feel happy that theyre
happy despite being enslaved, but I feel bad for them too because this religious
hope or joy is really a false sense of security. It was a bitter irony that they
took joy from the promised salvation of this religion, given them by the slave
owners whom they wanted to be liberated from (from a students term paper).
Empathy with a groups life condition can merge with ones stereotypes, attitudes, and developing ideologies regarding groups. This gives empathy added
depth, broadens its scope, and adds to its durability (embedding an emotion in
a cognitive structure makes it more durable), while adding motive force to the
attitudes and ideologies.
Empathys depth. Empathy research has dealt mainly with responding to
anothers immediate emotional stateneglecting how long the empathy lasts,
what turns it off, its rapid shifts and changes due to causal attribution, and
its depth. I deal here with depth, which pertains to an empathic responses
intensity, duration, and extent to which it penetrates ones motive system and
changes ones behavior beyond the immediate situation. Kaplan (2005), working on empathic responses to trauma in visual media, introduces two concepts
at opposite ends of the depth continuum: empty empathy and witnessing.
Empty empathy results from brief exposure to trauma images presented in
rapid succession, allowing only fleeting empathic responses, each cancelled
by the next and thus devoid of motivation to help victims. In witnessing (see
also Laub, 1995), one is so intensely moved by exposure to anothers trauma
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as to become fully committed to help, often altering ones life course to do so.
Between the two is vicarious trauma not only in clinicians, but also anyone repeatedly exposed to trauma victims. Kaplan sees this as widespread, due to our
living in a trauma culture where one is constantly bombarded with media
images of people worldwide being traumatized by wars and natural disasters.
Here are five examples of witnessing that show empathys potential contribution to social change (the first three are discussed in detail later): (a) Harriet
Beecher Stowes favorite sons death mobilized her empathy for slaves into the
driving force behind writing Uncle Toms Cabin, which helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War. (b) Lyndon Johnsons deeply felt empathy for poor Mexicans and Blacks contributed to his pushing through Americas first civil rights
law; (c) Tsar Alexanders empathy for serfs contributed to his emancipating
them throughout Russia. Less well known is (d) Susan Sontags self-described
experience of shock, numbness, and being changed forever by images of
atrocity at age 12 when first exposed to Holocaust photos. It affected her life
work, much of which featured mass suffering, culminating in Regarding the
Pain of Others (Sontag, 2003). And (e) Craig Kielburger (1998), award-winning
Canadian author and Noble Peace Prize nominee, also 12 when he saw a lifechanging newspaper photo and read the narrative of a Pakistan boy who was
bonded into labor at age 5, escaped from a factory where he knotted carpets as a
virtual slave, traveled widely speaking against child labor, and was finally murdered. The photo and story so empathically disturbed Kielburger that he went
to the library, called various organizations to learn about child labor, traveled
to Pakistan, and eventually founded and raised money for Free the Children,
the worlds largest network of children helping children through education.
While empty empathy may be a film-and-television-mediated phenomenon, witnessing and depth of feeling in real life as well as mediated contexts
are worth intensive study. As the above examples and what follows show, they
have great potential influence on laws that change society and alter the course
of history. As for witnessings place in empathy theory, I suggest this: one is
overwhelmed with empathic distress but instead of turning away from the distressing image, like most bystanders, one feels compelled to act on the victims
behalf not only in the present but also beyond it, often for a long time and
at great personal cost. This is not very different from how trauma clinicians
handle empathic over-arousal. Witnessing might be included as empathys
final development stage.
EM PAT H Y, L AWS, A N D SO C I E T Y
Laws are not necessarily prosocial or moral, but they qualify as both when
peoples lives and welfare, and therefore empathy, are implicated. Empathy is
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clearly implicated when empathic anger and empathy over the unjust plight
of people victimized by existing laws or absence of protective laws motivate
someone to use his energy, skill, and position in society to help get laws passed
or changed. It is also clearly implicated wwhen empathic feelings lead judges
to make courtroom decisions partly based on empathy for laws victims and
potential victims.
Causal attribution and empathic feeling of injustice. It is long known that
humans, children as well as adults, abhor an explanatory vacuum and spontaneously attribute causality, or when there is ambiguity they ask for causal
explanations of events (Hickling & Wellman, 2001; Weiner, 1985). They presumably attribute causality on witnessing someone in distress. I have written
at length about causal attributions shaping of empathic distress (Hoffman,
2000). Briefly, (1) if the victim caused his own distress, ones empathic distress is diminished or vanishes. Empathic distress becomes, at least partly (2)
sympathetic distressone sympathizes and wants to helpwhen the cause
is beyond the victims control (illness, accident, loss) or when the cause is unknown, as in the developmental transition discussed earlier, as well as the experimental research showing empathys contribution to prosocial behavior; (3)
empathy-based guilt when one has caused the others distress (Etxebarria &
Apodaca, 2005), when ones efforts to help have not alleviated the victims distress (Batson & Weeks, 1996), or when one has not tried to help and thereby allowed the victim to suffer: anticipating guilt over inaction may have motivated
some 1960s Civil Rights activists (Keniston, 1968) and Germans who saved
Jews from Nazis (Oliner & Oliner, 1988); (4) empathic anger when someone
else is the cause, even if the victim is not angry and one feels empathic anger
toward the attacker on the victims behalf; and (5) empathy over injustice when
there is a discrepancy between a victims fate and what he deserves.
Real-life events may produce a rapid succession of causal attributions, shaping and changing ones empathic feeling, even in response to a moments
exposure to a single scene, as this example shows. A male graduate student described a recent event where he saw the driver of an expensive sports car being
wheeled in a stretcher to an ambulance. He did not see the accident, driving
by just afterward: I first assumed it was probably a rich smart-alec kid driving
while drunk or on dope and I did not feel for him. I then thought this might
be unfair, maybe he was rushing because of some emergency, suppose he was
taking someone to the hospital, and then I felt for him. But then I thought, that
was no excuse, he should have been more careful even if it was an emergency,
and my feeling for him decreased. Then I realized the guy might be dying and
I really felt bad for him again. I asked him to dig deep and try to remember
how he felt the moment he first came upon the scene. It was recent enough for
him to recall his immediate response as a painful feeling of shock quickly
followed by the negative attributions and final empathic distress, perhaps not
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unlike the trauma clinicians described earlier who used distracting thoughts
as temporary relief of empathic over-arousal.
Empathic anger. Whats most important for present purposes is when
a perpetrator is involved. One may then feel empathic anger toward the
perpetratoran individual, group, law, the statewhether or not the victim
feels angry. John Stuart Mill (1861/1979) connected empathic anger, justice,
laws, and society: the natural feeling of retaliation rendered by intellect
and sympathy applicable to those hurts that wound us through wounding
others... serves as the guardian of justice. In other words, empathic feeling
of injustice, reinforced by empathic anger, is a crucial link between individuals
and laws by providing voices needed in law-based societies to uphold justice,
object to people and laws that abuse others, and be ready to punish perpetrators or change laws when necessary. Empathic anger is thus a prosocial motive
that gives society a needed backbone. Empathic anger, as a personality trait or
situationally aroused, has been found to motivate both helping victims and
punishing perpetrators (Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003). It may interfere with
forgiveness, although forgiving some harmful acts may be immoral (mass
murder, corrupt mortgage lending practices) because it does an injustice to
actual victims and legitimizes the harmful act. The problem with empathic
anger is to make sure the anger part doesnt dominate and use the empathy
part to justify aggression.
An example of empathy over injustice is Supreme Court Justice Harlans
lone dissent in the case that made separate but equal education the law in
1896. Harlans dissent is suffused with empathic concern for the individual
experience of race discrimination and clearly links it to injustice: We boast
of the freedom enjoyed by our people. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast
with a law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation
upon a large class of our fellow citizens . . . our equals before the law. A law
which, by sinister legislation [allows States] the power to interfere with the
full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to
all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens. The opinion also expresses empathic
anger toward race discrimination and Southern lawyers dissembling about
racial motivation, which he saw as an insult to our intelligence (Pillsbury,
1999).
Fairness/justice. That humans have a natural preference for fairness/justice
and an aversion to unfairness is supported by evolution theory (Silk & Bailey,
2011) and behavioral economics research across cultures (Fehr & Schmidt,
1999; Fehr & Gachter 2005). Culture helps determine exactly what constitutes
fairness: Hundley and Kim (1997) found Koreans judgments of pay fairness
were relatively more sensitive to differences in seniority, education, and family
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size; American judgments were more sensitive to variations in individual job

performance and work effort. Especially interesting, in view of Americas
normative support for individualistic self-serving behavior, are the findings
that recipients who think theyve received more than they deserve may feel
over-benefitted, and this can evoke feelings of guilt and the (often vague) expectation that they may be punished for this (Schroeder, Penner, Dovidio, &
Piliavin, 1995, p. 214). Americans can also accept the loss of their jobs through
downsizing if they believe the managements decision-making process was fair
(Peterson & Cary, 2002). And they show activation of several of the brains
reward regions when treated fairly even if they gain less materially (Tabibnia,
Satpute, & Lieberman, 2008), which adds brain imaging to the mix that suggests most Americans and perhaps other Westerners value fairness itself not
just when fair treatment is to their advantageous. Even 2-year-olds show the
germinal roots, though not a full grasp of the concept of fairness (Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2012).
It seems reasonable to conclude that most people believe a person should
get what he deserves based on performance, effort, and possibly also character
and legal rights; and that punishment for unfair behavior and other misdeeds
should fit the crime. When one sees others get less than deserved, deprived of
rights, or punished excessively, the preference for fairness is violated. This may
motivate action to right the wrong by transforming empathic distress into an
empathic feeling of injustice (Hoffman, 2000). Justice/fairness when violated
may also have its own motive-arousal properties, which would add fuel to the
empathic motivation to act. In any case, justice/fairness adds an element of inclusiveness that makes empathic feeling of injustice a more significant moral,
social, and legally relevant concept than empathy alone.
A note on empathy and fairness/justice, which are not commonly thought of
as being related perhaps because they are at times in conflict, as in the courtroom discussed later. For a full discussion of why they are related see Hoffman
(2000, pp. 228245). For now its enough to say that one way they are related
is that victims of fairness/injustice are likely to arouse empathic feelings of
injustice. There is also fMRI evidence that the same brain regions involved in
empathic pain and disgust are involved when one responds to unfair offers in
a monetary exchange game (Singer, 2007).
A caveat. Like empathys bias (see below) fairness/justice is vulnerable to
bias. One need only keep up with the news to know observers are less likely to
respond to victims of injustice who are members of minority groups or other
cultures, and women. The extent of this bias presumably varies with culture
and historical period.
Individuals whose empathy over injustice changed laws and society. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Toms Cabin (Stowe, 1852/1929) humanized
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and described the living conditions of slaves in the South, was motivated to
write it by empathic distress especially for mothers forcibly separated from
children, and empathic anger at the Fugitive Slave Law, as suggested by this
excerpt: An affluent, politically uninvolved housewifes deeply felt empathy for
slaves she personally knew who have been abused and oppressed all their
lives motivates her to oppose a new law against giving food, clothes, or shelter to escaping slaves. She argues with her husband, an official who supports
the law, saying the Bible says we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
comfort the desolate . . . people dont run away when theyre happy, but out of
suffering. She opposes the shameful, wicked, abominable law and vows to
break it at the earliest opportunity.
Stowes personal motivation to write the book apparently was triggered
by her favorite sons death: (from a letter to her friend) . . . I have been the
mother of seven children, the most loved of all lies buried near my Cincinnati
residence . . . at his dying bed and grave I learned what a poor slave mother
must feel when a child is torn away from her. In those immeasurable depths
of my sorrow it was my only prayer to God that such anguish might not be
suffered in vain . . . the most cruel suffering that I felt could never be consoled
for unless this crushing of my own heart might enable me to work out some
great good to others . . . I allude to this here because I have often felt that much
that is in that book had its roots in the awful scenes and bitter sorrow of that
summer . . . It has left now no trace in my mind except a deep compassion for
the sorrowful, especially for mothers who are separated from their children
(Stowe, 1852/2009). This is a clear example of a type of combined perspectivetaking in which self-focused leads to and continues along with other-focused
perspective-taking.
Did the book accomplish Stowes goal of abolishing slavery? Three hundred thousand copies were sold in the United States the first year of publication (1852), and a million copies in the United Kingdom (which contributed
to worldwide support for emancipation). It was the best-selling novel in the
world in the 19th century (only the Bible sold more). While no one should
underestimate the great services of abolitionists like Garrison, Phillips, Parker
and Sumner, who cast their fortunes into the effort to free the slaves, it is truth
to say that all their efforts were but a drop in the bucket compared with the
stir and power that were in Uncle Toms Cabin. Never in human history has
a work devoted to a great cause had such an instantaneous effect (Ward,
1896). This is surely an exaggeration, but most Civil War historians agree the
book played heavily in the 1850s national debate, which depended largely on
whether Stowes portrayals were true to life. They also agree the book played a
significant role in preparing the nation psychologically for emancipation and
Civil War. It also stoked fires overseas: it influenced the emancipation of the
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Russian serfs and later inspired Lenin, who recalled it as his favorite book in
childhood; it was the first American novel translated and published in China;
it fuelled emancipation in Cuba and Brazil (Reynolds, 2011). Its not an exaggeration to say that by humanizing the slaves and exposing their daily pain the
book aroused empathy for them in hundreds of thousands of people worldwide
and made a profound contribution to social and cultural change in America.
Another example is Lyndon Johnson, who had deeply felt empathy for
the plight of African Americans since emancipation and continuing through
World War II into the 1950s and for the powerless and the poor in general
which came from personal experience with them (Caro, 2002). When he was
21 Johnson spent a year teaching Mexican children in South Texas brush country: he visited their homes, saw the poverty, learned their fathers were paid
slave wages by Anglo farmers. I saw hunger in their eyes and pain in their
bodies. Those little brown bodies had so little and needed so much . . . Icould
never forget the disappointment in their eyes and the quizzical expression on
their faces . . . they seemed to be asking why dont people like me? Why do they
hate me because I am brown?a vivid example of the language of empathy
(see below). Besides teaching, he tried to help them (getting the school board
to buy play equipment, arranging games with other schools) but their life
circumstances interfered. Johnsons empathic anger and feelings of injustice
combined to fuel a promise of future action on their behalf: I swore then and
there that if I ever had a chance to help those underprivileged kids I was going
to do it. That, he said later, was where his dream began of an America where
race, religion, color, and language didnt count against youlong before he
was in the position as senator and later as president to act on it.
As a senator, Johnsons empathy, plus of course his drive, personal ambition,
extraordinary persuasive skills, and knowledge of Congress and the tactical
and strategic levers he could press, enabled him, against relentless opposition
from Southern colleagues, to get Americas first civil rights legislation passed
in 1964. He later backtracked a bit when his strong civil rights stand conflicted with his goal to be president. But even as president he appointed the
first African American to the Supreme Court and won a major addition to the
civil rights laws he had obtained in Congress: the Fair Housing Act, which he
hoped would supplement school desegregation and end ghettoization of black
America. His domestic programs ended up underfunded due to the Vietnam
War and the quagmire in Southeast Asia, which undermined his presidency
and his dreams of building a Great Society. Still, his accomplishments illustrate empathys potential impact on laws, and the vast social change that may
follow from them when it is deeply and enduringly felt and allied with a person
in powers egoistic motives. It also shows empathys fragility when it conflicts
with those same motives and is opposed by powerful social and political
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forces. Along with Uncle Toms Cabin, Johnsons accomplishments show empathys contribution to laws, in this case laws pertaining to injustices imposed
on socially disadvantaged groups, which in turn change society and the course
of history. In short, empathy can change society in ways that lead to changing
laws, which feed back and change society.
A third example combines the interaction of a Stowe-like author and a
Johnson-like power figure in another country. Stowe showed that an authors
empathy over the plight of societies victims could help change laws in a democracy with a large reading public. Could this happen in an autocratic state
with far fewer people who read? Apparently yes. A Sportsmans Notebook
(1852), written by Russias great 19th-century novelist Ivan Turgenev, which,
like Uncle Toms Cabin and published the same year, portrayed the serfs as
human and exposed their cruel treatment in great personal detail, is generally credited by historians with helping revolutionize Russias serfdom system
(Ripp, 1980). Like Stowe, Turgenevs book includes some landowners who
treated serfs fairly and serfs who had contented lives, but what came through
to readers, whose previous knowledge of the serfs harsh existence was largely
abstract, are serfs flogged, sent to the army for displeasing their master, prohibited from marrying, renamed, sent to work in factories for wages paid their
master, or treated like a doll: they turn him this way and that, they break him
and throw him away.
Turgenevs personal empathy for serfs is revealed in an argument with his
mother over her cruel treatment of the familys 2,000 serfs: [Mother] ... but
theyre well-fed, shod, and clothed, even paid wages . . . [Ivan] . . . but, momma,
I didnt say that they were starving or not well clothed. Just think about what it
must be like for a man to live constantly in such a state of fear! Imagine a whole
life of fear, and nothing but fear! Their grandmothers, their fathers and they
themselves are all afraid . . . must their children also be doomed. [Mother] ...
What fear . . . ? [Ivan] . . . The fear of not being safe for a day, or for a single
hour of their existence; today here; tomorrow there, where you will. That is not
life (Moser, 1972, p. 4). Im not sure fear was the most appropriate description
of the serfs distress, but the language is clearly empathic.
Turgenevs book made the predominantly upper class and serf-holding reading public aware of the serfs human qualities and the cruelties they suffered,
and thus, much as Uncle Toms Cabin did in America, helped cultivate sentiment for reforms already beginning in Russian society. This contributed to
Tsar Alexanders emancipation manifesto, the legal basis of serfdom reform in
Russia, in 1861, a year before Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation (Freeborn,
1960). But here, unlike with Stowe, was the important role played by the tsar
himself. When he was 19 and still a grand duke he was taken on a seven-month
tour of the Russian empire by his tutor. On the tour he insisted, against his
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fathers instructions, on stopping frequently to enter peasant huts and talk to

the serfs. According to Hanne (1994), one of Alexanders biographers describes
him as displaying obvious anguish (empathic over-arousal) as he discovered
the conditions of existence of many serfs (Almedingen, 1962), and another
notes that during the tour the peoples sorrow became Alexanders sorrow
(Schumacher, no reference given). Hannes summary is that ten years before
reading Turgenevs first story Alexander had a series of direct encounters with
serfs and was deeply moved by their desperate living conditions.
Reading Turgenevs stories years later apparently revived Alexanders empathy; he was deeply moved once again by Turgenevs vivid descriptions of
the serfs plight, personalities, and feelings of desperation, which he read and
discussed with his wife. This apparently enhanced and consolidated his empathy for the serfs, and, as with Lyndon Johnson, was partly responsible for
his motivation to abolish serfdom at the earliest opportunity. He succeeded to
the throne in 1855 and quickly initiated moves toward emancipation. He accomplished it in 1861, like Lincoln against strong opposition from the landed
serf-owning gentry. He did this by asserting his power and arguing forcefully
that freeing the serfs from the top was better than risking a revolution, not
unlike Lincoln who justified emancipation by its helping to win the Civil War.
Besides influencing the tsar, Turgenevs describing the serfs as individual
human beings with intellectual and spiritual potentialities contributed to a
widespread changing of Russians attitude toward them. This helped end the
tendency, even among liberals desiring emancipation, to treat serfs with derision and contempt (Schapiro, 1978). This shift in public opinion, as with
Uncle Toms Cabin, was an ally that helped strengthen the tsars case for emancipation. Turgenevs book reactivated the tsars travel-based empathy with
serfs, and it energized the anti-serfdom sentiment in the small but influential
reading public. Turgenev and the tsaran empathic one-two punch.
It is unclear if Turgenev, like Stowe, wrote for the express purpose of
achieving emancipation. He once said he did and called the book a political
manifesto, though he often claimed to be detached from social and political
concerns. But he was happy with the outcome: my one desire for my tomb is
that they should engrave upon it what my books accomplished for emancipation of the serfs. Yes, thats all I ask. (Goncourt, 1962). He also claimed the
tsar personally thanked him for the book, a claim vouched for by his biographer (Hanne, 1994; Almedingen, 1962).
Was there an empathic Stowe-Lincoln one-two punch, like Turgenev-
Alexander? It would seem likely given the comment attributed to Lincoln when
introduced to Stowe, So you are the little woman who wrote the book that
started this great war. Most historians doubt he said it or suggest it was said
in jest, and they agree that he may not have read Stowes book and considered
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emancipation a political not a moral act, a fit and necessary war measure for
suppressing [the rebellion of the Southern states]. Furthermore, although he
believed deeply in Americas founding proposition that all men are created
equal and opposed slavery as an evil institution, a monstrous injustice, there
is no evidence of an empathic sensitivity to the horrors of slave life, which is
surprising given his image as kind and compassionate. He was unlike Lyndon
Johnson, who was known as an ambitious, tough political brawler willing to
bully, flatter, horse-trade, whatever it took to get what he wanted but with deep
compassion for the downtrodden. There are lessons here: we cant always infer
empathy from prosocial acts, and empathy is not always a consistent personality trait. In any case there is no evidence for a Stowe-Lincoln empathic one-two
punch.
A final example is Yale Kamisar, known to legal scholars as an enemy of
injustice whose fiery empathy for those accused of crimes is combined with
an incredibly logical and rational approach to Constitutional law. His main
concern was confessions elicited by police using varying degrees of coercion
and techniques of subtle persuasion. These quotations illustrate the language
of empathy: The atmosphere and environment of incommunicado interrogation is inherently intimidating . . . the temptation to press the victim unduly, to
browbeat him if he is timid or reluctant, to push him into a corner and entrap
him into fatal contradictions, so painfully evident in many state trials . . . make
the system so odious as to give rise to a demand for its abolition . . . In many
cases police resort to physical brutalitybeating, kicking, hanging, whipping,
placing cigarette butts on his backand sustained and protracted questioning
incommunicado in order to extort confession or inform on a third party . . .
and which put the suspect in such an emotional state as to impair his capacity
for rational judgment. Kamisars articles on police interrogation procedures,
cited by Supreme Court judges, were a major factor in the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision, which linked the procedures to the Fifth Amendments clause
against self-incrimination and gave the accused the right to remain silent and
have a lawyer present during interrogation. He continued supporting Miranda
against attacks by those who saw it as an obstacle to criminal investigation
(Kamisar, 2000).
Note: by language of empathy I mean this: ones empathy can be communicated explicitly by describing ones feelings for victims, but it is often expressed indirectly without mentioning ones feelings, by selectively focusing
ones attention and pointing up in fine detail what is happening to victims and
their physical and psychological distress, as in the cases cited here. Another
example is Walt Whitman, whose well-known empathy for Civil War soldiers
is shown by the questions he asked dozens of hospitalized, often dying soldiers
and the painstaking detail with which he described their plight; I couldnt
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find one mention his own feelings (Whitman, 18631865). Selective attention
implies motivation, and the prosocial action that follows shows it to be empathic motivation. If research is to be done on empathy in the world we need
to learn more about the language of empathy. My hypothesis is that focusing
on whats happening to victims is always part of perspective-taking and may
reflect deeply felt empathy whether or not one says I empathize with, feel
sorry for, or my heart goes out to.
Empathy in Supreme Court Decisions. Empathy contributed to the Supreme
Courts unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned the separate-but-equal doctrine, made desegregation of public schools
the law, and resulted in busing and other large-scale social changes. To some
legal scholars traditional legality clashed with and was ultimately transformed by empathy (Henderson, 1985).
The proceedings of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People relied heavily on empathy narratives to show how the Southern states
school segregation policy destroyed Black childrens self-respect, stamped
them with a badge of inferiority . . . put up road blocks in their minds. It
also relied on expert social science testimony, including the famous study of
Black children who preferred white dolls and labeled black dolls as bad, to
describe the nature of the humiliation and self-hatred caused by segregation.
The Souths main argument, on separate-but-equal legal grounds, was that the
states involved had successfully wiped out all inequalities between its white
and colored schools (equal funding, class size, etc.) and this ended the matter
under the law. Their response to the empathy narratives was to blame the
victim: if segregation stamps Blacks with feeling of inferiority thats because
they choose to construe it that way, and besides, psychological reactions to
segregation is something the state lacks the power to deal with.
The Courts opinion is an example of empathy over injusticeempathy in
this case linked to the Constitutions equal protection clause and to the segregation laws having the effect of intensifying harm to its victims. Empathy
narratives thus did something unusual; they helped the judges interpret the
actual substance of the law and clarify a legal concept. They did this by showing the prior, accepted separate but equal principle was actually violated,
that is, there was separation but no equality since one race was harmed and the
other wasnt. Regarding long-term impact, the image of children in segregated
schools preferring white to black dolls still resonates as a lasting symbol of the
opinion, despite subsequent evidence that Black children in Northern states
did the same thing. This and other challenges have not diminished the doll
studys powerful imagery: see the article Betrayal of the children with dolls:
The broken promise of constitutional protection for victims of race discrimination (Rich, 2004).
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It gets more complex when there are conflicting moral claimants, as in the
Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. Amicus briefs and oral arguments were
loaded with empathy narratives of horrible effects of unwanted pregnancies
on women, but also on fetuses whom antiabortion lawyers humanized by calling them unborn children, human beings, the true silent majority that needs
someone to speak for them and protect their rights, an obvious attempt to
arouse empathy for fetuses. The justices voted to allow abortion but most of
them framed the legal issue not in terms of empathy but on womens broad
constitutional rights and the rights and expertise of medical professionals.
Subsequent majority opinions undermined Roe in bits and pieces (e.g., abolishing federal funding for abortions except when the womans life was in danger).
Finally, in a 1986 decision a bare majority staved off an amicus attempt by
President Reagan to have Roe overturned. Judges in this case were influenced
by a National Abortion Rights Action League brief made up largely of letters
by women who anonymously told stories of their own abortion experiences
including horror ones of abortions before Roe and narratives of women having
to leave jobs, quit school, marry. These were empathy narratives but with a legal
equality-protection dimension: the right to choose abortion will enable women
to enjoy, like men, the right to fully use the powers of their minds and bodies.
The Courts majority opinion acknowledges the empathy narratives but does
not rest on empathy alone: it links empathy to legal concepts, equal rights and
allowing women the same opportunities as men, the Constitution embodies
a promise that a certain private sphere of individual liberty will be kept largely
beyond the reach of government. That promise extends to women as well as
men. Few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private,
or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a womans decision
with the guidance of her physician and within the limits specified in Roe
whether to end her pregnancy. A womans right to make that decision freely
is fundamental. . . . Empathy narratives thus contributed to saving abortion
rights. Abortion is not just a legal matter of course. It permeates and divides
the nation, and the debate continues playing itself out publicly, in part with empathy narratives of desperate women on one side and CAT-scanned images of
doomed fetuses on the otherin every election nationally and in most states.
Victim impact statements. Lawyers use these to call attention to victims suffering. The empathy narratives discussed above are victim impact statements,
although they are used mainly in criminal trials. I discussed how Kamisars
empathy helped the criminally accused in police interrogations. Empathy also
helps the accused in court when evidence is presented for their good character
and unfortunate life circumstances. Victim impact statements do the opposite. Consider this by a witness whose daughter and granddaughter were murdered: He cries for his mom. He doesnt understand why she doesnt come
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home. And he cries for his sister Lacie. He comes to me many times during
the week and asks, Grandma, do you miss my Lacie. I tell him yes. He says Im
worried about my Lacie (Bandes, 1996, p. 361).
Should jurors be allowed to hear such heartbreaking empathy-arousing
testimony? The Supreme Court in 1991 said they should. Some legal scholars weigh the pros and cons, and say on balance, yes, mainly to counter the
parade of witnesses who testify to the defendants character or to unusual
pressure that drove the defendant to commit his crime by allowing victims
or their families to present the full reality of human suffering the defendant
has produced. Others say no, because victim impact statements may appeal to
vengeance, class hatred, even bigotry, and diminish juries ability to process
evidence bearing on defendants guilt or innocence, and are unnecessary because juries naturally empathize with victims. It also has obvious bearing on
empathic bias, one of empathys limitations discussed below. For a discussion
of the issues see Blume (2003). But note that regardless of who is right or wrong
and under what circumstances, the issue is all about empathy, highlighting its
impact on law and society.
EM PAT H YS L I M I TAT I O N S
I have long studied empathys s limitations (Hoffman, 1984, 2000), which

Iconsider serious. To begin, it should be clear from the foregoing that empathy is limited by its fragility, by its being influenced and biased in favor of ones
similarity to, familiarity with and relationship to victims, and by its dependence on the salience of distress cues.
1. Empathys fragility allows it to be trumped by egoistic motives like fear
and personal ambition, as in Lyndon Johnsons backtracking when he ran
for president. Its fragility also allows empathy to become so aversive that
bystanders may shift attention to their own personal distress, leave or
blame the victim, or think of other things to turn off the image of the
victims pain. This self-limiting feature of empathy is not a total loss: it
protects the observer and enables him to go on. And as I noted it may give
trauma clinicians temporary relief, enabling them to regroup and return
to the patient.
2. Though people may empathize with anyone in distress, they empathize
more with people like themselves. Recent research makes it clear, at the
neural as well as behavioral level, that people empathize more with victims who share their race (Avenanti, Sirigu, & Aglioti, 2010) and ethnic
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group (Xu, Zuo, Wang, & Han, 2009) as well as gender, and with kin
and friends. They empathize more with distressed members of their own
team than distressed competitive rivals (Smith, Powell, Combs, & Schurtz, 2009), unless the latter are viewed as having lower status (Cikara
& Fiske, 2012), perhaps because that signifies added distress. Finally,
in a longitudinal study of AIDS volunteers, empathic subjects helped
in-group members more than out-group members (Sturmer, Snyder, &
Omoto, 2005). For a review and discussion of in-group bias studies see
Cikara, Bruneau, and Saxe (2011).
This in-group or familiarity bias may not be a serious problem in small homogeneous groups except where there are multiple victims and one must make
a choice. It can be serious in the courtroom in criminal cases where plaintiff,
defendant, judge, and jury are from different class or ethnic groups, in determining guilt, innocence, and severity of punishment. It can be very serious in
complex multiethnic or class-stratified societies when scarce resources foster intergroup rivalry, where it can contribute to violence and empathic anger toward
anyone seen as a threat to members of ones own group. This can add fuel to the
rivalry and make people willing to fight, even sacrifice themselves in intergroup
warfare. Mass murder can seem legitimate to people who feel their community
is under threat and they are merely doing what is necessary to save the lives of
their nearest and dearest. So I didnt shoot anyone and I really feel bad about
it, really bad, because now he will throw stones at another soldier and could
injure him (Israeli soldier in first intifadaElizur & Yishay-Krien, 2009). It is
ironic, and unfortunate for human survival, that in-group empathy can lead to
out-group killing. Clearly reducing in-group bias is a worthy research objective.
3. Empathys dependence on the salience of distress cues makes people
more likely to empathize with victims who are present than those who
are absent, which I call empathys here-and-now bias (Hoffman, 1984).
This bias is probably due to preverbal empathy-arousing modes being activated only when victims are present, whether or not cognitive modes
are also involved. It has been shown experimentally: college students who
were induced to empathize with a girl suffering from a fatal disease decided to move her up the waiting list for a new life-saving drug, at the
expense of children who were more in need and legitimately higher on
the list (Batson, Klein, Highberger, & Shaw 1995).
Empathys here-and-now bias is especially important in law. Posner (1999)
views it as a manifestation of the availability heuristic in the courtroom
when judges give too much weight to vivid immediate impressions and hence
pay too much attention to the feelings, interest, and humanity of the parties
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in the courtroom and too little to absent persons likely to be affected by the
decision . . . You dont need much empathy to be moved by a well represented
litigant pleading before you. The challenge to the empathic imagination is to
be moved by thinking or reading about the consequences of the litigation for
absentoften completely unknown or even unbornothers who will be affected by your decision. Posner coined the term judicial empathy, which
I like because it stresses the positive. Posner might advocate prohibiting or
strongly discouraging empathy narratives and victim impact statements in
the courtroom, but he seems to assume that even without them here-and-now
empathic bias is inevitable and it is up to judges to make every effort to counterbalance it. How? By taking the perspective of and empathizing with victims
and potential victims who are not present in the courtroom.
An example of how here-and-now bias can interact with the media (mediaenhanced here-and-now bias), and affect society as well as the courtroom is
the highly publicized British nanny trial (New York Times, November 11, 1997,
pp. A1). When the 8-month-old child in the nannys care was shaken to death,
there was widespread media condemnation of the nanny and sympathy for the
parents. After her trial and conviction of second-degree murder the empathic
tide shifted in her favor (empathy can be fickle). She became the victim and
recipient of widespread empathic distress partly because of the severity of her
sentence. A retrial was denied and the judge, after reviewing the trials history,
found fault with the sentence, described her action empathically as characterized by confusion, inexperience, frustration, and anger, not malice in the
legal sense. He reduced the jurys verdict to manslaughter and time served (297
days) and let her return to her U.K. home, reportedly saying, In my judgment it
is time to bring this sad scenario to a compassionate conclusioncompassion
for the nanny; the absent victims were seemingly forgotten. The extent to which
empathic here-and-now bias affected the judges decision is not clear; what is
clear is its impact on the media and the cases larger social context. But this is
just one case. The larger generalization to be drawn is that empathizing with the
immediate victim can do a serious injustice to absent victims, real or potential.
C O N C LU S I O N
It seems clear that an individuals empathy contributed to emancipating

slaves, desegregation, civil rights, and abortion laws, all of which significantly
changed our social, political, economic, and cultural life. Of course emancipation wasnt due to Stowe alone, but it wouldnt have happened as soon as it
did without her, and the same for Johnson and civil rights legislation. Empathy narratives contributed to Supreme Court desegregation, abortion, and
Miranda decisions despite the laws traditional view of empathy as anathema
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to justice. These laws had a substantial effect on society, to which we can add
empathys helping prepare the culture, society, and public policy changes that
made them possible in the first place. Not all laws relate to empathy, but those
pertaining to civil liberties, civil rights, and societys disadvantaged do. They
reflect Pinkers better angels of our nature and fit Rawlss definition of a
moral society as one that promotes the welfare of the disadvantaged (although
Rawls denies the role of empathy.)
Not all empathys contributions to society are positive. Empathic bias is a
serious problem, particularly in-group bias, which fosters intergroup hostility
and can keep nations from getting together to solve human-survival problems like climate change. It may have survived natural selection and be part of
human nature, making empathy itself an obstacle to Rifkins empathic civilization. There is also the current human condition, with crises worldwide
involving victims described by the media in vivid detail every day, making everyone vulnerable to empty empathy, which serves no constructive purpose
and may waste ones empathic resources and reduce the likelihood of empathizing when needed in the future. Some may respond with too much empathy
and to avoid the unbearable pain put up defenses that immunize them against
empathizing with future victims.
Putting it all together, I still view empathy as the bedrock of morality, the
glue of society, and an important factor in changing laws and society in a
prosocial and projustice direction. Its not a panacea and has flaws. It cant
override powerful economic and political forces, ethnic divisions, natural disasters, and personal ambition and has the other flaws I noted. But its not just
a sideshow, and in the absence of a viable alternative it may be the only available human resource for keeping the diverse parts of society together. If so,
it is necessary to do whatever it takes to keep empathy alive. This means recognizing and finding ways to overcome its limitations and harness its power
to serve communities larger than ones own group. How? Perhaps, with help
from the media, people could be taught (a) to think about potential and absent
victims of their actions, the actions of others and of certain institutions (laws,
taxes, tax cuts) by imagining for example that the victims, even enemies from
outside ones group, are ones own loved ones; (b) to know that everyone regardless of culture and including ones enemies share the same basic hopes,
fears, pain of loss, anxiety over climate change and human survival; (c) to pass
laws that require the kinds of interaction between groups and cultures that
reveal these commonalities and promote working together for common objectives. Research wont solve it but can help, for example research on the value of
taking the others perspective (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) and on directly
intervening to reduce intergroup hostility and promote positive interaction
(Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011).
Empathy, Emotion Regulation,

andMoral Judgment
ANTTI KAUPPINEN
In recent years, some striking claims have been made about the importance
of empathyroughly, the capacity to share the feelings of othersto morality
and prosocial action. Perhaps most notably, Michael Slote (2007, 2010) maintains that empathy is the cement of the moral universe that arguably constitutes the basis of both metaethics and normative ethics (2010, 4). As inevitably
happens with philosophical enthusiasms, there has also been a backlash, even
among those who believe emotions are central to moral thought. Within the
sentimentalist camp, Jesse Prinz (2011a, b) makes a thorough case against empathy, arguing its neither constitutively, causally, developmentally, epistemically, nor motivationally necessary for moralizing. Indeed, Prinz argues that
empathy is likely to lead us astray in moral thought, however important it is
for personal relationships. Shaun Nichols (2004) and Jonathan Haidt (2012)
also emphasize the role of non-empathic emotional responses such as disgust
in moral thinking.
The critics of empathy are half-right. It is indeed implausible that our
natural empathic responses to the suffering or joy of others either explain
or justify our considered moral verdicts. But there is a long sentimentalist
tradition, beginning from David Hume and Adam Smith, which emphasizes
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the importance of corrected empathic responses, or what psychologists now

call emotion regulation in the context of empathy. What I will be arguing
in this chapter is that ideal-regulated empathic reactive attitudes, such as
empathic resentment or anger, may after all play a foundational role in explaining and vindicating moral attitudes and judgment. In contrast to much
of the literature in this area, I will thus not address the role of empathy in
altruistic motivation or morally praiseworthy behavior, but focus on its role
in moral verdicts.
Ill begin by distinguishing different forms of empathy in Section 1. What
I say will be somewhat novel, since I highlight the kind of adjustments to
immediate empathizing that classical sentimentalists proposed to be crucial
to understanding morality. To connect the sentimentalist view with contemporary psychological debate, I briefly survey the literature on emotion
regulation. What I call regulated empathy is a broadly affective response to
the perceived situation of another that is regulated by reference to an ideal
perspective. While some recent work on the role of hedonic empathy has emphasized the importance of emotional regulation in sympathy and prosocial
behavior (e.g., Eisenberg 2000a), the role of regulation in reactive empathy
(such as empathic anger) and moral judgment has remained largely unexamined. In Section 2, I examine how and why the classical sentimentalists
believed empathy is regulated in the context of moral thinking and how it
contributes to explaining our moral judgments. Roughly, they believed that
given the practical function of moral sentiments in reducing social conflict,
we must try to discipline our empathetic responses in a way that guarantees
others doing likewise can share them. They thus appeal to regulation by reference to an ideal perspective, such as that of an impartial spectator. I formulate
the core idea in terms of a hypothesis I call Neo-Classical Explanatory Sentimentalism (NCES). It says that the best fundamental explanation of variation
in moral judgment, in particular the extent to which we praise actions and
endorse norms that go against our self-interest, appeals to variation in idealregulated reactive empathy.
In Section 3, I turn to comparing NCES to competing sentimentalist accounts and responding to objections. The accounts I consider appeal to unregulated empathy (Slote 2010), or culturally transmitted norms that resonate
with emotions (Nichols 2004, Prinz 2007). I argue that NCES emerges as a
strong contender for explaining why we judge as we do. In the concluding
section, I briefly make the case that a regulated empathy account offers a vindicating rather than debunking explanation of certain emotion-based beliefs.
Insofar as it is indeed ideal-regulated empathy that fundamentally underlies
our moral judgments, they may well be in good order, in spite of the partiality
of immediate empathy.
Empathy, Emotion Regulation, andMoral Judgment
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1. EM PAT H Y: I M M ED I AT E A N D R EG U L AT ED
In this section, my aim is to make clear what I mean by empathy and highlight
the importance of regulating our empathic responses in a way that reliably
avoids social and emotional conflict. Roughly, empathy makes the feelings of
others our own, and interpersonal emotional conflict motivates up- or downregulating the empathic feelings.
The term empathy is used for a number of related phenomena. In a useful
article, Daniel Batson (2009b) differentiates between eight different senses.
I will try to do with less, as my aim isnt to chart everything people have
thought fit to label this way. But some basic distinctions have to be made to
be clear about the kind of empathy I will be talking aboutespecially as it
does not even figure among Batsons eight types! In line with most contemporary literature, Ill use the older term sympathy for concern for another (see
Darwall 1998, Sober & Wilson 1998, introduction). As Nancy Eisenberg puts
it, sympathy involves feelings of sorrow or concern for the other and the
other-oriented desire for the other person to feel better (Eisenberg 1991, 129).
It is one possible consequence of empathizing with anothers negative feeling.
One important phenomenon in this conceptual region is cognitive empathy
or perspective-taking. By cognitive empathy, I mean the capacity or process of
knowing what another wants, believes, or feels as a result of placing oneself in
her situation. There may be many ways of coming to know what others think.
It is plausible that at least one of them is imagining what I would myself think
in their position (self-focused cognitive empathy), or what I would think in
their position if I shared their background beliefs, desires, values, and emotions (other-focused cognitive empathy). Cognitive empathizing may well
be best cashed out in terms of simulating anothers reactions (Gordon 1995,
Goldman 2006). In any case, it is not what people in ordinary talk mean by
empathy, since it issues in a belief about anothers states, not in any kind of
emotional reaction.
Empathy, as ordinarily understood, is affective empathy. Affective empathy is feeling the way another feels, or having a congruent emotion, because
the other feels that way.1 Thus defined, it is a success notion: if I feel sad
1. It will not do to define empathy in normative terms, as Simon Baron-Cohen does: Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their
thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion (2011, 16; my emphasis). This trivializes
the task of arguing for the normative importance of empathyof course we should respond
to the state of mind of others with an appropriate emotion. It also vitiates Baron-Cohens own
claim of having a scientific measure for empathy, given that the appropriateness of emotion
isnt a matter of science.
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because I take another to feel sad, although she is in fact happy, I dont empathize with her. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that my feeling of sadness is
broadly empathetic, since it results from exercising the capacity for empathy.
(This distinction will be somewhat important in what follows.) Within affective empathy, we can make further distinctions on the basis of the kind
of affective response empathized with. One kind of affective empathy is hedonic: we take on the joy, happiness, pleasure, pain, or sadness of another.
This is the kind of empathy that most psychological research and measures
have focused on.
In my view, however, our ability to take on anothers reactive attitudes,
such as resentment and gratitude, is what is crucial for morality. As Peter
Strawson famously put it, these attitudes are natural human reactions towards the good or ill will or indifference of others towards us, as displayed
in attitudes and actions (Strawson 1962/1982, 67). They are not responses
merely to the harm or benefit that results from what others do to usafter
all, such consequences might be accidental or incidental. What matters for
resentment, say, is instead the disregard or disrespect that the other displays
toward us. Put differently, what triggers reactive attitudes is what Kant called
the maxim of the action. A maxim is the agents underlying principle that
specifies what she does and to what end, such as I will slow down in order
to avoid splashing the pedestrians. Ill call taking on anothers reactive attitudes reactive empathy. In the empirical literature, it has been studied mostly
in the context of empathic anger (Hoffman 1987, Vitaglione & Barnett 2003),
which is one possible manifestation of resentment or indignation. Psychologists sometimes appear reluctant to think of anger as a moral response, as it
is strongly linked to aggression. But responding to impermissible behaviors
with a negative sanction is absolutely central to moralityfrom a practical
point of view, it is its raison dtre.
There are different mechanisms whereby the feelings of others are transmitted to us. Some are cognitively undemanding and can be found in other
species (see, e.g., de Waal 2008, Andrews & Gruen this volume), and others
involve inference or association (Hoffman 2000). However, what may be the
paradigm kind of affective empathy involves cognitive empathy as well. In
what we might call combined empathy, we come to have an emotion congruent with anothers situation as a result of imaginatively placing ourselves in
anothers situation. In the following, I will use the term empathy as shorthand for combined empathy. This is simply for reasons of convenience: the
other forms of empathy Ive mentioned are quite rightly so labeled. It is nevertheless very important to keep them apart. For example, psychopaths may
have cognitive empathy, but little or no affective empathy. They can figure
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out what others think, but are untouched by it. People with autism, it seems,
have affective empathy, but little or no cognitive empathythey have to attribute feelings to others by explicit theory, but are then capable of sharing
them.2
(Combined) empathy is self-focused when I imagine being myself in your situation, and as a result have a feeling suited for your situation rather than mine.
In this case, my feeling may differ from what you actually feel (so my feeling
may be only broadly empathetic). Empathy is other-focused when I imagine
being in your situation as youwith your goals, beliefs, and characterand
feel the way you do.3 In terms of simulation theory, what happens in other-
focused empathy is not just that I run my own psychological systems with
inputs taken from your situation, but I also adjust the settings of those systems themselves. Consequently, the outputs may be different. Maybe Im thinskinned, so that hearing a racial epithet would wound me in your situation.
But I know youre not, so I simulate a thick-skinned person, and dont feel
vicariously hurt by what was said to you.
Empathic responses can come apart from anothers feelings when the latter
are based on false belief. Suppose you believe that your partner cheated on you
last night. I know this to be false, having spent the entire evening gambling
with him. You may be angry, and I will empathize with this feeling if I place
myself in your shoes with your beliefs as inputsIll be vicariously angry. Yet
it makes little sense for me to be angry with your partner, knowing hes innocent. Or: you thought your partner was innocently gambling with me, but I
know he was cheating on you. Surely it is a kind of empathic response on my
part to be angry with your partner (cf. Hoffman 2011). Lets say my empathy
is truth-adjusted when I have an emotional response as a result of simulating
being in your situation with true beliefs (as far as I know) as inputs. It is clear
from the cases that truth-adjusted empathy may result in emotions that are not
congruent with your actual emotions, but it is still a form of empathy, broadly
speaking. It is not what is now typically called sympathy, since it need involve
no concern for you, or desire to make you feel betterafter all, you may feel
quite good about your partner in your blissful ignorance.4
2. This crucial distinction is lost when Baron-Cohen (2011) lumps psychopaths and autists
together as having zero degree of empathy.
3. For the distinction between self-focused and other-focused empathy, see, e.g., Gordon
1995.
4. In my view, Sober and Wilson (1998, 234235) thus confuse things when they use the label
sympathy for what Ive called truth-adjusted empathy.
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Regulated Empathy
Empathizing with others presents particular challenges in conflict situations,
which frequently call for some form of emotion regulation. Consider the following scenario:
Rich Man, Poor Man
A beggar is sitting on the street with all his possessions. As a man in a fine
suit approaches, he holds up his cup and says politely Sir, would you have
a coin for a cup of coffee? The rich man says Not for you, my friend and
brushes past. Jerk, mutters the beggar resentfully.
If I empathize with the beggar, I will predictably resent the rich mans behavior
to some extent. But if I corner him later at the casino to complain, he might
well object that hes worked very hard for what hes got and has no time to stop
for every beggar. It may seem hard-hearted, but refraining from pitying the
poor encourages them to practice self-reliance in the land of opportunity. If I
were in his shoes, I would not give to beggars either, he might say. If I empathize with the rich man, I might even resent the poor man for living off the
hard work of others, and certainly wont disapprove of the rich mans behavior.
So empathizing with both results in conflicting sentiments toward the same
action.
Emotional conflict is an everyday fact of life. In such cases, it is impossible for a third party to take on both opposing feelings as her own, except at
the cost of internalizing the conflict. She is bound to regulate her empathic
responses somehow. How might one do this? Emotion regulation (or more
broadly, emotion-related regulation) has become a major topic in psychology
in the last decades, along with self-regulation in general (see Vohs & Baumeister (eds.) 2011). Emotion regulation involves goal directed processes functioning to influence the intensity, duration, and type of emotion experienced
(Guyrak, Gross, & Etkin 2011, 401). There are various questions to ask about
such processes. In the interest of making headway toward understanding how
empathic emotions might be regulated, I will focus on two main questions
about emotion regulation in general: How are emotions regulated, and why?
The first question concerns the strategies of regulation. There are various
ways to categorize them. James Grosss (1998) well-known proposal is to distinguish between different stages of an emotional episode: the eliciting situation, its attended features, their appraisal, and the behavioral, experiential,
and physiological response tendencies. Emotions can then be regulated, first,
by situation selection or situation modification with a view to avoiding or
generating emotional responses in oneself. Some do not count such situation
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management as a species of emotion regulation, strictly speaking. But the next

stage, attentional deployment, is by consensus an important strategy. Wellknown variants include distraction (focusing on something other than the
emotion-elicitor), concentration, and rumination (attending to ones feelings
as well as their causes and consequences) (Gross 1998, 284). Another cognitive
strategy is reappraisal of the emotion-eliciting features. Ochsner and Gross
(2008) distinguish between two main variants: reinterpreting the stimuli (for
example, imagining an arousing image is a fake) and distancing from stimuli
by adopting a detached, third-person perspective (2008, 154). The second
kind of strategy will be important in what follows. For Gross, the final stage is
response modulation, which includes direct suppression of emotion, modifying its expression with a view to changing the underlying emotion, or causing physiological changes with this purpose, for example by using drugs or
alcohol. These strategies are not all equally fruitful. For example, Gross and
John (2003) found that habitual use of reappraisal strategy was related to high
wellbeing and interpersonal functioning (such as having close relationships
and emotional and practical social support), while habitual suppression had
opposite consequences.
An important distinction that cross-cuts between these strategies is that
between explicit and implicit emotion regulation. Explicit emotion regulation
involves conscious effort to change ones emotional state and thus requires
some level of awareness of ones state and insight into what might change it.
Recently, many have argued that emotion regulation can be an automatic,
System 1 process as well as a conscious effort (Bargh & Williams 2007; Guyrak,
Gross, & Etkin 2011). Such implicit emotion regulation occurs without effort
or conscious awareness. It can be the result of habit. As Guyrak, Gross, and
Etkin point out, frequent use of a given explicit strategy can quickly render
the initiation of the strategy more implicit during regulation, thus making it
more implicit over time (2011, 405).
The second general question about emotion regulation concerns the reasons
for doing so. Ill distinguish between intrapersonal and interpersonal reasons.
Intrapersonal reasons include, most centrally, avoiding hedonic discomfort.
They motivate us to reduce the intensity and frequency of unpleasant emotion
and increase positive emotions. There may also be reasons deriving from maintaining integrity, which may have the opposite effect in some contexts (Koole
2009). Unpleasant emotions may also be up-regulated because they are useful to
achieve a goalfor example, anger can make success in a competitive situation
more likely (Tamir 2009; Ford, B. Q., and Tamir, M. 2012). Interpersonal reasons have to do with facilitating interaction with others. Our emotions make a
difference to what we do and what its like to be with us, and thus influence our
relationships with others. Psychologists who emphasize interpersonal reasons
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argue that the need for emotion regulation arises from conflicting goals that
different people have (Campos, Walle, Dahl & Main 2011).
What is the role of emotion regulation in empathy? In the past, this question has been addressed in the context of explaining helping response. Nancy
Eisenberg has long argued that emotion regulation is one determinant of
whether empathic arousal results in sympathy or in personal distress. The core
idea is that unregulated empathic response may be so strong that the person
focuses on relieving her own situation rather than on the others problems.
This depends in part on the individuals general level of emotionality (intensity
and frequency of emotional episodes) (Eisenberg & Fabes 1992). This hypothesis has received modest support from various empirical studies (Eisenberg
2000a).
While the data concerning the relation between emotion regulation and
hedonic empathy are important in the context of understanding morally
praiseworthy motivation, they do not address my present question, which is
the regulation of reactive empathic responses to conflict situations. They are
precisely the sort of circumstances in which moral judgment is typically called
for and thus crucial for understanding the role of empathy in moral judgment.
There are both intrapersonal and interpersonal reasons to regulate our empathic responses to conflict situations. The intrapersonal reasons derive from
the discomfort of experiencing conflicting emotions. The interpersonal reasons derive from the potentially destructive social conflict that results from
conflicting reactive attitudes and resulting behavior.
As far as intrapersonal conflict goes, any regulatory strategy may be effective. It may be easy enough to empathize with the near and the dear and the
similar, and put the suffering of others out of mind. In Rich Man, Poor Man,
I may focus on the cocktails Im drinking with the rich man or join in his
rationalizations to ignore the plight of the beggar. I will no longer feel torn
about the situation. Crucially, however, such strategies for managing the intrapersonal conflict only make the interpersonal conflict worse. For an extreme
example, consider the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. On both sides, many people
respond with extreme empathy to the plight of their own while ignoring or
rationalizing away (they brought it on themselves, etc.) the suffering of those
on the other side. As a result, intercommunity conflict is heightened, with consequences known to all.
It is a core insight of the classical sentimentalist tradition that there are
ways to regulate our empathic responses in a way that robustly reduces interpersonal conflict. Roughly, we modify our empathic responses so that they
could be non-accidentally shared by anyone doing likewise. In practice, this
means counteracting our natural empathic biases. For example, we must downregulate our empathic reaction to the treatment of those who are personally
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important to us or similar to us, and up-regulate our empathic reaction to the

treatment of those who are distant or different. When we do so, we respond
to what is done to someone from what Hume termed the common point of
view, a perspective anyone could come to share (see below). The classical sentimentalist accounts of this process appeal to regulation by reference to an
ideal. Roughly, we down- and up-regulate in the most socially adaptive way
when we reappraise the situation while abstracting away from our particular
interests, relationships, and expectationswe look at it from the perspective of
a sympathetic impartial spectator. This will dampen some empathic responses
and strengthen others. The resulting reactive attitudes will then be such that
anyone can come to share them, if theyre willing to be equally reasonable.
This means they are justifiable to others in the sense that they cant reasonably
object to them.
Ill call this kind of empathy ideal-regulated empathy. It is a broadly affective response to anothers perceived situation that is regulated by reference to
an ideal perspective. My hypothesis, briefly, is that the most effective strategy
for such regulation involves both refocusing attention to what things look like
from the perspective of each of those affected by an action, and reappraising
the meaning of the action in the light of expectations that any social actor as
such could be expected to share. Refocusing attention impartially predictably
increases empathic responses congruent with the situation of those different
from or opposed to us. The reappraisal involves detachment from personal
ideals, social identifications, and goals that others may not share, and predictably decreases empathic responses to those similar to us. Such ideal regulation
need not be a conscious process, although it may sometimes be suchpeople
can ask themselves how an indifferent but well-meaning bystander, or just
anyone, or maybe Jesus would respond. Taking on a more or less impartial
perspective before reacting with blame or praise is something that can become
habitual and automatized. There is reason to think that people would converge
on similar ideals, given what works best to reduce interpersonal conflictit is
not exactly alien to common sense that taking a step back from our egocentric (or ethnocentric) perspective before reacting emotionally tends to defuse
tension.
Since regulation by reference to an ideal has not, to my knowledge, been
identified in the psychological literature, it has not been studied either. But
there are studies that seem to tap into related phenomena. For example, Eran
Halperin and coauthors have been investigating emotion regulation in the
context of intractable conflict, in particular the dispute between Israelis and
Palestinians (Halperin, Sharvit, & Gross 2011). In one recent study (Halperin,
Porat, Tamir, & Gross in press), Israeli participants were shown a PowerPoint
presentation that would predictably induce anger toward Palestiniansmost
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plausibly, in my view, by way of empathic identification with Israeli victims

of Palestinian actions. In the reappraisal condition, participants were asked
to respond to the slides like scientists, objectively and analyticallyto try to
think about them in a cold and detached manner (Halperin, Porat, Tamir,&
Gross in press, 2). This is evidently not the same as responding like an impartial spectator, but the instructions similarly call for detaching from particular identifications and values, and can thus be expected to down-regulate
empathic anger for ones own and possibly up-regulate empathy for the other
side (although this is less likely). In the experiment, participants in the reappraisal condition did indeed report less anger than participants in the control condition and more support for conciliatory policies toward Palestinians
(Halperin, Porat, Tamir, & Gross in press). A follow-up experiment applied the
same design to a real-life situation (the Palestinian bid for UN membership)
and found a similar effect, extending to five months after the manipulation.
What the Halperin studies suggest is that people are indeed capable of regulating their empathic responses by reference to an ideal (in their case detached
objectivity), and that this reduces natural empathic bias, improving the odds
of conflict resolution. (It is natural to assume that there is more social pressure outside experimental context to adopt such a stance in the case of ingroup conflict.) The studies did not, unfortunately, ask for the participants to
morally evaluate outgroup behavior or possible policies toward the outgroup.
According to the sentimentalist tradition in metaethics, changes in empathic
responses predict changes in moral judgment, other things being equal. It is to
this tradition that I will turn to in the next section.
2. C L AS S I CA L S EN T I M EN TA L I S M A N D R EG U L AT ED
EM PAT H Y
One can be a sentimentalist in ethics about many different thingsmoral

metaphysics, moral judgments or concepts, moral epistemology, and so on
(Kauppinen 2013). Explanatory sentimentalists hold that our moral judgments
are fundamentally explained by our emotional responses to nonmoral facts.
By fundamentally explained I mean that even if not every individual judgment is made on an emotional basis, the belief or norm or disposition on the
basis of which it is made traces back to an emotional response, which may be
that of another subject. Explanatory sentimentalists disagree about the nature
and ultimate explanation of the emotional response, however. What is distinctive of the classical sentimentalism of David Hume and Adam Smith is that
they believe moral approbation and disapprobation is the outcome of empathizing with hedonic states or reactive attitudes, and more or less successfully
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regulating the resulting response by reference to an ideal perspective. Variation in peoples moral judgments, holding the situation and factual beliefs
constant, is thus fundamentally explained by variation in emotional dispositions, empathy, and regulation. (This is consistent with some variation being
explained by culturally transmitted norms, which trace back to someones
emotional responses to what they believe the facts to be.)
On a sentimentalist view, sentiments of approbation and disapprobation are
thus more basic than moral judgments. As sentiments, they are dispositions
to feel, notice, and perceive considerations as reasons for action. In my view,
moral sentiments are best understood as comprised of two elements: first, a
disposition to praise or blame someone on account of an attitude, action, or
act-type, and second, an authority-independent normative expectation that
everyone share the disposition to praise or blame. The two elements can be
dissociated. For example, the blame-emotion of anger need not involve or constitute moral disapproval (think of being angry with a computer). It is possible
to blame someone without finding them blameworthy. The difference is in the
normative expectation, which may itself be just a disposition to blame those
who lack the first-order blaming response, praise those who do, and so on
(for this notion of emotional ascent, see Blackburn 1998). In the moral case,
this normative expectation isnt contingent on others expecting us to have it,
unlike in the case of social norms. So a moral sentiment is a complex emotional disposition. It is important for a sentimentalist account that it does not
presuppose a moral judgment or appraisalotherwise the emotion response
could not possible explain or justify the judgment. Sentimentalists thus reject
judgmentalist theories of emotion (such as Nussbaum 2001).
The question is then: What fundamentally explains why we praise and
blame as we do? Why, in particular, do we sometimes approve of actions or
character traits that are contrary to our self-interest (such as an enemys courage) and disapprove of actions that are or would be good for us (such as the
behavior of an enemy turncoat, or stealing a childs lunch money when theres
no one to catch us)? Crudely, Humes answer is this: the more we empathize
with the pain of the patient of an action, thus feeling it ourselves to an extent,
the more we disapprove of the action. Insofar as we take the source of the
pain to be an intentional agent, we come to some extent to hate her. If I dont
empathize with your pain, I wont disapprove of the person who caused it; if
I do, I may disapprove even of myself for causing it. The converse goes for actions the benefit others. As Hume summarizes his view, When any quality, or
character, has a tendency to the good of mankind, we are pleased with it, and
approve of it; because it presents the lively idea of pleasure; which idea affects
us by sympathy, and is itself a kind of pleasure. (T 173940/1978, 580) Humes
account thus relies on what Ive called hedonic empathy.
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However, Hume himself was the first to observe that there is dissociation
between what we naturally empathize with and what we morally approve or
disapprove of. The two dont co-vary. As he put it:
We sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with persons
remote from us: With our acquaintance, than with strangers: With our
countrymen, than with foreigners. . . . But notwithstanding this variation
of our sympathy, we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities
in China as in England. (T 581)
This gap between immediate empathy-based approval and moral belief is also
manifest in cases of a kind of moral luck. Best intentions may go awry due to
no fault of the actor. There is then no pleasure to empathize with, yet we may
consider the agent virtuous.
Humes response to these challenges is to argue, first, that we have reason,
independently of any moral consideration, to regulate our empathic responses
by reference to an ideal, and second, that such our degree of success in correcting our sentiments for perspectival distortion serves to fundamentally
explain the observed pattern of judgments. On the first point, he appeals to the
practical benefits of disciplining our empathy in the context of moral judging.
Without doing so, were in trouble:
Our situation, with regard both to persons and things, is in continual fluctuation; and a man, that lies at a distance from us, may, in a little time,
become a familiar acquaintance. Besides, every particular man has a peculiar position with regard to others; and it is impossible we could ever
converse together on any reasonable terms, were each of us to consider
characters and persons, only as they appear from his peculiar point of
view. (T 581)
Part of the point of using moral language is to guide the way others feel and
act toward the people we talk about. If we guide our judgments by self-interest
or biased immediate empathy, I praise a kind of action or person while you
blame the same kind of action or person, and tomorrow our attitudes may be
reversed if our position changes, even if the action or person remains just the
same. We do have a language for this kind of approval: we talk about friends
and enemies, liking and disliking. But moral language suggests something
different, as Hume notes (1751/1948, 260). It manifests an expectation that
others will share our praise and blame and that our attitude hangs only on
the features of its target, not our idiosyncratic and possibly fleeting responses
to them. In the absence of a point of view that doesnt presuppose particular
interests and ideals, we couldnt achieve any coordination of blame and praise.
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Since we are talking about moral attitudes, I would not only blame people
for doing things you would praise them for, but also blame those who fail to
share the first-order blame. A spiral of mutual resentment and revenge would
threaten us, destroying the possibility of social trust and harmony.
So how do we avoid these problems caused by the variation in our natural
sentiments according to our situation of nearness or remoteness, with regard
to the person blamed or praised, and according to the present disposition of
our mind (T 592)? Hume says that we solve them by finding a stable point of
view that anyone, even rivals, can share:
Tis impossible men coud ever agree in their sentiments and judgments,
unless they chose some common point of view, from which they might
survey their object, and which might cause it to appear the same to all of
them. (T 591, my emphasis)
It is sentiments felt from the common point of view that guide moral judgments that we can justify to others. Hence, there is social pressure for us to
adopt such a perspective, particularly when it comes to judgments concerning
in-group members. As Hume puts it, Experience soon teaches us this method
of correcting our sentiments, (T 582) although the passions do not always
follow our corrections (T 585). In adopting such a perspective, we regulate
our uncorrected empathic responses, with more or less success, and thus
arrive at more or less interpersonally justifiable judgments. Humes own account of this regulation involves attending to and consequently empathizing
with the pleasure and pain of the typical effects of someones character traits
on those around her, her narrow circle (T 602). The problem with this aspect
of Humes view is, in a nutshell, that if we empathize with the actual hedonic
experiences of the narrow circle, well think Silvio Berlusconi is an excellent
fellow, since hes no doubt favored by his cronies. But we dont. When we morally evaluate something, we do not just look to the consequences, but also to
the quality of the agents intentions and motives.
So I believe that Smiths corresponding impartial spectator account does a
better job of explaining judgments of moral merit and demerit, in particular
due to its emphasis on taking on the reactive attitudes rather than hedonic
states of anyone affected. Generally speaking, Smith holds that any passions of human nature, seem proper and are approved of, when the heart
of every impartial spectator entirely sympathizes with them, when every
indifferent by-stander entirely enters into, and goes along with them (TMS
81). It is the reactive attitudes of resentment and gratitude that lie at the
foundation of moral blame and praise. They are the sentiments that motivate punishment and reward and are sensitive to the agents motives as well
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as consequences. They appear justified when we take any reasonable person

would share them:
He, therefore, appears to deserve reward, who, to some person or persons,
is the natural object of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to
beat time to, and thereby applaud: and he, on the other hand, appears to
deserve punishment, who in the same manner is to some person or persons
the natural object of a resentment which the breast of every reasonable man
is ready to adopt and sympathize with. (TMS 81)
But how do we come to hold that someone is the natural object of the resentment
of any reasonable man? Smiths best account occurs in the context of his discussion of self-directed moral judgment. He famously says that We endeavour to
examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator
would examine it. If, upon placing ourselves in his situation, we thoroughly enter
into all the passions and motives which influenced it, we approve of it (TMS
129). So, what we do, more or less successfully, is detach ourselves from our natural perspective and look at the situation from the perspective of an imaginary
impartial spectator. This is something that habit and experience teach us to
do so easily and readily, that we are scarce sensible that we do it (TMS 157). If,
from such a perspective, I empathize with the resentment of someone affected by
an action, I take the resentment to be fitting, and thus take the agent (who may be
myself) to have acted wrongly. Smith places particular emphasis on correcting
the natural misrepresentations of self-love (TMS 158), but the kind of reflective correction he believes we make will also work for the other distortions that
Hume identified. He observes that for most of us, our success in such correction
depends on the social context and its demands: The propriety our moral sentiments is never so apt to be corrupted, as when the indulgent and partial spectator
is at hand, while the indifferent and impartial one is at a great distance. (TMS
179) It takes the right kind of social environment for all but the most virtuous to
successfully regulate their sentiments by reference to the impartial ideal.
Nevertheless, it remains a fact that as human beings, we simply cannot adopt
the common point of view in all cases, even if are strongly motivated and have
unlimited time at our disposal. We quickly run up against cognitive and affective limits. As Jesse Prinz rightly emphasizes, empathy essentially targets
individuals as such (Prinz 2011a). But groups and large numbers of people are
also morally relevant. Moreover, it seems that sometimes the right thing to do
goes against the grain of empathy. As Hume noted,
Judges take from a poor man to give to a rich; they bestow on the dissolute
the labour of the industrious; and put into the hands of the vicious the
means of harming both themselves and others. (T 579)
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His response to the problem was to distinguish a class of artificial virtues,

justice among them.5 Instead of exploring this intriguing idea, Ill propose a
two-stage explanatory model inspired by Adam Smiths remarks on the role of
reason in judgment. Smiths idea is that many if not most of our moral judgments result from reasoning from principles rather than directly from empathetic sentiments. Nevertheless, our adherence to these principles is ultimately
explained by disciplined sentiment:
The general maxims of morality are formed, like all other general maxims,
from experience and induction. We observe in a great variety of particular
cases what pleases or displeases our moral faculties, what these approve or
disapprove of, and, by induction from this experience, we establish those
general rules. (TMS 377)
We are better off regulating the greater part of our judgments by appeal to
such rules because they would be extremely uncertain and precarious if they
depended altogether upon what is liable to so many variations as immediate
sentiment and feeling, which the different states of health and humour are
capable of altering so essentially (ibid.).
Smiths remarks suggest the following kind of two-stage account:
Stage 1: Moral sentiments that result from more or less successfully idealregulated empathy in small-scale paradigmatic instances initially explain
beliefs about which act-types are wrong-making (and associate blame with
those act-types, other things being equal).
Stage 2: Beliefs about which act-types are instantiated combined with beliefs
about which act-types are wrong-making generate beliefs about the wrongness of particular actions (and associate blame with them).
On this model, then, ideal-regulated empathy isnt needed to directly explain
beliefs about particular cases. Rather, it explains beliefs about paradigm cases
and pro tanto principles, which then generate judgments about particular
cases when combined with particular facts. We dont have to try to take up the
common point of view or engage in systematic reflection unless the various
features of an action generate opposing responses. It is also important that we
can acquire beliefs about principles from other people, such as parents or other
role models. But all the same, these chains of cultural transmission come to
5. Roughly, the idea is that if we just focus on the individual case, we may disapprove of
the enforcement of property rights. But if we consider the benefits of the convention-based
scheme of property rights, invented by people seeking their enlightened self-interest, as a
whole, we approve of it by virtue of empathizing with the beneficiaries.
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an end somewheresomeone or some people must have formed the beliefs to

begin with. And the hypothesis is that when it comes to judgments that are
likely to be widely accepted, their beliefs will have resulted from more or less
successful ideal-regulated empathizing.
3. C O M PA R I N G S EN T I M EN TA L I ST E X PL A N AT I O N S
In the preceding sections, I have articulated and tentatively endorsed the classical sentimentalist explanation of our moral approval and disapproval in
terms of more or less ideal-regulated empathic responses. Call this type of explanatory account that casts classical sentimentalism in contemporary terms
neo-classical sentimentalism. The main thesis may be formulated somewhat
more precisely as follows:
Neo-Classical Explanatory Sentimentalism
The best fundamental explanation of variation in core moral judgments
along the dimension of interpersonal acceptability is variation in empathy
and exercising emotion regulation by reference to an ideal perspective.
This account predicts that people who are wholly deficient in empathy (such
as psychopaths) will only be capable of making interpersonally acceptable
moral judgments parasitically on others. It is unsurprising if they are consequently unable to distinguish between moral and social norms, which are also
transmitted by others (see Blair 1995). At the other end of the scale, people
who are maximally empathic and capable of ideal regulation are predicted to
make judgments that are widely acceptable and withstand reflective scrutiny.
They may be considered moral exemplars (sages, saints) by others and may
thus be sources of culturally transmitted norms. Finally, I add the qualification core moral judgments, by which I mean judgments about what we owe to
each other (Scanlon 1998). There are other moral judgments that NCES doesnt
purport to explain, such as condemnation of harmless behaviors that offend a
religious sensibility.
To evaluate the thesis that ideal-regulated empathy is the best explanation of
something, we need to compare it with the most plausible alternatives. I will not
attempt a comprehensive survey in this paper. Sentimentalist accounts in general have two things going for them: simplicity and parsimony. They typically
postulate only very simple and straightforward psychological capacities that
have a nonmoral distal evolutionary explanation. They are compatible with an
austere picture of practical reason that is precisely modeled by rational choice
theory. Sentimentalists argue that neither reason nor mere understanding tells
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us to care about the interests of others or respect. Since discussing these arguments is beyond the scope of this chapter, I simply proceed on the assumption
that they are along the right lines, and that emotions of one kind or another
are fundamental in explaining moral thought.
There are, however, many competing sentimentalist explanatory accounts.
Some involve appeal to unregulated empathy, while others dismiss or sideline
it. In this section, I will compare NCES to two leading contemporary views.
First, Michael Slotes account gives unregulated empathy pride of place in
moral thinking. Second, Jesse Prinzs and Shaun Nicholss accounts appeal to
the emotional resonance of culturally transmitted norms, and Prinz in particular is skeptical of empathys role.
(a) Slotes Unregulated Empathy View

The most notable recent empathy enthusiast in philosophy has no doubt been
Michael Slote. He argues that empathy plays a constitutive role in moral attitudes, and he makes both explanatory and justificatory claims on behalf of
empathy. The kind of empathy he sees as the cement of the moral universe
(2010, 13) is what Ive called immediate empathy. To begin with Slotes main
moral psychological thesis, he claims that empathic feelings constitute moral
approval and disapproval:
[I]f agents actions reflect empathic concern for (the well being or wishes of)
others, empathic beings will feel warmly or tenderly toward them, and such
warmth and tenderness empathically reflect the empathic warmth or tenderness of the agents. . . . [S]uch empathy with empathy . . . also constitutes
moral approval, and possibly admiration as well, for agents and/or their
actions. (Slote 2010, 3435)
Some peoples actions exhibit empathy toward others. This empathy is a warm
feeling. When we empathize with the agent, we come to share this warm feeling. And this empathetic warm feeling constitutes moral approval. In contrast,
unempathic actions manifest a coldness toward others. Since moral approval
and disapproval enter into the making of moral judgments, empathy also
enters into our understanding of moral claims (2010, 53). Slote believes this
accounts for why moral judgments have motivating force for us. Roughly, the
reason is that the underlying empathic response motivates us to do things that
we judge to be morally right (2010, 54).
Given this account of what moral approval is, its not surprising that Slote
believes empathy can explain our intuitions and judgments. More precisely,
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differences in (the strength of) our empathic reactions (or tendencies to react)
to various situations correspond pretty well to differences in the (normative)
moral evaluations we tend to make about those situations (Slote 2010, 21).
For example, we naturally flinch more strongly from causing harm to someone than from allowing the same harm to happen. This, for Slote, basically
accounts for the commonsense deontological distinction between the seriousness of the wrong of doing harm rather than allowing it to happen. Slote
defends the following normative thesis tying moral status of actions with empathy or its absence:
actions are morally wrong and contrary to moral obligation if, and only
if, they reflect or exhibit or express an absence (or lack) of fully developed
empathic concern for (or caring about) others on the part of the agent.
(2007,31)
So even though Slote fully acknowledges that (natural) empathy, even when
fully developed, is influenced by factors like similarity and distance, he believes that it offers a criterion of rightness.
Does unregulated empathy really play the sort of role in moral psychology
Slote claims it does? There is good reason to doubt it. First, empathy is neither
necessary nor sufficient for moral approval, either of actions or agents. Its not
necessary, since it is possible for us to approve of an action that isnt empathically motivated (so that there is no agential warmth for us to catch). Surely
somebody incapable of empathy can do the right thing, and not just for fear of
punishment either. I see no reason to deny someone could desire to be morally
good without feeling empathy or that such desire could motivate one. There is
something to Kants insistence that acting out of duty is morally praiseworthy,
and in some cases we might approve of it more than acting out of empathy. I
dont want you to refrain from taking my things just because you think Id feel
bad if you did so. Second, empathy isnt sufficient for approval, since it is possible for us to disapprove of an action that is empathically motivated. Think
of a mother who empathizes strongly with her daughter and therefore elbows
everyone elses child out of the way to get her a place in college. (Recall that
Slote endorses the partiality of immediate empathy.) The same goes naturally
for disapproval. Bad people, much less people doing the wrong thing, need not
be cold-hearted. The Tutsi shooting the Hutu in front of his family may be full
of empathy toward the victim, but nevertheless choose to follow orders.
The second problem with Slotes account of approval is that moral disapproval isnt necessarily a cold feeling, nor approval warm (whatever exactly
these characterizations mean). Indeed, it neednt have any particular phenomenal quality, even if occurrent. Further, feelings of coldness or warmth may be
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caused by one thing or another, such as (perhaps) empathy with someone elses
empathic feelings, but that doesnt mean they are about anything. After all, literally feeling cold isnt about anythingits not, for example, about the north
wind that causes the feeling. Nor, relatedly, is it clear that Slotean psychological weather conditions motivate us in the way that moral approval and disapproval do. If contemplating someone gives me a chill, why not contemplate
something warmer rather than punish or blame the unempathetic person? For
all these reasons, moral approval and disapproval are much better understood
in terms of reactive attitudes we expect of each other, as discussed above.
What about Slotes empathic criterion of rightness? Focusing on only one
of the many cases that he presents may suffice to bring out the problems with
it. Comparing the My Lai killings and bombing civilians, he says that since
face-to-face killer demonstrates a greater lack of (normal or fully developed)
empathy, than the person who kills from the air (Slote 2007, 25), it is harder
for us to empathize with the former, so there is a stronger moral obligation
to refrain from killing face to face. I believe Slote is correct in his hypothesis
about our natural empathic reactions, but wrong about the normative facts of
the case. It is not the case that our obligation not to kill an innocent person is
stronger when we can do so face to face than when we can do so by pressing a
button far away (lets say, to update the example, by a drone strike).
To see this more clearly, we have to focus on just the relevant difference between the cases. So lets say that in Face to Face, a renegade soldier guns down
an Afghan family in person, in full knowledge that they are not dangerous to
anyone, just in order to relieve anger and frustration. In Drone, a renegade
drone controller in Miami remotely fires a missile at an Afghan family hut
(knowing of but without seeing the family inside), in full knowledge that they
are not dangerous to anyone, just in order to relieve anger and frustration. If
we try to empathize with the killer in each case, we may indeed catch more of
a chill in Face to Face, in which the soldier must surely be more callous or
hardened to pull the trigger. If Slote is right, the soldier in Face to Face thus has
a stronger obligation not to kill than the controller in Drone. If, on the other
hand, we regulate our empathy and put ourselves to the position of the family
members as they are about to be killed or in the position of someone who cares
about them, we will, I believe, have just as strong a negative reaction toward
the agent in both cases. After all, though the action is different, the intended
consequences and purposes are identical (and thus the underlying maxims
relevantly similar).
On reflection, I believe it borders on the absurd to think that there is a difference in strength of obligation. Surely the civilians have just a strong a right
not to be killed by missile as by bullet! I would object just as strongly to my
son being killed by any means whatsoever, the purpose being the same, and
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Id be right to do so. So Slotes view must be mistaken. Immediate empathy is

no guide to moral rightness.6
(b) Cultural Transmission Accounts

As I noted in the introduction, Jesse Prinz makes what is perhaps the most systematic case against the importance of empathy for morality. I agree with his
claim that empathy isnt constitutive of moral sentiments. But what about explanation? Prinz argues that on-line empathy cannot be causally necessary for
moral judgment or approval. He notes that there may be so many victims you
cant possibly empathize with all of them. On the other hand, we may approve
of an action that causes suffering (2011a, 220). Neither of these cases poses a
challenge to NCES. First, the two-stage model says that we judge on the basis
of more or less ideal-regulated empathy in small worlds and then make use of
principles in large-scale situations, so we need not try to empathize with all.
Second, ideal-regulated empathy with, say, the anger of a victim may indeed
lead us to approve of punishment that causes the perpetrator to suffer. Once we
leave behind the hedonic empathy model, there is no reason to think empathy
couldnt result in approval of causing suffering in some cases.
Prinz might grant these points, but offers further cases in which it seems
empathy cannot explain our judgments: What if you are the victim of a crime
yourself? (2011a, 220) And what about sacrificing one person to save fiveif
we empathize impartially, shouldnt we be willing to do so (2011b)? Yet many
people have nonconsequentialist intuitions about such cases. These cases pose
a prima facie challenge to an empathy-based explanation, but I believe that
they can be accounted for. In the first-person case, a direct role for empathy
is indeed precluded. However, the relevant question is: what explains the difference between non-moral and moral disapproval of someone who harms
me? The natural answer, according to NCES, is that I morally disapprove of
something done to me when I would morally disapprove of the same thing
done to someone elsewhen what matters is the action and its motives and
consequences, not the fact that I am the victim. And this takes us back to
empathy-based disapproval. Second, I argue elsewhere that empathizing with
anticipated reactive attitudes predicts nonconsequentialist responses in many
6. There may nevertheless be some temptation to think that the soldier must at least be a
worse person, being more callous or hardened. But I doubt that, too. Killing by pressing
a button is cowardly for many reasons. It is said that Hitler was shielded from personally
encountering the consequences of his vicious orders. I dont think his reluctance to face the
suffering and terror he caused made him any better a person.
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casesalthough from a hedonic perspective it makes no difference, when it

comes to reactive attitudes, being hurt as a means for someone elses good is
very different from being hurt as a side effect. Thats why regulated reactive
empathy may lead us to disapprove of sacrificing one to save many.
Another possible objection, more in the vein of Shaun Nichols (2004), is
that NCES is cognitively too demanding to account for early emergence of
moral judgment in children. Emotion regulation by reference to an ideal perspective certainly goes beyond small childrens capacities. But that only entails defective spontaneous (that is, unlearned) moral judgments, according
to NCES, not that they couldnt make judgments at all. We should bear in
mind that empathic reactive attitudes also emerge at an early age, before or
contemporaneously with moral judgment. According to Martin Hoffman, A
simple example of empathic anger is that of the 17-month-old boy in the doctors office who, on seeing another child receive an injection, responds by hitting the doctor in anger. (Hoffman 1987, 55) Less anecdotally, Kiley Hamlin
and coauthors recent studies with infants and toddlers suggest preference for
helpful characters over antisocial characters, and a willingness to punish antisocial ones (Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom, & Mahajan 2011). I believe that these
observations are plausibly manifestations of empathic (proto-) anger toward
antisocial c haractersmore plausibly than manifestations of evaluative judgment, as the authors themselves believe. This is further supported by more
recent results, according to which infants dont dislike bad treatment of individuals who are dissimilar to them (and thus are harder to empathize with)
(Hamlin, Mahajan, Liberman, & Wynn 2013).
Finally, it is clear that when Prinz talks about empathy, he has immediate
empathy in mind. He says that [a]s I will use the term, empathy requires a
kind of emotional mimicry and explicitly rules out what Ive called truthadjusted empathy as a form of empathy (Prinz 2011b, 212). And I agree that
immediate empathy is problematic. So to some extent, my disagreement with
Prinz is merely verbal. But since many of Prinzs arguments are general enough
to target regulated empathy, there is also substantive disagreement.
So, it seems that NCES survives the explanatory challenges that Prinz
(rightly) raises for simple empathy-views such as Slotes account. But how
does it compare with Prinzs own explanatory account? His view is a species
of what Ill call the Cultural Transmission theory (CT). For Prinz, moral judgments consist in emotional responses. We dont need to empathize when we
judge, since moral response is linked to action-types (Prinz 2011b, 212). His
view seems to be that we simply associate a negative response with certain
act-types, so that it gets triggered by classifying something as falling under
them. But how do we come to associate blame and praise with certain acttypes? Prinz appeals to social conditioning: when parents punish a child for
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something, the child associates fear, sadness, and anguish with that type of
action and is motivated to avoid them (Prinz 2011a, 221; cf. Prinz 2007, 3537).
Alternatively, children may simply imitate the anger of their parents toward
something (Prinz 2011b, 229). And why do the parents associate blame with
theft, for example? Here culture comes into the picture. Norms get culturally
transmitted from generation to generation, and consequently vary from place
to place, although some may be more common due to their resonance with
non-transmitted affective responses. On this picture, the emotional responses
that constitute judgment are not evolutionary adaptations (unlike for Haidt
[2012], for example), but byproducts of exercising capacities evolved for other
purposes. For example, guilt is a form of sadness caused by hurting those one
cares about and being rejected by those one depends on (such as parents).
Nicholss (2004) variant of CT begins with the assumption that there are a
variety of norms that individuals subscribe to. (Unfortunately, he never explains what he takes norms or norm-acceptance to consist in.) Norms prohibit
and permit certain actions. When the actions they prohibit are independently
emotionally upsetting, we regard the norms as being non-conventionalthey
dont just hold because of some authority says so or locally. Moral norms are a
subset of these sentimental rules. When we make moral judgments, we apply
sentimental rulesunlike for Haidt or Prinz, no on-line emotion is needed
(Nichols 2004, 2529). This account presupposes that we have norms independently of emotional responses. Instead of asking about the origin of norms,
Nichols tells an epidemiological story about why certain norms prevail. The
answer is that norms that resonate with our (independent) affective reactions
enjoy greater cultural fitness and are thus likely to be passed on from generation to generation (Nichols 2004, ch. 78). Some of these affective reactions result from contagious distress, which explains why we typically regard
(norm-forbidden) harmful actions as morally wrong. (Here theres a place for a
kind of immediate empathy in Nicholss view.)
How do the CT accounts compare with NCES? It is evident that NCES has
higher explanatory ambitions, since it offers an account of the origin and not
merely the survival of norms. People originally come to have a moral norm
(a normative, authority-independent expectation that everyone refrain from
doing something) when they (more or less) impartially empathize with those
affected by paradigm instances of an act-type. Although the epidemiological
framework that Nichols and Prinz employ is plausible in many cases, when
it comes to moral norms, it is very implausible that people start out with a
large body of random norms that are then winnowed down to those that resonate with our (culture-independent) emotions. Further, people can judge that
something is morally wrong when it goes against the norms that have been
culturally transmitted to them. This is hard for the sentimental rules account
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to accommodate. Finally, Nicholss version of CT also shares the weakness of

immediate empathy accounts. Appealing to immediate empathetic reactions
or personal distress plainly cant explain why we embrace norms that prohibit
harming or cheating of those we dont naturally empathize with. The distress
of the distant just isnt as contagious as the distress of the near, yet I dont adopt
a rule according to which it is less bad to hurt the distant as a means to advancing ones self-interest, say. So again, NCES offers at least some explanatory
advantages. I cant claim that the issue is in any way settled at present. More
empirical evidence is needed.
4. C O N C LU S I O N: V I N D I CAT I N G O R D EB U N K I N G
M O R A L J U D G M EN T?
In this paper, Ive developed the classical sentimentalist hypothesis that empathic sentiments are more or less successfully regulated by reference to an
ideal perspective fundamentally explain why we make the moral judgments
we do. Suppose that this explanation is correct. What does it mean for the
justification of the emotion-based moral judgments? On the critical side, Jesse
Prinz argues that basis in natural empathy undermines the justification of
moral judgments. He notes that our capacity to experience vicarious emotions varies as a function of such factors as social proximity and salience
(Prinz 2011a, 223). As a consequence, [w]e are grotesquely partial to the near
and dear so that we use empathy as an epistemic guide at the risk of profound moral error (Prinz 2011a, 224). There is also experimental evidence
that the here-and-now bias of empathy results in judgments we consider unfair
on reflection (Batson, Klein, Highberger, & Shaw 1995). Further, when it comes
to justice in particular, empathy can be misleading. Like some proponents of
ethics of care, Prinz contrasts justice with empathy. Finally, Prinz likes to emphasize the dark side of empathy. It is easily manipulated, selective, subject
to cuteness effects, and prone to in-group biases as well as proximity and salience effects (Prinz 2011b). Indeed, it is intrinsically biased in the sense that
essentially a dyadic emotion, regulating the responses between two individuals, and its function is, arguably, to align the emotions of people in a close
personal relationship (Prinz 2011a, 229). So empathy has at best an incidental
link to morality and misleads moral judgment.
Is there anything to be said in favor of empathy when it comes to justification? Classical sentimentalists say surprisingly little about this topic, although they are not shy to employ language that implies moral knowledge.
Hume may have felt that providing justification was beyond his brief as an
anatomist of morality (T 3.6). When we begin to justify moral belief, we give
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voice to our own convictions, abandoning the outsiders theoretical perspective. At the very end of the Treatise, Hume nevertheless permits himself to say
a few words from within an engaged perspective. He notes that once we see the
origin of our moral judgments in (what we would call) empathy felt from the
common point of view, we must certainly be pleasd to see moral distinctions
derivd from so noble a source (T 3.6). Again, our empathy-driven moral
sense must certainly acquire new force, when reflecting on itself, it approves
of those principles, from whence it is derivd, and finds nothing but what is
great and good in its rise and origin (ibid.).
This coherentist suggestion is that when we engage in a process of what would
now be called wide reflective equilibrium, in which we try to find the best fit for
our particular and general moral convictions and known psychological and
sociological facts, including facts about the origin of our moral convictions
(Daniels 1979), we will reflectively endorse those moral convictions that result
from ideal-regulated empathy. On the other hand, if we come to believe that
some moral belief of ours reflects partiality or the influence of mere distance,
we lose confidence in it. There is thus a fundamental difference, when it comes
to justification, between beliefs based on natural empathy and those based on
regulated empathy. The latter kind of beliefs are not subject to the kinds of bias
that Prinz points out. Consequently, when we try to get our beliefs to line up
in wide reflective equilibrium, we may opt for embracing rather than rejecting judgments based on ideal-regulated empathy. In that case, we will see that
origin in regulated empathic emotions vindicates our moral beliefs rather than
debunking them.
I will finish with a final objection from Prinz. In his papers against empathy, he does, in fact, briefly consider a version of Smiths impartial spectator
account (Prinz 2011b) and Humes appeal to the common point of view. Heres
what he has to say about the latter:
As attractive as this idea is to a liberal readership, it is bad psychology. The
fact is, we rarely adopt such a point of view, and empathy is probably the
greatest impediment. We can empathize with members of the out-group
but only by making their similarities salient. . . . But there is no way to
cultivate empathy for every person in need, and the focus on affected individuals distracts us from systemic problems that can be addressed only by
interventions at an entirely different scale. (Prinz 2011a, 228)
If what Ive argued above is on the right track, Prinz here draws a false contrast
between empathizing and adopting a common point of view. (For Hume and
Smith, it would certainly be inconceivable that we could separate the two.) He
is right, to be sure, that natural empathy can be one obstacle to ideal-regulated
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empathy, given all its biases. But the answer is not to shut out empathy, but to
use it wiselyto try hard to bear in mind not only what is in front of our eyes
and to rely on general principles when in doubt about ones ability to adopt
an intersubjectively sharable perspective. If we are able to do so, empathy
although of a cool and challenging variety that may require looking beyond
the individual in front of usdoes, after all, merit some of the enthusiasm it
has lately received.
At the Empathetic Center

of Our Moral Lives
K. RICHARD GARRETT AND GEORGE GRAHAM
I N T R O D U CT I O N
One of the most hotly debated topics about the role of empathy in moral judgment and motivation is whether empathy is somehow central to morality. Not
a mere adjunct, but central. Some say that empathy is not and likely should not
be at the center of our moral lives. Not only, writes Jesse Prinz, is there little
evidence for the claim that empathy is necessary, there is also reason to think
that empathy can interfere with the ends of morality. Prinz cautions: Placing
empathy at the center of our moral lives may be ill-advised (Prinz 2011a: 211).
Of course, some disagreements about the role of empathy in our moral lives
may stem from the fact that two people may use the same word to mean different things. As Alvin Goldman puts it, the term empathy does not mean
the same thing in every mouth (Goldman 2011: 31). In such cases, an apparent disagreement about empathys moral role may not be about morality and
empathy, but about how empathy itself is best understood, independent of any
possible moral role.
We assume that it is best to think of empathy or the human capacity for
empathy as follows: Empathizing with another person is the paradigm case or
At the Empathetic Center of Our Moral Lives
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prototype of empathy. When empathizing with another, an individual takes

the subjective perspective of that second person. This may be automatic and
unreflective or, on occasion, deliberate, reflective, and effortful. The empathetic person reflects on the state of mind of the other, imagines how things
are (were, or will be) for that person, and imagines how the empathizer himself
or herself would think or feel if he or she was in their shoes or situation.
Empathy may sometimes be restricted to another persons affective or emotional states, or states of distress, but it needs not be. One may empathically
enter into another persons more global frame of mind (their thoughts, desires,
and so on) and not just into anothers emotional states or states of distress.
One may also empathize with anothers happiness and feeling of psychological wellbeing. Empathy may also be focused on oneself, wherein the target or
focus is ones remembered past or imagined future. Empathetic impulses may
be had toward nonhuman sentient animals. But the central case or paradigm
phenomenon of empathy, as we shall understand things, is that empathy consists of imaginative identification with the subjective perspective and situation
of another person.
It has been debated whether someone could empathetically identify with
another persons pain or distress (when the other is in pain or distress) and,
yet, be an empathetic torturer. We assume not. We assume that empathy is no
mere matching or mirroring of anothers mental states. We presuppose that
if a person enters empathetically into anothers state of mind and the other is
in pain or distress, some impulse or desire to assist the other is part of being
empathetic. Again, though, the waters of discussions of empathy are muddied
in the literature by theorists who use the word empathy as if it can apply
to someone who imaginatively matches or mirrors anothers distress but is
devoid of any sort of pro-other impulse or motivation to help the other. We
assume that imagining yourself in anothers frame or state of mind, when the
other is distressed, carries with it an impulse to help the other person, which
may vary in strength or be checked on reflection, but could not possibly lead
to a desire to torture that individual and still be proper to empathy itself. Likewise, we assume that in imagining oneself in anothers frame of mind when
they are in a positive state, the empathizer may have the impulse to reinforce
or support that state.
Enough said, for the moment, about our use of a term or understanding of
a phenomenon. Our aim here is to make a case for the proposal that empathy
(given our understanding of the phenomenon, to be added to below) ought to
be at the center of our moral lives. Or, more specifically, empathy ought to be
at the center of our moral lives if one agrees, as we ourselves do, with R. M.
Hare that if we are to conduct ourselves in a truly or fully moral manner, we
have to know what it is like for [the other person] (Hare 1981: 91). We have
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to empathize with them. And if one also assumes (as we do) that, as James
Rachels puts it in his Problems from Philosophy, from a moral point of view
everyone counts equally, even strangers . . . who have no ability to harm or hurt
us (Rachels 2005: 184). If the moral principle or premise of the equal worth of
persons, that is, of each and every individual person counting, from the moral
point of view, for one and none for more than one, is taken seriously, then empathy must also be taken seriously, morally speaking. It should, indeed, be at
the center of our moral lives. Just what such centering means will be discussed
in the course of the paper.
Suppose your young teenage child deeply desires to go to a certain excellent

film (with their friends) instead of studying for a final exam that they have
very early the next day. If you know just what your child desires and feels and
you had similar experiences as a youngster, and this helps to explain why you
know what it is like to be in their shoes, and all of this results in your likewise
desiring that your child have this same wonderful experience (of going to the
film with their friends), then this would be a case of empathyagain, as we
plan to use this term.
Consider a second scenario. Suppose that, in addition to having empathy toward the child in their situation, you start reflecting on your childs
future, on the fact that your daughter or son is academically very talented
and earnestly interested in becoming a doctor, and you reflect further on how
extremely competitive getting into a medical school can be. Moreover, you realize that the final exam the next day could be critical in their effort to get into
medical school. Its for an advanced placement course in biological science.
These additional thoughts concerning your childs desires and future frustrations and upset in failing to get into a medical school could result in your
having empathy for your childs future and thereby desiring them to take the
test tomorrow in order to avoid future suffering and distress. In this futureorientated way, your empathy for your childs desire to go to the film with
their friends would be in conflict with your empathy for the childs future
happiness. Furthermore, further reflection may lead you to see that it would
be better for the child from the childs own standpoint and likely greatest happiness to forgo the present anticipation of pleasure rather than to suffer as a
result of career aspirations that may be permanently blocked. So, out of empathy for your childs future desires and future happiness, you may reflectively
control your empathetic impulse toward the childs current desire to go to the
film with friends.
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We can even suppose that there is a third scenario. In this case, after your
child has accepted your decision that they give up the film, you learn that the
same test will be given after the weekend on Monday by the same teacher. So,
you call the teacher and explain the situation regarding your child and you ask
the teacher if your child might not take the test on Monday instead of Friday
(the next day). The teacher is accommodating and kindly grants your request.
In this case, your child can see the film, take the test Monday, and have the
whole weekend to prepare for it. So, we can imagine how still further reflection plus some empirical investigation changes your decision once again. All
along, your empathy for or imaginative identification with your child is the
drive behind your actions.
These three possible scenarios, as homely as they are, teach us that the marriage between empathy and reflection/investigation is not only a possible marriage, but may be very good marriage for everyone involved. It may help to
promote the best interest of the person toward which one has an empathetic
reaction.
What we now need to do is to characterize empathy in a form that is distinctively human and reflective. This is the kind of empathy illustrated above.
What makes such empathy distinctively human and reflective is that only a
creature with a descriptive or propositional language can reflect on the other
person (and they on themselves) in the manner above. After all, there is no evidence whatever that nonhuman animals can describe the world, themselves,
or others or discriminate between descriptions that are true and descriptions
that are false. Everything distinctively human depends upon such a language:
religion, politics, law, science, technology, philosophy, and art all presuppose
an ability to describe both what is real (true) or what might be real (true) and
what is entirely imaginary or fictional (false).
Having what we here are calling a descriptive language is precisely what
permits us to tell others how we feel, what we consciously think, what we consciously experience and, thereforewhat it is like to be us from the inside.
This is how the child (in the story above), we assume, is able to communicate
to the parent what they was experiencing internally. Without the childs words
or talk to go on (with only facial expressions, bodily postures, behaviors and
the like) a parent would have little or no clue about what is going on internally
in the child, little or no clue that all the psychological commotion was about
going to the movies with their friends. Indeed, we persons could not even so
much as have certain feelings, certain experiences, beliefs, values, or thoughts
if we did not possess a descriptive language. We could not for example have
feelings about what is happening in China, about landing on the moon, about
the president of United Statesor about attending medical school. Nor could
we describe to ourselves the various nonverbal feelings, thoughts, or desires
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that we have without a descriptive language. So, having a descriptive language

has been utterly transformative for humankind and, in particular, it has radically transformed the nature and complexity of our capacity for empathy with
other persons.
What then is empathy of the distinctively human and reflective kind? We
may characterize empathy of the distinctively human and reflective kind as
follows: When we are empathetic in the distinctively human way we not only
imaginatively share anothers inner life and emotions, but we do so in a fully
descriptive and appreciative way, and we will therein have the very same desires for them that they have for themselves and thereby a very powerful inclination to act on their behalf. So, there is nothing to prevent us from merging
empathy or empathetic behavior with the analysis, investigation, or rational
assessment of our conduct. To be fully human, our capacity for empathy, in
fact, needs to be infused with reflection. Stripped of our descriptive powers,
we may share in the sorts of non-descriptive empathetic capacities of which
certain species of nonhuman animals seem capable. Yet, when infused with
such descriptive powers we can, as it were, imagine being our child happily
and successfully pursuing our career as a doctor and we can equally imagine
being our child and being permanently blocked from our career as a doctor,
with all of the consequent frustration and misery. That said we now turn to
examine the role of empathy in our moral life.
II
In order to examine the role of empathy in our moral life, and the reasons why
we believe that empathy should be at the center of our moral life, we need first to
consider the concept of what truly is best for or in the best interest of a person.
This is the concept whose application helped the parent in the example above to
realize that the child may need to forgo going to the movies with their friends.
Let us begin by noting that it follows analytically from the very concept of
what is truly best for some person that nothing better can be so much as conceived. If something truly is best, its the best, period. Nothing else is better.
To be sure, it may seem that the application of such a concept of the best
for us is beyond human knowledge or any kind of certainty. However, further
reflection reveals that this concept, nonetheless, has an important role to play
in guiding our ordinary everyday actions, and we often understand that our
daily practices assume that the concept is applicable. Consider the following
simple example: Barry is all alone sleeping on the couch in his home, when
suddenly he wakes up and becomes aware that there is a raging fire all around
him. Under the circumstances, we can plainly see that what is truly best for
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Barry, at that particular time, is simply to get out of the house as fast as he
can. Although we can conceive of some conduct it might have been better for
Barry to perform: For example, we can conceive of a possible world in which
he could just push a button and the fire would go out and we can imagine other
scenarios in which getting out of the house as soon as possible would not be
what is truly best for him. Nonetheless, under the present circumstances it is
hard to imagine anything better that he might do.
The example of Barry and others like it are quite compatible with the fact
that there will be situations where we are completely at a loss to know or even
guess what might be the truly best thing for us to do. But, and this is crucial,
this is not always or even usually the case. There are many cases where we can
be extremely certain or at least quite certain enough that we are doing what
is truly best for ourselves or another. We indeed make this assumption when
were making careful, well-thought-out decisions about medical care for ourselves or for loved ones, decisions about buying a home, decisions about our
childrens schooling, and much, much more.
We can, moreover, improve our ability to determine what is truly best for
ourselves by becoming more rational in examining and assessing ourselves
and our circumstances. By being rational here we mean reasoning in ways that
are likely to lead to the truth or insights about self and circumstance, and irrational would simply mean to reason in ways that are likely to lead to falsehood.
Thus, the more informed we are about our situation and a particular problem
at hand and the more knowledge we have about the world, about ourselves and
about other persons, the better off we will be at determining what is truly best
for ourselves or for another. Again, in many cases, we can discuss or consult
experts on the matter. And we can become more skilled at distinguishing good
reasoning (i.e., arguments that are very likely to lead to the truth) from bad
reasoning (i.e., arguments that are very likely to lead to falsehood). We can
cultivate habits of action and mind that will eliminate our intellectual vices,
for instance our judgmental egotism, our lack of epistemic humility, our outof-control passions. And we can likewise cultivate intellectual virtues or habits
of action and mind that will enhance our performance at good reasoning, for
example listening very carefully to others, being open to completely new ways
of seeing things, valuing truth as a supreme good, and having the courage to
admit that we are wrong (when this is the case). In these and various related
ways, we can get better and better at determining what is truly best for ourselves as well as what is truly best for other people.
Thus aiming for what is truly best for ourselves or for others is not only
something we do and should always try to do, it is something we can improve
at doing. So, aiming at what is truly best for ourselves and for others is entirely
realistic and desirable.
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III
In order to better understand the concept of what is truly best, we now need to
consider the kind of things to which the concept applies. For example, a mechanic may say The truly best oil for your car is such and such oil. However,
what the mechanic means is simply that such and such oil is least expensive,
lasts longer, is most environmentally friendly, will enable your car to perform
at its best, and so on. They dont really mean it is truly best for your car, but
rather that it is best for you and/or other people. If, of course, we imagine that
your car is conscious (that there is something it is like to be your car) and our
car could suffer or feel pain or undergo pleasure or joy, then we could sensibly
talk about what was truly good or bad, better or best or worst for your car from
your cars standpoint. So, we can talk about what is truly best for your car or
anything, only so far as your car or anything else is something for which we
can have empathy, that is, something that has an inner life or subjective perspective. This is hardly surprising if we consider that in both cases (in the case
of empathy and in the case of what is truly best for something), we are dealing
with a being that is conscious, a being that can suffer or experience pain and
that can experience joy or pleasure.
This means that we can talk about what is truly best for something only so
far as we have access to that things inner life or subjective perspective through
empathy. Empathy is the doorway to understanding what is truly best for any
creature or person.
But what has all this to do with empathy being at the center of our moral
lives? To help to answer this question, we need to consider what it means for
human beings to live in various forms of union and ideally in interpersonal
harmony.
IV
There are different ways in which two or more people or even a whole village,
society, or nation may cohere or form various kinds of union. There is, for
example, such a thing as honor among thieves, where mutual dependency
can hold all kinds of people together, people who care nothing about each
other and have not the slightest empathy for one another. In such cases, people
are simply useful instruments for one another. There are other ways in which
people may be bound together. For example, a culture may speak of peoples
moral obligation to help one another and to avoid harming one another. And
we can further imagine that such a culture or community may teach that
what is morally good is good in and of itself apart from any considerations
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of empathy. So, we can certainly imagine that societies are variously bound
together by some sort of quasi-moral glue that has nothing whatsoever to do
with empathy.
At the same time, to the extent that we may empathize with other persons,
we will not harm them and, indeed, we will try to help them. Consequently, it
would seem that a family, tribe, society, nation, or world that is bound together
by empathy will turn out to be the best of social worlds. A world in which
the glue, as it were, that unites people and holds them in union does so in a
manner infused by peoples appreciation of and reflection upon what it is like
to be other personsto possess anothers desires, beliefs, emotions, and so on.
However, there is a social complication here in the very possibility of union
among persons, namely the phenomena of genuine conflicts between what is
truly best for one person, group, family, or nation and what is truly best for
some other person, group, family, or nation. In order to make this problem or
complication entirely clear, we need to consider the difference between a conflict that is genuine or real and one that is artificial or fictitious.
Suppose a woman or man wishes to become a senator and has an opportunity to do so. The husband or wife of the person in question may fear that this
will negatively impact upon their relationship with one another, their lives
in general, and upon the lives of their children. So, much marital discussion
ensues and each partner, failing to understand the other, may, at times, become
angry and alienated from their spouse. However, suppose the couple goes to
an excellent therapist who helps them work through the problem carefully,
thoughtfully, and empathetically. And suppose that after extensive sessions,
the husband or wife (whichever one was fearful) is subsequently willing to take
a chance and go along with his/her spouses becoming a senator. In this case,
let us assume that as things turn out, the fears of the husband or wife were
quite unfounded and that in fact the spouses becoming a senator positively
impacts upon all of their lives. In retrospect, they all come to realize that there
was no genuine conflict of interests, only an apparent conflict of interests.
Note how empathy is an important key here. Without empathizing with
one another, each spouse would only be able to really understand their own
personal feelings and desires and may have viewed the other as being quite
irrational or unreasonable with the result that no resolution would have been
reached. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that if each party has enough empathy for the other person or persons in any situation, then with sufficient patience and talking there is an extremely good chance of resolving the conflict
in question. We may even say that if there was enough empathy in the world
at large, then people would never deliberately harm one another and would
always be willing to try to help one another when the conflict was merely apparent. This would be a tremendous step forward for all of us, since many
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conflicts that arise between people are, like the above example, only apparent
and not genuine or real.
Unfortunately, things are not quite so simple. Genuine conflicts of interest
are not conflicts that will go away if only the parties caught up in the conflict
have sufficient skills, if only they have their passions and emotions under control, or if only they are open and willing and able to listen empathetically to
one another. These are the kind of prima facie intractable conflicts that we
must ultimately consider in order to see just how far empathy can take us.
Lets start with a simple example. Suppose two friends are camping out in
the woods after a long hike and that they are at least 5 miles from any drugstore, hospital, or physician. Unfortunately, they unknowingly settle down in
an area that is infested with rattlesnakes. Consequently, the two of them no
sooner fall asleep, when they both awake from fatal rattlesnake bites. Even
worse, they discover that they only have enough anti-venom with them to save
one of them. If they try to save both, by sharing the anti-venom, it is very clear
that both of them will die. So, at best, only one of them can be saved. Here we
have a genuine conflict of interest, a conflict of interest that will not go away or
be dissolved by all of the talking and empathy in the world. In the end, at least
one of them will die.
Many would argue that this kind of an example shows the moral limits of
empathy. In one sense this is true, but in another sense it is far from the truth.
It is true that all the empathy in the world will not eliminate such genuine conflicts of interest. Genuine conflicts of interest are not dissolvable through mere
empathy alone. Moreover, such genuine conflicts are a permanent feature of
human existence. However, as we shall see, genuine conflicts of interest are
resolvable, resolvable in ways that make for the best world that humans can
imagine constructing or bringing about.
Suppose in our actual world we possessed a special sort of empathy. This special sort of empathy would be empathy of a type that is no mere empathy but
that reflectively takes account of what is truly best for each and every person.
What we are imagining here is empathy that is tantamount to assuming the
equal worth of persons. Let us call such empathy morally sufficient empathy
or simply sufficient empathy.
What exactly is meant by the words sufficient empathy? Sufficient to accomplish what is the question? And the answer to the question is: Sufficient to
produce a world in which there is maximum harmony among persons.
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Suppose that you had so much empathy for another person that they became,
to you or in your own mind, the moral and spiritual equivalent of yourself.
Return to the two friends bitten by rattlesnakes deep in the woods with only
enough anti-venom to save one. Suppose that each friend had so much empathy for the other that each friend cared about their friend as much as they
cared about themselves. Thus, for example, the death of the friend would be
as horrible to each of them as their own death. Under such conditions, we can
easily imagine that they would resolve their problem by according an equal
chance for survival to each one of them, that is, they would let random chance
decide their fates. Since, for each one, their own death and the death of their
friend would be equally horrible, by, say, flipping a coin they could accept their
fate, either way, with grace and peace. This is sufficient empathy at work. In a
world in where each person had sufficient empathy for every other person, this
would amount to a world in which each and every human life has an equal
worth for everyone.
So, lets imaginatively extend our concept of sufficient empathy to the entire
world and consider the consequences. There are all kinds of genuine conflicts
of interest throughout the globe, genuine conflicts of interest between and
within individuals, between and within families, groups, organizations, political parties, religious groups, townships, states, and nations. So, the world
is full of strife as a result. Nonetheless, we can at least imagine a world in
which human beings have evolved or developed to a point where each and
every human being has sufficient empathy for every other human being. Put
another way, the worth of every human being for every other human being
would be equal to their own worth. Since equals are equal to equals, it follows
that if every other human being in the world had the same value to you as you
have to yourself, then everybody in the whole world would necessarily have an
equal worth. No one in the whole world would have more (or less) worth for
you than anyone else. So, we are trying to imagine a world in which everyone
has sufficient empathy for everyone else, a world where everyone has an equal
worth for everyone else.
The notion of such a world is immensely complicated of course, and there
are terms in its description that need careful analysis of a sort that we cannot
provide here. But let us proceed to outline or sketch what we have in mind and
consider the idealistic possibility of sufficient empathy.
In such a world, no one would deliberately harm anyone else (any more than
they would deliberately harm themselves). Nor would anyone deliberately fail
to help any other person (any more than they would fail to help themselves). So,
in such a world there would be what may be called maximum harmony of everyones best interest. However, is such a world even close to being empirically
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possible, even in the remote future? Can we expect humans to evolve to such
a high moral state?
There are reasons to believe that we might. In the first place, it would be the
best sort of world to live in, since everybody would gain from a world in which
there is maximum harmony. After all, in such a world, conflicts of interest
would either be dissolvable (in most cases of apparent conflicts) or at least
resolvable (in most cases of genuine conflicts). So, there would be no war, no
strife, no hostility, and no harm deliberately done to one another. Moreover,
everybody would help everybody else as far as possible. Each person living
in such a world would surely benefit immensely and be far happier than the
world in which we currently live. It would be a world of win-win or gain-gain
for everyone.
However, and here is the rub, how do we get from the world we actually
live in, a world filled with greed, vanity, hostility, bigotry, hatred, and, above
all else, selfishness to the world that we are imagining? How is such a world
possible? After all, as good as such a world might be for everyone, the question
remains: Who is going to take the first step? Who is going to cultivate such
incredible empathy so as to have such empathy for each and every person in
the world? Who may make such a supreme sacrifice, if, indeed, such a thing as
sufficient empathy for each and every person in the entire world is at all possible and not just some delicious pie-in-the-sky ideal that philosophers, such
as the two of us, have dreamed up? Would not such a sacrificing person (or
persons) be trampled by those around them who are anxiously looking out for
themselves?
Indeed, it would seem to be a fruitless and impossible sacrifice to try and
have sufficient empathy for the entire world, if what is required in order to
make the sacrifice is the expectable prospect of receiving rewards from other
people. In our woefully morally imperfect world, the reward for moral behavior often is not the reciprocal and appreciative behavior from others. So, what
then could be the reward?
We claim that the reward is a special kind of personal happiness. Not the
happiness of a happy or pleasurable but transient feeling, but the happiness
that comes from passing positive judgment on [ones] life; . . . on the living
of it and on whether [one] is [deeply] satisfied with its course and character
(Graham 1998: 193; see 192197 for discussion). This is the happiness that
many religious persons have spoken of when they have described the experience of finding the greatest happiness through helping and behaving morally
toward others and therein giving happiness to others.
Religions often clothe this claim about human happiness in various muddled theological and confusing metaphysical garments. These outer garments,
though often perhaps harmless in and of themselves, sometimes blind many
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proponents of different faiths to the true virtues of other faiths and consequently have divided people of different faiths, breeding endless controversy,
intolerance, hatred, and war. What we need today is to see beyond these outer
metaphysical garments and embrace the real core of a claim that can unite us,
the proposition that those who spread happiness enjoy a far deeper and lasting
happiness than other people. Whatever the ultimate nature of the universe
(which is beyond human knowing), what stands fast and endures above all
other truths is the fact, or so we claim is a fact, that those who have sufficient empathy, those who understand that all human beings have equal worth,
and those who have gotten beyond a narrow, self-centered existence enjoy the
greatest happiness humanly possible.
Granted this essential truth, our primary goal in life should be to empathetically value others as if they were ourselves. Such empathetic valuations will
not only produce the greatest happiness for our own person, but for others as
well. Indeed, it quite clearly follows that the very highest and best gift that we
can give any human being is to help them to have sufficient empathy for each
and every other person on the globe thereby becoming a person who likewise
seeks the happiness of others. In doing this, we not only help them to achieve
the greatest happiness possible, but set them on a path that will help them to
help others to do the same, thereby spreading happiness throughout the globe.
VI
A grand ideal? Indeed. But there are those who would concede that all of the
consequences adduced above really would occur only if it were possible to have
the kind of sufficient empathy described above. But they deny that having sufficient empathy (for everyone in the world) is even close to being humanly possible. We just are not built by nature, by the circumstances of human culture,
or by the demanding character of life itself to have such sufficient empathy.
In its most extreme form, this objection would say that we are incapable of
having sufficient empathy for even one single other person. But this extreme
form of the objection is clearly mistaken. For many people who are loving
parents or grandparents deeply understand that such empathy is possible,
since they have experienced it firsthand with respect to their own children or
grandchildren.
In a less radical form, the objection may be expressed by saying that our
empathetic concern for individuals can blind us to the common good and
to what we would otherwise take to be morally right. As a consequence of
an over-concern or solicitation for certain specific individuals, such empathy would incline us to put the wellbeing of some individuals ahead of others
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by exaggerating the importance of the individual when compared with the

common good.
However, some people can and do come to empathize with whole groups of
persons. This is illustrated by the profound impact of Harriet Beecher Stowes
mid-19th-century novel Uncle Toms Cabin, which was written prior to the
Civil War in United States. This wonderful book enabled white Americans to
understand what it was like to be a slave and thereby helped people to empathize with an entire group of people. The effect was so powerful that this single
book helped to inspire the movement to abolish slavery in America.
Equally important is the fact that what we are describing as sufficient empathy, above all else, is what prompts us to seek, again above all else, what is
truly best for each and every person on each and every occasion, which is to do
all that we can to help them in turn come to have sufficient empathy for each
and every other person. Given this condition, there is no way that the common
good and the good of the individual can be in competition. Quite to the contrary, to the extent that we succeed in helping others to have sufficient empathy
for each and every person, we thereby serve the common good throughout the
globe.
A final version of the objection to the possibility of having sufficient empathy for all human beings was posed by David Hume, who famously pointed
out that we have far greater empathy for those close to us in space and time, or
for those, whom he puts it, to which the mind from long custom has become
familiarized, than for those removed from us (see citation in Morton 2011:
325). What makes Humes observation appear compelling is that it is in fact
quite true of many (or possibly most) people. After all, it makes good evolutionary sense to say that we very likely do have a genetic predisposition to be
most empathetic to those closest to us. Moreover, it is factually true that many
of our various cultures reinforce this tendency to be more empathetic to those
belonging to our group or tribe and, in fact, if anything, reinforce our tendency to be hostile or at least less empathetic to outsiders.
However, the crucial question is not whether in fact many or most humans
are much more empathetic to those who are closer to them in time and space,
but whether or not they have the potential to be equally empathetic to those
who are removed from them in time and space.
It is, indeed, necessary and desirable to have special persons in our lives
such as family and friends. Most people are raised, fed, housed, trained, loved,
and educated by their family, friends, and teachers. All of these people, close to
us in time and space, made extraordinarily important contributions to our development as persons. We could not have become the persons we are without
such special persons or significant others in our lives. Indeed, humans would
never have evolved into creatures with a descriptive or propositional language
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had they not lived in families or small tribes. Nor could they, therefore, have
developed sufficient empathy for anyone else or have developed into moral
beings without family and friends (and others close in time and space) in their
lives. We might call such special persons our primary tribe (see Garrett 1989
for related discussion).
Over time, we come to join other tribes, such as political parties, religious
groups, and the like. And, moreover, we automatically become part of still
other tribes simply as a result of where we live, our neighborhood, our town
or city, our county or state and our nation, and we can even speak of the international tribe, the tribe which includes the entire world. Technology has
made that world tribe more and more possible, because as technology develops
(especially in the realm of communication and transportation) time and space
shrink and we find ourselves affected by and interacting with people who live
at enormous distances from us. As this happens, we move more and more
toward both the possibility and the necessity of becoming a single tribe.
Tribes are a good thing. The problem is not with tribes, with communities
that bond, nurture, and connect us, but with tribalism, with the very tendency
of which Hume speaks, namely the tendency to favor those who are closer
to us in time and space or, we might add, in race, religion, political ideology,
and all the rest. Tribalism views members of other tribes with suspicion, bigotry, hatred and, frequently, as nonpersons. Tribalism is quite real and it is
the biggest threat to the world today, precisely because it is the biggest threat
to a world in which each person has an equal worth, a world in which there is
maximum harmony.
However, there is a remedy for the disease we might call tribalism. It is the
development of sufficient empathy for each and every person in the world.
History has shown us again and again that it is indeed quite possible to go
against our natural inclination toward being attached to our own tribe when
doing so is morally unhealthy or contrary to one or another moral imperative. The very first thing that we need to do is come to see that those belonging to tribes other than ours (and even engaged in struggles with our tribes)
as human beings just like ourselves. This is the teaching of the parable of the
Good Samaritan in the New Testament. According to the Gospel of Luke
(10:2937) a traveler (who may or may not be Jewish) is beaten, robbed, and
left half dead along the road. First a priest and then a Levite come by, but both
avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan arrives on the scene. Samaritans and Jews
generally despised each other, but the Samaritan helps the injured man. Jesus
is described as telling the parable in response to a question regarding the identity of the neighbor who Leviticus (19:18) says should be loved. Quite literally, the meaning here is that anyone who can help or harm us and whom we in
turn can help or harm is our neighbor. The point is made in this way in order
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to illustrate to the Jewish tribe that those belonging to the alien Samaritan
tribe can be just as loving and kind as can Jews.
The second thing that we must do to overcome tribalism is to practice sufficient empathy (i.e., regard all others as having an equal worth) with respect
to everyone, no matter who they are or what tribe they belong to. Even in cases
where we dont immediately feel sufficient empathy, we should act as we would
if we had sufficient empathy for the person or tribe in question.
Something else must also be recognized. Cultivating sufficient empathy for
everyone in the world is a lifetime pursuit. Gautama Buddhas Eightfold Path
is a deep analysis of what humans must do in order to transform themselves
into beings that have sufficient empathy for each and every conscious living
being. We have to understand the truth that without such sufficient empathy,
life is suffering for ourselves and for others, and we have to understand that the
cost of our suffering and the suffering of others is due to the lack of sufficient
empathy. We need to see how attachment to our fears, desires, hatreds, prejudices, passions in general, and especially our attachment to ourselves (to the
ego) cause our blindness and our inability to cultivate sufficient empathy. And
we need to see how such passions frequently lurk beneath the surface of consciousness and need to be brought forth and made part of our daily awareness,
so that we can control them, instead of being controlled by them (see Garrett
2011 for related discussion).
If we understand that various religious and other communities actually
exist and actually bring about such radical transformations in persons, then
here above all we see that humans really do have the potential to have sufficient
empathy for each and every person in the universe, for each and every person
whose life they can affect.
Thus, we can agree with Hume when he says that most people in fact do not
have sufficient empathy for their neighbor (i.e., for those whose lives they can
affect). But this in no way contradicts the empirically relevant point that we
have the potential for practicing empathy for every living person in the world,
for those whose lives we can affect. And we have the potential therein for respecting the equal worth of persons.
C O N C LU S I O N
Jesse Prinz describes his paper on empathy, cited at the beginning of our paper,
as a kind of campaign against empathy, that is, against empathys occupying
a central role in our moral lives (Prinz 2011a: 212). He also claims empathy is
a response directed at individuals, and many of the most urgent moral events
involve large numbers of people (229). What we really need is an intellectual
recognition of our common humanity (229).
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One way of reading our chapter is that we agree with Prinz that we persons
need both to recognize our common humanity and to respond to urgent moral
crises facing large numbers of people, but we disagree that this means that
empathy should not play a central role in our moral lives or behavior. Our capacity for empathy is not necessarily restricted to our tribe. It is not confined
to feeling only for the primary persons in our life. It is a power of identification
with others in a manner that can respect our equal worth as persons as well as
what is in the best interest of each and every person affected by our actions. It
should not occupy an exclusionary or non-complemented/partner-less center
in our moral lives (for down that path lies tribalism). It should occupy a center
with complementary components, such as commitment to the equal worth of
persons and to our own and other peoples best interests. Morally sufficient
empathy, so understood, is an ideal center each step toward which may make
it more empirically real and socially encompassing.
Empathy and Moral Deficits

inPsychopathy
ABIGAIL A. MARSH
In the disaster he brings about he cannot estimate the affective reactions of others which are the substance of the disaster . . . the real psychopath seems to lack understanding of the nature and quality of the
hurt and sorrow he brings to others.
Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity
If there is a single psychiatric condition that is defined in terms of morality, it is

psychopathy. Modern conceptions of psychopathy emerged from 19th-century
observations that the primary affliction of a subset of criminal and mentally ill
populations was a breakdown of the moral faculties. Benjamin Rush described
individuals afflicted by apparent perversion of the moral faculties (Rush,
1812), and James Cowles Prichard created a diagnostic category, which he
termed moral insanity, that was marked by moral or emotional madness in
the absence of hallucinations or delusions (Prichard, 1837). The contemporary
definition of psychopathy reflects these origins, incorporating both deficiencies in moral emotions like empathic concern and guilt and persistent immoral behaviors like deceit, conning, theft, and interpersonal violence (Hare,
1991). Although other psychological conditions, such as borderline personality disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, are associated with increases in
immoral behavior, there is no other disorder for which immorality is such a
central feature. Because of this, psychopathy is an important phenomenon for
Empathy and Moral Deficits inPsychopathy
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better understanding the nature of human morality. In learning about individuals in whom moral emotions and behavior are consistently impaired (in
the absence of other major cognitive impairments) we may derive important
information about the neurocognitive systems that support morality.
Since the development of reliable scales for measuring psychopathy (e.g.,
Hare, 1991; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996), research
on psychopathy has burgeoned, driven in part by the practical importance of
understanding individuals whose disproportionately violent and criminal behavior is costly to society (Rutter, 2012; Hare, 1993). Understanding the nature
of moral deficits in psychopathy is therefore both a pragmatically and a theoretically useful endeavor. This chapter will review the accumulating empirical research that supports the roots of specific moral deficits in psychopathy.
In particular, it will explore the evidence that moral deficits in psychopathy
emerge from fundamental deficiencies in the capacity for certain forms of
empathy and will consider the possible neural basis for these deficits. These
findings may illuminate the role of empathy in moral judgments and behavior
more broadly.
PSYC H O PAT H Y
The earliest criteria for assessing psychopathy were formulated by the psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley, whose book The Mask of Sanity was first published in
1941 and has since become a touchstone for psychopathy researchers in the
modern era (Cleckley, 1982). Cleckley noted that a subset of patients in the
mental institutions where he worked were set apart by characteristic features.
These features included an absence of afflictions typical in institutionalized
patients, such as delusions, irrational behavior, suicidality, and nervousness or neuroses. These items were included in his original 16 criteria for psychopathy, in addition to items related both to moral emotions (such as a lack
of remorse or shame) and to immoral behavior (including untruthfulness and
inadequately motivated antisocial behavior). Of note, Cleckley also included
the failure to learn by experience as symptomatic of psychopathy, as many of
the psychopathic individuals he observed persistently engaged in deviant behaviors, seemingly undeterred by the prospect of negative consequences like
future incarceration.
More recently, Hare and colleagues applied psychometric techniques to
create a reliable instrument for researchers to assess psychopathy in institutionalized populations, called the Psychopathy Checklist (now in its revised
form, PCL-R) (Hare, 1991). The PCL-R is a 20-item scale with a maximum
score of 40 that was originally created and standardized in male prison
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populations rather than patients in mental institutions (Hare, 1991). The selection of items on the scale reflects this fact. It features more items specifically assessing criminal behaviorjuvenile delinquency, criminal versatility,
revocation of conditional releasein addition to items featured in Cleckleys
criteria, for example, lack of remorse and pathological lying. Absent from the
PCL-R, however, are the items that Cleckley included to distinguish psychopaths from other mentally ill populations: the absence of nervousness, absence
of delusions or irrational thinking, and infrequent suicidality. The ubiquity of
the PCL-R and its variants in forensic psychiatry and related disciplines has
led to this instrument being described as the gold standard for the measurement of psychopathysometimes to the extent that the instrument is considered synonymous with the psychopathy construct (Skeem & Cooke, 2010;
Skeem, Polaschek, Patrick, & Lilienfeld, 2011; Ermer, Kahn, Salovey, & Kiehl,
2012). That said, drawbacks of this instrument include the requirement that
file data or other background information be used when scoring it (meaning
that it cannot easily be used in noninstitutionalized samples); its heavy reliance on items assessing criminal behavior (Skeem & Cooke, 2010); and the exclusion of items that assess fear or anxiety, which has led some investigators to
supplement the scale with anxiety measures or clinical assessments of anxiety
disorders (e.g., Koenigs, Kruepke, Zeier, & Newman, 2012; Marsh et al., 2008).
A variety of self-report measures of psychopathy are also available, which
are generally reliably correlated with the PCL-R (Malterer, Lilienfeld, Neumann, & Newman, 2010; Poythress et al., 2010) and obviate the need for file
data, permitting psychopathy to be assessed in noninstitutionalized community samples. The use of self-report measures in community samples is consistent with the idea that, like most other psychological disorders (Markon,
Chmielewski, & Miller, 2011), psychopathic traits are continuously distributed in the population (rather than being taxonomic in structure) such that
information about psychopathy can usefully be drawn from both clinically
diagnosed samples and community samples (Edens, Marcus, Lilienfeld, &
Poythress, 2006; Guay, Ruscio, Knight, & Hare, 2007; Malterer, Lilienfeld,
Neumann, & Newman, 2010).
Views on the factor structure of psychopathy vary (Skeem, Polaschek, Patrick, & Lilienfeld, 2011; Jones, Cauffman, Miller, & Mulvey, 2006), but the
classic division of psychopathic traits is a two-factor solution incorporating socio-affective traits termed callous-unemotional traits that include lack
of guilt or remorse and shallow affect; and antisocial and under-controlled
behaviors, like irresponsibility, impulsivity, and poor anger control. Antisocial behaviors observed in psychopathy may also be observed in other deviant populations, but callous-unemotional traits set psychopaths apart and are
often referred to as the core features of the disorder (Sylvers, Brennan, &
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Lilienfeld, 2011). Assessments of children typically focus only on these traits,

and a callous-emotional traits specifier has been proposed for children diagnosed with Conduct Disorder using the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V (DSM-V) (Frick & Moffitt, 2010). The two factors that compose
psychopathy are strongly positively related, such that higher levels of callousunemotional traits predispose an individual to increased antisocial behaviors,
particularly antisocial behavior that serves an instrumental goal, such as bullying, sexual violence, or assault during the course of a robbery (Blair, 2001;
Woodworth & Porter, 2002; Kahn, Byrd, & Pardini, 2012; Viding, Frick, &
Plomin, 2007; Dadds, Fraser, Frost, & Hawes, 2005).
M O R A L J U D G M EN TS I N PSYC H O PAT H Y
Very early descriptions of psychopathy explained the condition as a disorder of

the moral faculties. Prichard, for example, described psychopathy as a morbid
perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits,
moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder
or defect of the intellect or knowing or reasoning faculties . . . (Prichard,
1837, p. 16). But accumulating research on the neurocognitive basis of morality indicate that the umbrella term morality encompasses many different
phenomena and that various types of moral judgments may be facilitated by
distinct neurocognitive processes (Sinnott-Armstrong & Wheatley, 2012). This
suggests that any single disorder or impairment is unlikely to affect all forms
of moral reasoning. The goal, therefore, is not simply to determine whether
psychopathy affects morality, but what forms of moral judgment it affects, and
via what mechanisms.
The earliest investigations of psychopaths moral judgments aimed to identify qualitative differences in moral reasoning using Kohlbergs method, in
which respondents are presented with a complex moral scenario and asked
to justify the most appropriate course of action (Kohlberg, 1981). Responses
are scored as representing various stages of moral reasoning, which Kohlberg
believed emerged progressively during development. These investigations met
with mixed results, with some yielding findings that psychopaths reason at a
lower level than other antisocial populations (Fodor, 1973; Jurkovic & Prentice, 1977) and others finding no significant group differences (Lee & Prentice,
1988; Trevethan & Walker, 1989).
More consistent findings have emerged from quantitative investigations of
the moral/conventional distinction in psychopathic adults and children (Blair,
1995; Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith, 1995; Fisher & Blair, 1998). In this task,
respondents make a variety of judgments about both moral transgressions,
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which are defined as violations of others rights or welfare and which include,
for example, theft, violence, and damaging property, and about conventional
transgressions, which are defined as deviations from social norms or rules and
which include, for example, talking out of turn (Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith,
1995). Moral and conventional transgressions are typically judged differently in two respects: moral violations are generally judged to be more serious
and also to be less rule contingent (modifiable). In other words, compared to
conventional violations, a moral violation like hitting another person is less
likely to be judged morally acceptable, and judgments about it are unlikely
to change when respondents are informed that there are no rules against the
action in the setting where it occurred (Turiel, 1977; Turiel, 1983). In addition,
when asked why a moral violation is wrong, respondents tend to refer to its
effects on the welfare of the victim. Populations found to successfully distinguish between moral and conventional violations according to these criteria
include non-psychopathic criminals (Blair, 1995), children as young as three
years of age (Smetana & Braeges,1990), adults with autism (Zalla, Barlassina,
Buon, & Leboyer, 2011), and adults with Downs syndrome (Hippolyte, Iglesias, Van der Linden, & Barisnikov, 2010). Evidence exists that the distinction
emerges across cultures as well. A study of Amish adolescents found that these
respondents distinguished between conventional violations, like working on
a Sunday, that would be permissible if God had made no rule against it, as
compared to moral violations, like hitting someone, that would be impermissible even if God had made no rule against it (Nucci, 1985). Together, these
findings suggest that the moral/conventional distinction arises in the absence
of advanced cognitive abilities, advanced Theory of Mind, or learning accrued
in a particular cultural context.
Despite this, psychopaths typically fail to distinguish between moral and
conventional transgressions. This has been observed anecdotally, for example, during a prison interview, in which the presumed psychopath Ted Bundy
listed behaviors he knew to be wrong and jumbled together moral and conventional violations in a way that seems strangely arbitrary: It is wrong for me
to jaywalk. It is wrong to rob a bank. It is wrong to break into other peoples
houses. It is wrong for me to drive without a drivers license. It is wrong not
to pay your parking tickets. It is wrong not to vote in elections. It is wrong to
intentionally embarrass people (Michaud & Aynesworth, 2000, p. 119). Empirical evidence exists as well. In two studies assessing the moral/conventional
distinction in psychopaths, Blair and colleagues assessed responses to descriptions of transgressions adapted from the developmental literature, including
four moral transgressions (a child hitting another child, a child pulling the
hair of another child so that the victim cries, a child smashing a piano, a child
breaking the swing in the playground) and four conventional transgressions
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(a boy wearing a skirt, two children talking in class, a child walking out of
the classroom without permission, a child who stops paying attention to the
lesson and turns his back on the teacher). In one study of 20 violent offenders,
half of whom were psychopaths, non-psychopathic offenders distinguished
between moral and conventional transgressions in terms of judgments of seriousness, modifiability, and the types of rationale used to justify their judgments whereas non-psychopathic offenders did not (Blair, 1995). This indicates
that the moral/conventional test can distinguish psychopathic offenders from
non-psychopathic offenders. Interestingly, psychopathic respondents tended
to err in treating conventional violations like moral violations in terms of seriousness and modifiability. Psychopaths were also markedly less likely than
non-psychopaths to justify their judgments by referring to the victims welfare. Over half (52.5%) of non-psychopaths justifications of moral violations
referred to victim welfare, whereas only 17.5% of psychopaths justifications
did (neither group used any welfare-based justifications in response to conventional violations). Psychopaths were markedly more likely to refer to conventions or rules (52.5%) than non-psychopaths (35%) when responding to moral
violations.
A follow-up study largely replicated this result, finding again that non-
psychopathic offenders distinguish between moral and conventional violations in terms of seriousness, modifiability, and welfare-based rationale,
whereas psychopathic offenders distinguished between moral and conventional violations only in their judgments of seriousness (Blair, Jones, Clark,
& Smith., 1995). And again, psychopaths were markedly less likely than non-
psychopaths to refer to victims welfare in response to moral violations (3.75%
vs. 27% of responses). The PCL-R item that best predicted participants responses was a core moral emotion item: lack of remorse or guilt.
A recent study (Aharoni, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Kiehl, 2012) did not find
a significant relationship between psychopathy and performance on a moral/
conventional distinction task that assessed modifiability judgments (but not
permissibility or justifications). However, significant negative associations
were found between task performance and both the affective and antisocial
facets of the PCL-R. Among the moral violations that best distinguished offenders with high and low psychopathy scores was the one item that described
victim distress: Annoyed by her sarcastic attitude, a man pulls a flight attendants hair, causing her to scream.
The results of early studies on the moral/conventional distinction in psychopaths, as well as the results of a study assessing children with psychopathic
traits (Fisher & Blair, 1998) are interpreted by Blair in support of Violence
Inhibition Mechanism (VIM) model and the updated Integrated Emotion
Systems (IES) model (Blair, 2005; Blair, 1995). Under this model, distress
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cues such as facial expressions and vocalizations of fear or sadness are unconditioned stimuli that developing children come to associate with moral
violations, thereby learning to avoid engaging in these behaviors. But the neurocognitive deficits associated with psychopathy prevent psychopaths from
using information about a victims distress to generate appropriate judgments
about violations that result in victim suffering, making these individuals difficult to socialize (Blair, 2005). This model neatly explains psychopaths impairments in judging the seriousness and modifiability of moral violations, as both
types of response require an appreciation of the distress the violation causes
the victim. (Is hitting someone permissible? No, because it would cause the
person distress. Would hitting be permissible if the rules said its all right to
hit? No, because hitting would still cause the person distress.) The model does
not specify whether psychopaths fail to learn the seriousness of moral transgressions because they fail to recognize the distress that results from moral
violations, or whether they fail to care that these violations results in distress,
but either mechanism could presumably yield the observed effects.
If the failure to respond to the distress of a victim is central to psychopaths
moral deficits, one would expect other moral reasoning tasks that hinge upon
responding to a victims distress to also find impairments in psychopathy. The
evidence for this is clear but limited, in part because many moral judgment
tasks do not systematically manipulate victim distress or include task stimuli
that highlight it. For example, the commonly used trolley scenarios typically manipulate whether the harmful act is intentional versus unintentional
(accidental or merely foreseen) (Young, Koenigs, Kruepke, & Newman, 2012;
Marsh et al., 2011a), or personal versus impersonal (requiring physical contact with the victim or not) (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen,
2001; Crockett, Clark, Hauser, & Robbins, 2010). Koenigs and colleagues (Koenigs, Kruepke, Zeier, & Newman, 2012) investigated the responses of psychopathic and non-psychopathic inmates to trolley dilemmas featuring personal
harm (e.g., pushing one person off a bridge to stop a runaway train car from
hitting five people) or impersonal harm (e.g., pulling a switch to divert a runaway train car from hitting five people). In either scenario, sacrificing one
victim to save five others is the utilitarian choice, but most respondents avoid
this outcome if saving the five requires personally harming the victim. Nonpsychopathic criminals generally followed this pattern, whereas psychopaths
were more likely to endorse personally harming the innocent victim in order
to save the others. It should be noted that this psychopathy sample was limited
to only respondents scoring 30 or greater on the PCL-R and that group differences in response to personal harm were only obtained for psychopaths with
low anxiety scores (sometimes called primary psychopaths), but not psychopaths with high anxiety scores.
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Koenigs and colleagues suggest that the higher cutoff score explains why they
observed group differences in judgments of personal harm dilemmas whereas
two previous studies assessing how psychopathy affects judgments of similar
scenarios did not. Cima and colleagues (Cima, Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010) used
a cutoff score of 26, and Glenn and colleagues (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009;
Glenn, Raine, Schug, Young, & Hauser, 2009) assessed correlations in a community sample with no cutoff score. This explanation runs counter, however,
to findings that psychopathy is more accurately described as a continuum than
a taxon (Edens, Marcus, Lilienfeld, & Poythress, 2006) and that, in related
neurocognitive tasks, similar findings can be observed across the psychopathy
spectrum in both incarcerated and community samples (Glenn, Iyer, Graham,
Koleva, & Haidt, 2009; Aharoni, Antonenko, & Kiehl, 2011; Vanman, Mejia,
Dawson, Schell, & Raine, 2003; Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 1993). An alternative
explanation is that neither Cima and colleagues nor Glenn and colleagues assessed anxiety in their samples. Koenigs and colleagues only found more lenient moral judgments regarding personal harm in low-anxiety psychopaths,
whereas high-anxiety psychopaths looked similar to controls. When all the
psychopaths were considered together in this study, psychopathy was not significantly related to judgments of personal harm.
Together, these findings could be interpreted as refuting the idea that moral
judgments in psychopathy are impaired at all (Cima, Tonnaer, & Hauser,
2010). Trolley dilemmas are a staple of neurocognitive assessments of morality, and it seems counterintuitive that psychopaths, whose moral behavior is so
obviously aberrant, respond to these dilemmas similarly to controls. But an alternate interpretation is that perhaps psychopathy does not impair judgments
of trolley dilemmas because these dilemmas do not target the crux of psychopaths moral deficits. If psychopathy predominantly impairs moral judgments
that require a representation of a victims distress, trolley scenarios are not ideally suited for capturing this impairment. None of the scenarios describe the
victims responses to their fatethere are no mention of the screams, tears, or
anguished expressions that occur during an actual fatal trolley crash. And although the personal harm scenarios are considered more emotional in nature,
it is not because victims emotional reactions are amplified in these scenarios.
Rather, these scenarios aim to increase respondents presumed emotional reaction to causing the death of an innocent victim. One might argue that in the
personal scenarios the victims distress would be more salient to the respondent, but evidence for this mechanism is lacking. And because other features
also distinguish the two types of scenarios it would be difficult to attribute any
response patterns to this detail or to rule out alternate mechanisms, such that
responses to personal harm scenarios represent a general distaste for violence
or normative beliefs about the appropriateness of violent behavior.
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In support of the idea that trolley scenarios are poorly suited for capturing
moral judgment deficits in psychopathy are the results of studies that explicitly
assess responses to victims outcomes and do find that psychopathy predicts
distinct judgment patterns. For example, two recent studies have assessed the
correspondence between psychopathic traits and responses to the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) (Haidt & Graham, 2007; Aharoni, Antonenko,
& Kiehl, 2011; Glenn, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, & Haidt, 2009). This measure assesses the importance of five systems, or foundations, in respondents moral
judgments: Harm/Care (concerns about violence, suffering, and compassion);
Fairness/Reciprocity (concerns about equality and justice); Ingroup/Loyalty
(concerns about loyalty and the treatment of ingroup versus outgroup members); Authority/Respect (concerns about obedience and hierarchical relations); and Purity/Sanctity (concerns about moral disgust and purity). Using
a large community sample, Glenn and colleagues found that psychopathy
predicted reduced concerns about harm and fairness, but was relatively unrelated to other moral domains such as authority and ingroup loyalty (Glenn,
Iyer, Graham, Koleva, & Haidt, 2009). Aharoni and colleagues found much
the same results in a sample of offenders, among whom concerns about harm
and fairness were also more strongly related to psychopathy scores than were
concerns about other moral domains (Aharoni, Antonenko, & Kiehl, 2011).
In both studies, the strongest predictor of total psychopathy scores was judgments regarding harm/care. The harm/care subscale of the MFQ includes items
like, [It is relevant to consider] whether or not someone suffered emotionally,
and It can never be right to kill a human being. Fairness judgments are assessed using items like, [It is relevant to consider] whether or not someone
acted unfairly and I think its morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot
of money while poor children inherit nothing. Thus, both subscales include
items that allude to victim suffering, although the harm/care subscale does so
most explicitly.
A still more explicit focus on victim suffering was employed by Marsh and
Cardinale in a recent set of studies assessing the influence of psychopathy on
moral judgments about behaviors that evoke specific emotions in the victim
(Marsh & Cardinale, 2012; Marsh & Cardinale, 2014). The stimuli used in
these studies were written statements that vary in moral permissibility and
would cause a target to experience one of five basic emotions: anger (You are a
disgrace), disgust (I never wash my hands), fear (I could easily hurt you),
happiness (You are the nicest person I know), or sadness (I dont want to
be friends anymore). In both studies, respondents were drawn from community samples and assessed using a self-report measure of psychopathy. During
the task, they read each statement and were asked whether it would ever be
morally acceptable to make that statement to another person. In both studies,
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the only judgments associated with psychopathy scores were judgments about
causing others fear. Although violations resulting in anger and fear were on
average viewed as equally serious by the study participants, high psychopathy
scorers judged violations that cause fear to be significantly more permissible,
but did not differ in their judgments of the other violations. The results of these
studies provide the most targeted evidence to date that psychopathy is most
closely linked to impaired moral judgments when making those judgments
require reference to information about a victims distress, particularly fear.
To summarize, the most consistent moral deficits in psychopathy emerge
in paradigms that that focus on the issue of victim suffering. Trolley dilemmas, which neither describe nor manipulate the suffering of victims, have not
reliably been found to predict psychopathy scores. By contrast, investigations
of moral versus conventional violations, which require considering victim distress in order to differentiate between two types of transgressions, have been
more reliably linked to psychopathy. Similarly, investigations of various moral
foundations have found those that the subscales relevant to victim suffering
are most closely associated with psychopathy. And a novel task that assesses
moral judgments about evoking specific emotions in victims finds that psychopathy most strongly affects judgments about causing a victim one particular kind of emotional distress: fear.
EM OT I O N A L R ES P O N D I N G I N PSYC H O PAT H Y
That psychopathy is particularly likely to impair moral reasoning in response

to victims distress, fear in particular, is significant. One of the most durable
findings in the psychopathy literature is that this disorder also impairs the capacity to experience fear (Aniskiewicz, 1979; Birbaumer et al., 2005; Herpertz
et al., 2001; Lykken, 1957; Marsh et al., 2011b; Rothemund et al., 2012; Flor,
Birbaumer, Hermann, Ziegler, & Patrick, 2002). The parallel between the emotion that psychopaths fail to respond to in victims and the emotion they fail
to experience suggests a possible empathic basis to moral reasoning deficits in
psychopathy. That is, the emotions that psychopaths fail to respond to in victims may mirror the emotions they tend not to experience themselves.
Fear can be defined as the aversive state that accompanies the anticipation
of a punishment or other negative event and promotes avoidance and escape
behaviors (Stein & Jewett, 1986; LeDoux, 2000; Panksepp, 1998). Psychopathy
has been linked to deficient fear responding from the earliest formal descriptions of the disorder. It will be recalled that among Cleckleys defining criteria
is the absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations. Cleckley describes the prototypical psychopath as incapable of anxiety (p.340) showing
148
immunity from . . . anxiety or worry (p. 339), and being free from . . .
nervousness (p. 339). His case studies largely describe psychopaths as relaxed,
affable, charming, and prone to engage in a variety of risky and reckless behaviors with seemingly little thought to the possibility of danger or punishment (for example, imprisonment). These descriptions are consistent with
current thinking that psychopathy is a predictor of recidivism, perhaps because psychopaths are not sufficiently deterred by the threat of future punishment ( Corrado, Vincent, Hart, & Cohen, 2004; Hare, 2006).
Empirical data aimed at assessing psychopaths responses to the threat of
punishment also supports the idea of impaired fear responding. The first assessment of psychopaths behavioral responses to anticipated negative outcomes was conducted by Lykken (Lykken, 1957), who created a sort of mental
maze that subjects were given 20 trials to learn. At each choice point in the
maze four choices were available, and one of the four choices would result
in an electrical shock applied to the respondents finger. Relative to controls,
psychopaths were significantly slower to learn to avoid selecting the choices
that resulted in shock. This is consistent with the idea of an impaired fear response. The fear learning system is conserved across species and has been well
delineated by researchers studying humans and nonhuman animals (LeDoux,
2003; Schoenbaum, Chiba, & Gallagher, 1998). The system is described as promoting the acquisition of an avoidance response for aversive events and is dependent upon an intact amygdala (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Lee, 1999).
Also consistent with the notion of an impaired fear response are the results of a paradigm in which psychopathic and non-psychopathic participants were given the choice between an immediate shock and a delayed shock
(Hare, 1966). Most non-psychopathic participants preferred the immediate
shock rather than the dread that accompanies waiting for a delayed shock,
explaining their choice as resulting from a desire to get it over with (p. 27).
By contrast, psychopaths were indifferent between the two options, selecting
them in nearly the same proportions throughout the task. The psychopaths
claimed that, waiting for the occurrence of delayed shock bothered them very
little (p. 27). Combined, these data are consistent with the idea that psychopathy impairs the generation of a fear response under conditions of impending
threat and that this is a defect in emotional processes subserved by primitive
subcortical structures.
Psychophysiological data also support the notion that psychopaths responses to an impending aversive outcome are muted. During conditions
of anticipated threat, psychopathy reduces skin-conductance responses, an
index of palmar sweat (Aniskiewicz, 1979; Birbaumer et al., 2005; Herpertz
et al., 2001; Lykken, 1957; Rothemund et al., 2012; Flor, Birbaumer, Hermann,
Ziegler, & Patrick et al., 2002); fear-potentiated startle responses, an index of
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the contraction of the muscles around the eye following a startling noise (Herpertz et al., 2001; Rothemund et al., 2012; Levenston, Patrick, Bradley, & Lang,
2000); and distress-related facial expressions, indexed as the contraction of the
corrugator muscle underlying the brows (Herpertz et al., 2001; Rothemund
et al., 2012). When primary psychopaths are distinguished from secondary
psychopaths, these differences are particularly pronounced for primary psychopaths who more strongly exhibit the core callous-unemotional personality
features of the disorder (Aniskiewicz, 1979; Lykken, 1957). These findings are
consistent with the comments of the psychopaths tested by Hare (Hare, 1966)
as well as with anecdotal reports from psychopaths who claim they do not not
really understand what others meant by fear (Hare, 1993, p. 53).
Empirical data also support that subjective experiences of fear are reduced
in psychopathy. In one recent paradigm (Marsh et al., 2011b), healthy children and adolescents and those with psychopathic traits underwent an autobiographical recall paradigm adapted from a task developed by Scherer
and Wallbott to measure subjective experiences of emotion across cultures
(Scherer & Wallbott, 1994). Respondents recalled events in their own lives
during which they had felt anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. They
then reported on how they felt physiologically during these experiences. Specific items were selected to correspond to changes linked to activation of the
sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic nervous system. Items
composing the index of sympathetic activation included changes in breathing,
heart rate, and muscle tension. When reports of changes in sympathetic activity were analyzed, a significant group by emotion interaction was found such
that the psychopathic adolescents reported experiencing less sympathetic activation during frightening experiences than did healthy adolescents, whereas
no group differences were observed for other emotions. These data omitted
the responses of two psychopathic adolescents who claimed never to have felt
afraid, and so they could not provide a relevant recent event. No healthy adolescents reported never having been afraid. At the end of the task, participants
were asked how often and how strongly they experienced the various emotions in daily life and again, the groups differed only in their responses to fear,
which psychopathic adolescents claimed to feel less often and less strongly
than healthy adolescents.
It should be noted that psychopaths do not appear to be generally without emotion. For example, anger appears to be intact and perhaps enhanced
in psychopaths. Anger is the high arousal state that follows frustration or
perceived threat and, behaviorally, is closely linked to aggression against the
source of frustration or threat (Blair, 2012). Two recent studies found that
psychopathy is associated with intact or heightened physiological and subjective anger responses. Lobbestael and colleagues (Lobbestael, Arntz, Cima,
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& Chakhssi, 2009) found that total psychopathy scores, as well as callous-
unemotional traits scores, among individuals with antisocial personality disorder were unrelated to physiological changes during an anger induction task.
And Hicks and Patrick (Hicks & Patrick, 2006) evaluated angry responding
using a variety of self-report scales and found elevated anger responding in
psychopathy, an effect that was primarily accounted for by antisocial behavior factor scores. Positive excitement is another emotional state that appears
to be intact in psychopathy. This state is distinct from happiness, which is
associated with goal attainment, and is the state that accompanies the anticipation of a reward (i.e., an appetitive outcome) and that promotes acquisition
or achievement of the reward (Berridge, Robinson, & Aldridge, 2009). Although comparably little data exist that explicitly assess positive excitement
in psychopathy, what data do exist suggest that psychopathy either minimally
affects the motivational salience of rewarding stimuli (Blair et al., 2004) or
may even increase it (Bjork, Chen, & Hommer, 2012; Scerbo et al., 1990). So,
for example, Bjork and colleagues (Bjork, Chen, & Hommer, 2012) found that
psychopathy predicted faster reaction times when responses were rewarded,
but not when they were unrewarded. Little direct empirical evidence exists
regarding psychopathy and experiences of disgust or happiness; of all other
emotions sadness may be the next-most likely to be significantly impaired
(Marsh & Blair, 2008; Dawel, OKearney, McKone, & Palermo, 2012), although some direct evaluations of sadness in psychopathy find no significant
effects (Marsh et al., 2011b).
Specific impairments in subjective fear are related to a final interesting fearrelated finding in psychopathy, which is that psychopathy also impairs the
ability to recognize when others are experiencing fear. A number of studies
have assessed the degree to which psychopathy affects the recognition of various emotions from the face, body, and voice and have consistently shown that
the form of emotion recognition most affected by psychopathy is fear recognition (Marsh & Blair, 2008; Dawel, OKearney, McKone, & Palermo, 2012). This
effect appears to be unrelated to the age or sex of respondents (Marsh & Blair,
2008) and is more strongly related to the callous-unemotional factor of psychopathy than to the antisocial behavior factor (Dawel, OKearney, McKone, &
Palermo, 2012). Psychopathy also affects the ability to determine which behaviors will elicit fear in another person (Marsh & Cardinale, 2012). In the moral
judgment task described earlier, psychopathy not only affected respondents
moral judgments about causing others fear, it reduced their ability to identify
which behaviors would cause others fear. These two judgments were also correlated, such that respondents who less accurately identified statements like,
I could easily hurt you as frightening also judged these statements as more
morally permissible.
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To summarize, the evidence is fairly strong that psychopaths do not feel fear
as strongly as non-psychopaths and that this deficit does not extend across
other emotions. In some psychopaths the experience of fear may be essentially
absent (such as, perhaps, the psychopath quoted by Hare and the two youths
assessed by Marsh and colleagues) but, in keeping with the idea that psychopathy is a continuum rather than a taxon, fear is likely muted to varying degrees
rather than absent in most individuals with psychopathic traits. This pattern
parallels the findings for emotion recognition in psychopathy; whereas psychopathy is associated with impaired recognition of fearful emotional expressions, recognition of other expressions appears relatively unaffected.
EM PAT H Y A N D M O R A L J U D G M EN TS I N PSYC H O PAT H Y
Returning to the consideration of moral deficits in psychopathy, the fact that

psychopathy impairs the recognition of others fearfor example, fearful facial
expressionsmay be particularly important to consider because responses to
expressions like these have been strongly linked to empathic concern, defined
as a concerned or sympathetic response to anothers distress (de Waal, 2008). It
has been suggested that the ability to recognize anothers distress is critical for
the experience of empathic concern (Nichols, 2001). This is compatible with
data that fearful emotional facial expressions elicit empathic concern and the
desire to help from people who perceive them, even subliminally (Marsh &
Ambady, 2007). Data on emotion recognition in psychopaths suggest that this
fundamental empathy mechanism is impaired in psychopaths. What is this
basis of this mechanism? There is not yet a consensus on how emotional facial
expressions are recognized, but clearly the parallels between psychopathic deficits in emotion recognition and emotional experience are hard to miss. The
one emotion that psychopaths clearly seem not to feel stronglyfearis the
emotion that they have the most difficulty recognizing in others. That the experience and recognition of emotions are linked has previously been observed
across a number of emotions, including fear (Buchanan, Bibas, & Adolphs,
2010). This suggests that, in response to others fear, people typically experience a low-level form of empathy sometimes termed emotional contagion,
which is the ability to be affected by and share the emotional state of another
(de Waal, 2009). It has been suggested that we exploit this low level emotional
contagion in order to recognize emotions expressed by other people (Goldman
& Sripada, 2005). Impaired empathic responding to others fear may be the
source of psychopaths fear recognition deficits and, by extension, their deficits
in empathic concern. This empathic breakdown appears to render others expressions of fear literally meaningless in individuals with psychopathic traits.
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Here a potential link between empathic deficits and moral judgments in

psychopathy also emerges. It will be recalled that deficits in moral judgment
most reliably occur in psychopathy when the task highlights or manipulates
the distress of victims. And, when various forms of victim distress are compared, the strongest moral judgment deficits are observed for fear (Marsh &
Cardinale, 2012). Perhaps psychopaths moral responses to victims fear are
impaired the same way their responses to fear expressed in the face or voice are
impaired: their own muted capacity for fear leaves them unable to recognize or
understand the victims fear and thereby formulate the appropriate concerned
reaction to it. So, for example, in studies assessing the moral/conventional distinction, the distress of potential victims, whether explicitly stated (e.g., . . .
and the victim cries) or requiring inference on the respondents part (How
would a victim react to being hit or pushed off a swing?) are presumed to drive
the average respondents judgment that the actions are not acceptable because
they cause distress. This is also the reason the actions are viewed as impermissible and not dependent on social rules. Psychopathic respondents presumably
fail to generate any empathic response to fear-relevant distress cues in these
scenarios, and are thus left to engage in a qualitatively distinct process in order
to arrive at a judgment. For example, they may recruit semantic information
about societal rules to answer the question. Presumably this occurs in response to both moral and conventional violations, which is why psychopaths
judgments tend not to distinguish between these types of violations.
That psychopaths resort to moral judgment strategies like the recruitment
of semantic knowledge about rules is supported by recent neuroimaging
evidence. It will be recalled that Marsh and Cardinale (Marsh & Cardinale,
2014) assessed moral judgments to emotionally evocative statements during
a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan. During this
task, moral judgments about statements that evoke anger, disgust, happiness,
or sadness in the listener did not vary across groups. By contrast, high psychopathy scorers judged statements that would elicit fear (which are primarily threats) as more morally permissible than did low psychopathy scorers, a
pattern that was matched by a significant difference in amygdala activation
across groups. That low psychopathy scorers recruited the amygdala preferentially when judging frightening statements (but not other negative statements) supports the possibility of an empathic response to the stimuli during
the task. High psychopathy scorers did not exhibit any increase in amygdala
activation for these judgments. Instead, across judgments of all negative
statements, high psychopathy scorers showed relatively increased activation
in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that is involved in
facilitating abstract reasoning (Glenn, Raine, Schug, Young, & Hauser, 2009).
This finding parallels those of a number of prior studies of psychopathy, in
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which activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is found to be elevated

in respondents with higher psychopathy scores during morally relevant decisions, for example, trolley car dilemmas (Glenn, Raine, Schug, Young, &
Hauser, 2009) and the prisoners dilemma (Rilling et al., 2007). This supports
the idea that psychopathic traits increase reliance on abstract reasoning about
rules instead of the emotional input that individuals without psychopathic
traits preferentially use in order to arrive at moral judgments (Glenn, Raine,
Young, & Hauser, 2009).
The types of moral reasoning paradigms in which behavioral differences
emerge as a function of psychopathy, then, may be those for which abstract
rule-based reasoning or other non-empathic strategies do not yield sufficient
answers. When empathic concern is the default response in controls and a
critical contributor to their moral judgments, psychopaths moral judgments
may be most likely to differ from controls. But when controls primarily
engage in abstract reasoning about rules, weighing utilitarian gains across
outcomes, or deploying emotional systems that are not impaired in psychopathy, such as anger (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), the task is less
likely to identify group differences. This explanation can account for recent
findings, for example, that psychopaths judgments of accidental harm to a
victim are more lenient than non-psychopaths judgments (Young, Koenigs,
Kruepke, & Newman, 2012). This suggests that psychopaths relied overly
much upon the semantic information that people are not held responsible
for true accidents that harm othersfor example, when a pedestrian steps in
front of a car and leaves the driver insufficient time to stop being hitting the
pedestrian. People who are not psychopathic also know this rule, but in considering the action they would also be expected to experience empathic concern when imagining hitting someone with their car and judge this action
more severely as a result.
Much remains unknown about moral reasoning in psychopathy. Although
the evidence is substantial that moral judgments that rely on recognizing and
responding to fear and similar forms of distress are impaired in psychopathy, what specific other forms of distress may be affected is less clear. Far less
is known about the neurocognitive basis of sadness relative to fear, and how
the experience or recognition of sadness is affected by psychopathy is relatively understudied. Abundant research has recently been conducted assessing empathic responses to pain (Lamm, Decety, & Singer, 2011), but how
psychopathy might affect responses to the suffering that accompanies pain is
also relatively poorly understood. Finally, how the various moral emotions affected by psychopathyincluding empathic concern, remorse, and guiltmay
be interrelated, and how they may affect moral reasoning in psychopathy, is an
important topic for future study.
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The case of psychopathy presents a strong case that some forms of moral reasoning rely on intact empathic responses to victims distress, particularly
fear, and therefore are reliant on basic emotional processes. There are many
compelling reasons to focus on the rational basis of moral judgments (Cima,
Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010), but interpreting psychopaths moral reasoning deficits as primarily rooted in rationality presents several difficulties. For one, as
Nichols has argued (Nichols, 2002a), it is difficult to identify a rational defect
that is present in psychopaths but that is absent in populations (e.g., very
young children, autistic adults) that reliably draw the moral/conventional distinction. For another, the evidence seems to suggest that psychopathic deficits
in moral judgments are more likely to emerge the more the moral reasoning
task requires the consideration of victims distress, particularly fear. This phenomenon can be observed both across tasks and within tasks (e.g., Aharoni.
Sinnott-Armstrong, & Kiehl, 2012; Marsh & Cardinale, 2012). Deficits in responding to others fear in moral judgment tasks closely parallels findings that
the fear system appears to be generally defective across a variety of neurocognitive paradigms in psychopaths. Finally, recent neuroimaging research
suggests that psychopaths deficits in both fear processing and moral reasoning are linked to dysfunction in evolutionarily ancient subcortical structures
like the amygdala, the function of which is primarily affective. This suggests
that the empathic deficits that lead to moral reasoning deficits in psychopathy
emerge from basic affective processes.
These points are among the accumulating evidence that supports the presence of circumscribed deficits in moral reasoning in psychopathy. In better
understanding the nature of these deficits, including their neurodevelopmental origins, we may gain an improved understanding not only of the nature of
psychopathy, but of the nature of human morality.
Are Empathy and Morality Linked?

Insights from Moral Psychology, Social and Decision
Neuroscience, and Philosophy
G I U S E P P E U G A Z I O , J A S M I N K A M A J D A N D I C,
AND CLAUS LAMM
Empathy is commonly viewed as a necessary condition for moral behavior in

most of the treaties proposed in the history of moral philosophy (Aristotle/
Roger, 2000; Hume, 1777/1960; Smith, 1853), which has resulted in the widespread belief that empathy and morality are intimately related. Defining the
relationship between empathy and morality, however, has proven to be difficult for two main reasons. First, empathy has been defined in many different ways, which makes it hard to differentiate it from other socio-emotional
states, such as compassion or sympathy (e.g., Batson, 2009b, this volume).
Second, evidence on the causal role of empathy, and of emotions in general, in morality is mixed. Some scholars indeed maintain that emotions play
no role in morality (Hauser, 2006), while others claim that emotions play
a dominant role in moral judgments (Prinz, 2004). Addressing these two
issues will allow us to gain a clearer view of the relationship between empathy and morality.
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In this chapter, we will therefore summarize the most important philosophical approaches to defining morality. We will then propose a definition of
empathy that differentiates it from the emotional states with which it is often
confused. Having laid a theoretical foundation in the first two sections, in
the third section we will discuss, in light of the existing literature, what role
emotions, and more specifically empathy, most likely play in morality. We will
explain that empathy plays a very important role in morality in two respects.
First, empathy allows humans to understand how others are emotionally affected by a given action, which can directly inform moral decisions and actions. In addition, by means of the link between empathy and compassion (or
sympathy), empathy can motivate people to behave in accordance with moral
principlessuch as maximizing the wellbeing of as many people as possible
(Bentham, 1789/1996) or not inflicting harm or using a person as a means to
an end (Kant, 1785/1965). However, we will argue that, although empathy is an
important source of information, the knowledge acquired via empathy does
not directly translate into moral decisions as, under some circumstances, the
morally appropriate option may be different from the option following from
ones empathic response. For instance, previous results have shown that empathic responses can reduce the frequency of utilitarian judgments, such as
when one decides to refrain from sacrificing the life of an innocent person
with whom one strongly empathizes in order to save a larger number of innocent people (Crockett, Clark, Hauser, & Robbins, 2010; Gleichgerrcht & Young,
2013; Majdandi et al., 2012). This might be viewed as at odds with the moral
judgment prescribed by the utilitarian school (see Figure 1 below for a schematic illustration of this point). Furthermore, empathic responses can lead
people to express contradictory judgments depending on whether their decisions regard ingroup or outgroup members (Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, &
Fiske, 2010). Third, the knowledge acquired through empathy may sometimes
be used to motivate immoral behavior, such as in the case of torture.
1. W H AT I S M O R A L I T Y?
If we want to find out whether and, if so, how empathy informs morality,
we first need to define morality. The roots of the English noun morality
evolved from the Latin noun morlia and lie in the Latin mores, which
can be literally translated into habits, customs, or traditions. These are
also the nouns that are closest in meaning to the Ancient Greek thos from
which the English ethics originated. Although these words can be considered synonyms, we should note that over the centuries ethics has been used
to denote the study of the principles which should be used to establish the
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appropriate habits for a given community, social group, or professional activity; morality, instead, has been mostly used in its adjective form, that is, as
a synonym of ethical, denoting the habits that are in accordance with the
principles identified by ethics. In the context of the present chapter, we will
refer to morality as the expression of judgments classifying behaviors into
good/right and bad/wrong ones. Two perspectives can be taken when studying morality: (a) a normative perspective that establishes the principles that
should be used to decide which behaviors are good and which are bad and (b)
a descriptive point of view that studies how we decide whether a given behavior is good or bad.
Normative moral theories thus inform us about how we ought to behave
and how we ought to decide which behaviors are right or wrong. More specifically, normative ethics provides us with the means to discriminate between
right and wrong. However, singling out which behaviors are right and wrong
is a task of practical ethics, a branch of ethics that we will not discuss in this
chapter. From the numerous theories proposed in the normative moral philosophical literature, two have particular relevance in the contemporary moral
debate: consequentialism and deontology (Tobler, Kalis, & Kalenscher, 2008).
These theories differ mainly in what they focus on in order to identify the normative principles. While the principles proposed by consequentialism focus
on the foreseeable consequences of behaviors, deontological principles specify
the requirements that the behaviors need to meet.
More specifically, consequentialism holds that the outcomes (consequences)
of our actions ought to be as good as possible (Scheffler, 1988; Singer, 1974).
Consequentialist theories are further distinguished between act consequentialism and rule consequentialism. According to the former, the outcome of
individual actions ought to be as good as possible. On the other hand, given
that the consequences of individual actions are sometimes difficult to predict, the latter holds that the consequences of established action-guiding rules
ought to be as good as possible. Actions are thus evaluated with respect to
these rules (see also Heinzelmann, Ugazio, & Tobler, 2012). For example, one
of the most relevant consequentialist theories is utilitarianism: One ought to
do what maximizes the wellbeing of the greatest number of people (or minimizes their unhappiness).
Deontological theories assign a special role to duties (deontology refers to
the study or science of duty, from the Ancient Greek deon = duty). Duties are
actions that follow one or more principled rules. From this perspective, the
rightness or wrongness of an action is not so much determined by the goodness or badness of its consequences, but rather by whether the action itself
fulfills the established requirements. For instance, one of the most popular
requirements can be found in Kants (1785/1965) moral theory, in which the
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author states that one may never treat other human beings as a means to an
end, but only as an end in themselves (p. 30).
In contrast to normative moral theories, descriptive moral theories seek to
elucidate how a person decides whether a given behavior is right or wrong.
Following David Humes Treatise on Human Nature (1739/1978), which is
one of the most complete attempts to provide a scientific description of moral
judgments, moral philosophers have diverged into two groups: those who believe that morality is driven solely by rational considerations (Clarke, 1738;
Cudworth, 1996; Kant, 1785/1993) and those who propose that morality is
of an emotional nature (Hume, 1739/1978; Hutcheson, 2002; Prinz, 2004;
Cooper, 1999).
Briefly, those who consider morality to be of an emotional nature suggest
that, in order to evaluate the moral appropriateness of an event, one must base
ones judgment on the gut feeling provoked by the event. If the gut feeling
is a pleasant one, then the event is morally appropriate, but if the gut feeling
is unpleasant the event is morally inappropriate (Hume, 1739/1978). In other
words, by paying attention to ones own feelings, a person can infer whether
something is morally appropriate. In contrast, those who believe that morality
is solely a matter of reasoning claim that evaluating the appropriateness of an
event requires a deliberative reasoning process based on a moral principle that
is purely based on practical reason, in other words, a principle that rational
agents would all agree on (e.g., never treat humans as means to an end): If
an event violates such a principle, it is morally inappropriate; if an event is in
accordance with such a principle, it is morally appropriateirrespective of the
emotions accompanying the decision (Kant, 1785/1993).
It has recently become problematic to maintain that morality is solely of
either an emotional or a cognitive nature. On the one hand, while we normally
think of moral judgments as beliefs, they are characteristically motivating, and
as Hume notes, judgments of facts alone do not have the power to move us
(Schwartz, 2005, pp. 12). In other words, if morality were only of a cognitive
nature, then moral judgments alone would lack the motivational aspect that
induces a person to act according to his/her judgments. Prinz (2011a) proposed
an interesting thought example that captures such motivational aspects: Consider the following two rules that pupils are frequently taught at school: (a)a
conventional rule stating that pupils should raise their hand and wait for the
teacher to call on them before speaking and (b) a moral rule stating that pupils
should not harm other pupils. If a schoolteacher told the pupils that they could
speak whenever they wanted to and no longer needed to raise their hand and
wait to be called on, most of them would conform to the new norm, speaking
whenever they wanted to. However, if a teacher told the pupils that they could
hurt each other, very few of them would actually do so as moral norms have
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intrinsic motivational power and do not need an external element (such as an

authority) to be obeyed. Furthermore, a purely rational view of morality is
inconsistent with the recent body of evidence that moral judgments typically
involve strong immediate subjective feelings (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom,
Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001; Moll, De Oliveira-Souza, & Zahn, 2008;
Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer, 2012).
On the other hand, considering morality to be solely of an emotional nature
would result in denying the ubiquitous emergence and consolidation of moral
knowledge (i.e., sets of moral principles) in human societies (Schwartz, 2005).
Indeed, in order for such moral regulations to emerge, it is necessary that a
group of people reach an agreement on the moral appropriateness of a given
behavior based on grounds that exceed the level of individual feelings. Founding moral criteria on formal rules of logic seems to constitute a more widely
accepted common ground than basing them on more erratic, individual emotions. Due to the conclusion that morality requires both emotional and rational components, scholars who argued that emotion and rationality mutually
exclude each other in moral judgments ran into the logical impossibility of
maintaining at the same time that moral knowledge exists and that morality is
of a solely emotional nature (R. Campbell, 2005).
Thus, as R. Campbell (2005) proposes, morality is best considered to have
elements of both reason (or belief) and emotion (and desire)that is, it can be
considered to be a besire (Altham, 1986). From this perspective, then, moral
judgments are considered to be a combination of beliefs, emotions, and motivations, but sometimes they can also be solely rational or solely emotional
responses to events. In sum, according to this moral descriptive view, the
emotional component of morality is mainly associated with its motivational
aspect, that is, the force that morality has to motivate a person to act in a certain way, while the rational component is linked to the capacity of acquiring
moral knowledge, that is, a set of norms that guide our moral judgments
(R.Campbell, 2005).
The dichotomy of philosophical views on morality, that is, whether it is
of an emotional or rational nature, has also been reflected in the mixed results of scientific attempts to clarify the nature of morality. On the one hand,
some scholars claim that, given the obtained data, morality is motivated by
emotions: Schnall and colleagues found that induced disgust leads people to
express more severe judgments of condemnation toward certain moral violations (such as incest) than people in a neutral emotional state (Schnall, Haidt,
& Clore, 2008); a similar disgust-induction effect was found by Wheatley
and Haidt (2005) on the same types of moral scenarios. On the other hand,
otherscholars who mostly analyzed the motivations for the moral considerations expressed by people claimed the opposite, that is, that morality is of a
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purely rational nature (Kohlberg, 1976; Piaget, 1932; Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, &
Thoma, 1999). As we have argued in previous work (Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer,
2012), it is likely that the origins of the many contradictory findings lie in the
heterogeneity of experimental procedures that have been adopted. At present,
the views that considered morality to be solely driven by emotional or rational forces are losing strength, as most scholars now agree that both reason
and emotions play an important role in morality (Cushman, Young, & Greene,
2010; Moll, Zahn, de Oliveria-Souza, Krueger, & Grafman, 2005; Moll, De
Oliveira-Souza, & Zahn 2008; Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer, 2012). In line with R.
Campbells (2005) dual view of morality, the evidence proposed by moral psychologists seems to support the theoretical view that moral judgments result,
depending on the circumstances, from a combination of rational deliberations
and emotional responses to an event.
In light of the literature discussed so far, we propose that emotions may
play a crucial role in morality. Being a social emotion, therefore, empathy may
serve as a crucial source of information for a person to judge which behaviors
are morally right or wrong (Bartels, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Nichols, 2002b; Ugazio,
Lamm, & Singer, 2012). Through this role, empathy can then trigger associated emotional states, which have the potential to move people to act in accordance with morally prescribed behaviors. Since it is important to distinguish
between empathy and other constructs that are also associated with emotional
responses (such as emotional contagion, sympathy, or compassion), the next
section focuses on defining empathy and related terms.
2. W H AT I S EM PAT H Y?
The Anglo-Saxon linguistic roots of the word empathy lie in the Ancient
Greek empatheia (passion), which is composed of en (in) and pathos (feeling).
The term was originally coined by the German philosopher Theodor Lipps,
who used the term Einfhlung (of which the English word empathy seems to
be a direct translation) to describe the process of understanding works of art.
At a basic phenomenological level, empathy denotes an affective response to
the directly perceived, imagined, or inferred emotional state of another being.
To our own understanding, empathy requires the affective sharing or resonating of an observer with another persons (the target) affect in an isomorphic
manner. In addition, the observer has to be aware at any point in time that the
source of his or her feelings is the target. This stresses the central importance
of the capacity for self/other distinction, which is the ability to distinguish
between mental and bodily representations related to the self and to the other
(de Vignemont & Singer, 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Singer & Lamm, 2009).
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Empathy can therefore be described as a mechanism enabling a (usually impartial) copy (feeling with) of the targets emotional state by the observer,
with full awareness of which parts are copied and which parts originate in
the observer him- or herself.
This definition, which stresses the role of empathy in gaining information
about the internal affective representations of others, deviates from the predominant folk psychological definition, namely, that empathy is an other-
oriented or even moral social emotion. In order to avoid confusion with such
definitions, some conceptual clarifications are needed (see also Batson, 2009b).
At least five key concepts are related to empathy, ranging from motor mimicry
to prosocial or altruistic behavior.
Motor mimicry describes our tendency to automatically synchronize our
movements with those of another person. For instance, considerable evidence suggests that perceiving a targets affective facial expressions activates
the corresponding facial muscles in the observer (for a review, see Dimberg &
Oehman, 1996), and the strength of such mimicry responses correlates with
self-report questionnaire measures of empathic skills (Sonnby-Borgstrom,
2002). Notably, though, this correlation is rather weak, indicating that such
bottom-up resonance mechanisms are only one aspect of empathy. In addition, recent accounts contest the automaticity of human mimicry and
propose that it acts as a social signal (Hess & Fischer, 2013). We propose
that motor mimicry might subserve both resonant and signal functions
and support a virtuous circle sustaining smooth social interactions (Heyes,
forthcoming).
Emotional contagion is another phenomenon that is strongly relevant to yet
clearly distinct from empathy (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). It denotes
the tendency to catch other peoples emotions and has also been labeled
primitive empathy (Hatfield, Rapson, & Le, 2008) or affective empathy
(deWaal, 2008). Notably, a few days after birth, human newborns already start
crying in response to the distress calls of other babies. To turn this contagious
response into a full-blown empathic response requires the development of a
sense of self, however, since experiencing empathy requires the awareness that
the source of the feeling state is the other, not the self. This sense emerges
around the age of about 12 months (Hoffman, 2000). Taken together, motor
mimicry and emotional contagion may in many instances be important antecedents of empathy, but in general should neither be regarded as necessary nor
as sufficient processes for the experience of empathy.
With respect to the consequences of vicarious emotional responses, empathy as defined here needs to be separated from sympathy, empathic concern,
and compassion. While all four terms include affective changes in an observer
in response to the affective state of another person, only the experience of
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empathy entails vicarious responses that are not modified by the observer (in
the sense of the copied state or feeling with referred to above). In contrast,
sympathy, empathic concern, and compassion carry additional feeling for
processes attributed to the observer. For example, in the case of empathy, observing the sadness of another person is associated with a partial feeling of
sadness in the observer. Sympathy, empathic concern, and compassion, however, are characterized by additional feelings, such as concern about the targets welfare or the wish to alleviate his or her suffering. These processes are
the outcome of the interaction between observer and target, but go beyond
what the target is actually feeling. The main distinction between empathy and
phenomena like sympathy, empathic concern, and compassion is therefore
whether the observers emotions are inherently other-oriented (feeling for;
compassion, sympathy, empathic concern) or whether they reflect affective
sharing in the sense of feeling with (empathy) the other person.
Finally, many accounts of empathy, broadly defined (Batson, 1991; de Waal,
2008), relate its occurrence to prosocial, other-oriented motivations (i.e., a motivation to increase the other persons wellbeing or welfare or to forego selfish,
self-related benefits for the benefit of others). This is not necessarily the case
when empathy is defined as feeling with another person. Empathy as understood this way simply enables us to feel as accurately as possible what others
are feeling, without any sort of valuation attached to these feelings. Whether
this then has prosocial, antisocial, or neutral consequences is the result of
other variables, including other social emotions (such as envy or guilt), as well
as acquired behavioral tendencies, moral values, or the personal relationship
between observer and target (which if competitive can even result in counterempathy; e.g., Lanzetta & Englis, 1989; Yamada, Lamm, & Decety, 2011). Notably, while consistent evidence for the link between feeling for (empathic
concern, compassion) and prosocial behavior exists (e.g., Batson, 1991; Eisenberg, 2000b; Eisenberg et al., 1989a), a clear-cut empirical demonstration of
a link between empathy as feeling with and prosocial or moral decisionmaking is still missing.
In terms of the neural foundations, which have received increased attention in the last few years, the definition of empathy as a shared feeling state
has received widespread support. For example, two recent meta-analyses of
functional neuroimaging studies unequivocally demonstrated that witnessing others suffering engages a neural network indicating that the observer
is in an emotional state him- or herself (Fan, Duncan, de Greck, Northoff,
2011; Lamm, Decety, & Singer et al., 2011). This network includes the anterior insular cortex and the medial cingulate cortex (MCC), two brain
areas that constitute an intrinsically linked network involved in emotional
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awareness and the homeostatic regulation of physiological bodily responses

associated with emotional responses (Lamm & Singer, 2010). Of note for the
present discussion, by means of its connections to output centers of the
brain, the MCC in particular is able to provide a rather direct link between
emotional and behavioral responses, which enables the organism to maintain homeostasis.
In addition, it is important to point out the distinction between self- and
other-related emotional responses resulting from the observation of distress
in others (e.g., Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade, 1997; Lamm, Batson, & Decety,
2007). Witnessing negative emotions in others can result in empathic concern, which is an other-related vicarious response. This might in turn increase altruistic motivation toward the person empathized with and thus
motivate prosocial behavior (Batson, Early, & Salvarini, 1997). In contrast,
harm to others might also evoke personal distress, which is a self- rather than
other-focused vicarious emotion. Rather than motivating a prosocial act,
personal distress might increase ones tendency to escape the distressful situation. Alternatively, if a prosocial act is performed, it might result from essentially selfish motives, that is, be an attempt to reduce ones own distress
by eliminating the source of the distress (i.e., the other persons suffering;
e.g., Cialdini et al., 1987; Maner et al., 2002). Hence, decisions to help others
that are motivated by vicarious responding can stem from other-related or
from self-related motives. Whether such decisions can be considered moral
decisions strongly depends on the relevance one assigns to the motives for
the decision: On the one hand, if motives are not among the primary determinants of whether a decision is moral or not (e.g., if we only care about
the consequences of a decision), then decisions motivated by self-related motives can also be considered moral. However, if motives or intentions play a
central role in determining whether a decision is moral or not (e.g., as for
Kant, 1785/1965), then selfish motives can never be moral motives. Hence,
decisions motivated by self-related motives would not be considered moral.
From Kants perspective, decisions resulting from selfish motives should not
be considered moral as the given motives cannot be universalized and ultimately come to constitute a moral principle (Kant, 1785/1965). For example,
imagine a bystander who decides to risk his life to save a drowning person
because he could not bear the distress of witnessing the death of a person
(or, due to a more trivial selfish motive, such as because the drowning person
owed him a large sum of money). From the two perspectives discussed previously, if we only care about consequences, this decision has to be considered a
moral decision; from the second point of view, however, this decision can be
considered a good one, but not a moral one.
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3. M O R A L I T Y A N D EM PAT H Y
In the previous two sections, we discussed our definitions of morality and empathy. Within this theoretical framework, we will now analyze the relationship between empathy and morality. Since, in the process of defining morality,
we differentiated between the normative and descriptive parts of morality,
it is necessary to elaborate on the relationship between empathy and each of
these aspects of morality. However, we will mainly focus on the relationship
between descriptive morality and empathy rather than on the relationship between normative morality and empathy.
From a normative point of view, scholars might debate on issues such
as: Should an individuals empathic capacities be cultivated and promoted?
Should empathy be included among the elements used to establish the principles that govern our decisions? For instance, Kant (1785/1965) proposed that
emotions should not be involved in the deliberative process leading to the establishment of moral principles, while Hume (1777/1960) placed empathy at
the core of morality.
Such normative issues can be understood best if a solid grasp of the relationship between descriptive morality and empathy is acquired. To help the reader
understand the following discussion, we have illustrated some of the ways in
which empathy may play a role in morality (see Figure 1).
In the following, we will discuss this relationship, addressing three main
questions: (1) Is empathy necessary for morality? (2) What role does empathy
play in morality? and (3) Can empathy also result in judgments that are incompatible with moral principles and hence contribute to morally wrong behaviors?
Behavior
Morally Relevant
Morally Irrelevant
Marginal/No Role for Empathy
Strong Role of Empathy
e.g.: externalities of behavior affect

environment
e.g.: externalities of behavior affect

other human beings
Normative Moral Principle:

Should do X
Non-consequential
e.g.: Never use another human being

as a means to an end
Empathic Response
is coherent with
morally appropriate
behavior
Empathic Response
is incoherent with
morally appropriate
behavior
Utilitarian:
e.g.: Maximize happiness of largest

number of people
Empathic Response
coherent with
morally appropriate
behavior
e.g.: Empathy increases sensitivity to

harm aversion and results in forbidding
killings, even when killing would lead
to saving a greater number of people
Other (e.g.
virtue-ethics)
Empathic Response
incoherent with
morally appropriate
behavior
e.g.: Empathy response stronger for

more people than for a single person
results in endorsing killing when this
would lead to saving a greater
number of people
Figure 8.1 Schematic representation of the relationship between empathy and morality.
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1. Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?

The short answer is: No, empathy is not necessary for all aspects of morality.
By definition, the capacity to feel with another person implies that empathy
is only involved in morality when the object of morality is another human
being. However, moral norms also regulate how people should behave toward
nature, for example, by prescribing that we not litter, destroy forests, and so
on, or toward cultural institutions, such as by prescribing that we return books
borrowed from a library. It is hard to see how empathy would be necessary
for morality in these contexts. Besides, even when moral judgments regulate
interactions with other human beings, there are circumstances in which empathy is not necessary (see also Figure 1). First, several studies (see Koenigs
etal., 2007; Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer, 2012) have suggested that certain types of
moral judgments do not involve emotions (including empathy). For instance,
Koenigs and colleagues study compared the moral judgments of patients
with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a brain
area associated with affective valuation processes (Damasio et al., 2000), to
the moral judgments of healthy individuals. The authors found that lesion patients only made more utilitarian judgments than healthy controls in personal
moral dilemmas (i.e., when the action to be judged involved physical interaction between the people in the scenario; see Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom,
Darley, & Cohen, 2001). In contrast, in impersonal moral dilemmas (i.e., those
in which the action to be judged does not involve personal interactions; see
Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001), the judgments of the
two groups of individuals did not differ, suggesting that emotions are not involved in this second type of moral judgments.
Second, the moral capacities of people suffering from psychopathologies associated with an impaired capacity for empathy (see Blair, 1995) do not differ
from those of controls (Cima, Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010).
2. What Role Does Empathy Play in Morality?

The notion that empathy is not necessary for morality does not mean that empathy might not play an important role in some types of morality, however.
As stated in the previous sections, we believe that one of the most important
roles of empathy in morality is an epistemological one: As a mechanism for
the observer to experience the affective state of the observed person, empathy provides direct feedback to the observer about how the consequences of
an event are affecting or will affect the observed person. For instance, if the
consequences of an agents action harm another person, the agent can learn
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by means of empathy that his actions are causing pain in the other person.
Following Humes (1777/1960) reasoning (see above), empathy, by eliciting
feelings of approbation or disapprobation, can be used to decide whether an
action should be considered morally right or wrong: If the vicarious feeling we
experience from observing the other person is a pleasant one, then the action
may be right, and if the feeling is negative, the action may be wrong. Furthermore, by making a person aware of the emotional state of others, empathy
can motivate people to judge and eventually act accordingly. For instance, if
someone is in a negative emotional state as a result of another persons actions,
for example, feels pain after being hit by another person, empathy may motivate an observer to judge that hitting others is morally wrong and, by extension, may motivate him to help the victim. However, as we illustrate below,
an empathy-driven judgment does not automatically correspond to a morally
appropriate judgment/action: Whether the judgment motivated by empathy is
morally right or wrong depends on the circumstances (see also Figure 1).
There is some support for the above-mentioned role of empathy in morality,
although the direct link between empathy and morality remains rather unclear
and requires further investigation. A large body of evidence has shown that
certain types of moral judgments involve strong emotions (e.g., Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001; Majdandi etal., 2012;
Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer, 2012). In line with this, it has been shown that vmPFC
lesions, which typically result in deficits in the ability to judge the moral appropriateness of actions, are consistently associated with affective impairment
(Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Ciaramelli, Muccioli,
Ldavas, & di Pellegrino, 2007). These emotions can be either self-related or
other-related, however, so the decisive role of empathy is not clear-cut.
There is also more closely related, albeit not very specific evidence on the
link between morality and empathy, as defined here. The lack in specificity
stems from the fact that there are hardly any specific behavioral or self-report
measures of empathy in the sense of a shared or copied state. Therefore, previous research has mainly used questionnaires or self-reports that are more akin
to measures of empathic concern, sympathy, or compassion. For instance, it
has been shown that empathic concern is positively related to the tendency
toward harm aversion in moral judgments (Crockett, Clark, Hauser, & Robbins, 2010). Similarly, Gleichgerrcht and Young (2013) found that utilitarian
moral decisions in moral dilemmas similar to the trolley dilemma were negatively correlated with the level of empathic concern (i.e., the lower the level of
empathic concern, the more utilitarian judgments were made). Interestingly,
these authors found that empathic concern was predictive of utilitarian judgments irrespective of other emotional states often associated with empathy
such as personal distress or perspective taking. Moreover, our own recent
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work (Majdandi et al., 2012) has shown that moral decision-making involving people who are perceived as being more human than others is associated
with neural and behavioral responses indicating increased feelings with (in
the sense of empathy) as well as feelings toward (in the sense of sympathy)
them. Furthermore, moral judgments involving people perceived as being
more human were less utilitarian.
Although the evidence suggesting that empathy is related to harm aversion is rather convincing, the way in which an increased sensitivity to harm
aversion influences moral judgments is somewhat controversial. While the
evidence cited in the previous paragraph suggests that empathy increases
the aversion to harm to the one person in the trolley dilemma, another study
(Choe & Min, 2011) reports that empathy might lead the moral decision-maker
to help the larger group. In this study, the authors found that if the emotion
people reported as being the strongest emotion they felt when making moral
decisions was empathy, this was predictive of a utilitarian decision in the
moral dilemma situations discussed above.
Furthermore, even if the predominant view of the relationship between empathy and morality focuses on a directional role of empathy on moral decision-
making, we also need to consider how moral decisions affect empathy. In other
words, since our aesthetic judgment is affected by the moral character of the
object of aesthetic judgment (Kieran, 2006), a persons moral decisions might
influence the extent to which we empathize with this person: If a persons
moral decisions are congruent with ours, we will be more likely to empathize
with this person, and vice versa. For example, Pillay (2011) found that peoples
empathic responses toward a police supervisor who hires a police officer who
acted in a controversial way, that is, ejected a paraplegic from his wheelchair
because he had broken the law, were affected by the moral judgment they expressed about such a controversial action.
In sum, there are preliminary although not very specific indications that
empathy guides moral decisions, thus allowing us to factor the emotional reactions of a person affected by an event into our moral judgments. The inconsistent results discussed, however, reveal that the empirical evidence describing
the relationship between morality and empathy is quite weak. Thus, a much
deeper and more thorough investigation of this relationship is required in order
to achieve a more satisfactory understanding of how empathy and morality are
interrelated. Some of the many possible explanations for the heterogeneity in
the findings are: (a) the different objects toward which empathy is directed
which in previous studies was either a larger group of people or a single person
(Choe & Min, 2011; Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013); (b) whether the people
described in the moral scenarios are perceived as ingroup or outgroup members (Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2010; Majdandi et al., 2012); (c) the varying
168
methods used to measure the levels of empathy, empathic concern, or other

aspects of empathy. For instance, while Crockett, Clark, Hauser, and Robbins
(2010) and Gleichgerrcht and Young (2013) used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis 1980), Pillay (2011) used the Basic Empathy Scale (BES,
Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006), and Choe and Min (2011) as well as Majdandi
etal. (2012) asked people which emotion they felt while making decisions; (d)
interindividual and/or cross-cultural differences in the samples investigated.
Although decisive evidence for a causal role of empathy in moral judgments
is still lacking, we will now briefly discuss a possible mechanism through
which empathy might influence moral decisions. Briefly, empathy is an emotional process (according to the definition provided above) and, considering
that emotions have motivational tendencies, these motivational tendencies can
represent a plausible mechanism through which empathy influences moral decisions. As stated above, scholars from both philosophy and psychology claim
that morality can have an emotional valuation component as it steers people
to express their moral judgments in a certain way (i.e., in line with moral prescriptions). The motivational importance of emotions for moral judgments was
recently captured by studies revealing that, by taking into account the motivational tendencies of emotions, it is possible to predict how certain emotions
will affect moral judgments (Harl & Sanfey, 2010; Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer,
2012). For instance, we (Ugazio et al., 2012) showed that when a person judges
a moral scenario, emotional states influence her choices in opposite ways depending on the motivational tendencies of the emotion induced. People who
were induced to feel angeran approach emotionwere more likely to judge
a moral action in a permissive way as compared to people in a neutral emotional state, and people induced to feel disgusta withdrawal emotionwere
more likely to judge the same actions in a less permissive way. Having a solid
understanding of the motivational tendencies linked to empathy, as we define
it here, may yield a better understanding of how empathy motivates morality. Indeed, most of the existing studies have investigated the importance of
empathic concern (Batson, 1991; Eisenberg, 2000a; Eisenberg et al., 1989a) or
compassion (Leiberg, Klimecki, & Singer, 2011), which are other-related emotional responses that motivate prosocial behavior.
3. Can Empathy Also Result in Judgments That Are Incompatible

with Moral Principles?
Although empathy and related emotional states such as empathic concern,
sympathy, or compassion have been implicated in motivating prosocial behavior, a critical reader could ask whether the behavior motivated by these
169
elements is actually morally right or simply appears to be so. In many situations, it is not possible to claim that the judgment motivated by empathy is
actually morally good, or morally better than judgments not motivated by
empathy. For instance, consider a study in which the participants are asked
to allocate food (a scarce resource) to two groups of children in Africa (Hsu,
Anen, & Quartz, 2008). One of the two options would be to distribute the
food equally but inefficiently (i.e., the total amount is not maximized) among
a group of children. The other option would be to distribute the food efficiently
but unequally among the other group of children. Which of the two allocation
strategies is better can only be determined by referring to a moral principle: If
the accepted moral principle is that equality should be maximized, then the
first strategy is the morally preferable one; if the accepted moral principle is
that efficiency should be maximized, then the second strategy is the morally
preferable one. In this study, Hsu and colleagues (2008) found that emotionrelated neural networks seem to be involved in motivating individuals to prefer
an inefficient equity-based distribution of scarce resources to a more efficient,
but unequal distribution. Based on these findings, one could speculate that
the empathy-driven moral judgment in this situation would be to choose the
equal but inefficient allocation strategy. Whether this strategy is the morally
appropriate one or not, however, depends on the normative moral principle
one is relying on in order to make the decision.
Similarly, in the trolley dilemma type of moral situation, in which one has
to decide whether sacrificing one person to prevent the death of more people
is the morally appropriate decision, the moral appropriateness of the decision
strategy is determined by the moral principle one adheres to. A utilitarian
would judge it to be morally obligatory to sacrifice one person in order to save
more even if to do so required the use of a person as a means to the end, while
a non-consequentialist would judge it to be morally forbidden to sacrifice one
person to save many if the rights of the one person were violated in the act.
Thus, the role of empathy in motivating an agent to avoid harming a single
person (Crockett, Clark, Hauser, & Robbins, 2010) should be considered morally neutral. Depending on the moral principle one chooses to adopt, the motivated decision will be morally appropriate or not.
Furthermore, due to the properties of our empathic responses (see above,
and Prinz 2004), one can identify several situations in which the decisions
motivated by empathy are actually morally wrong, which may ultimately promote immoral behaviors. This is particularly well illustrated by the fact that
empathy is shown to be prone to ingroup bias. For instance, Batsons social
psychology study revealed that priming an empathic response toward a person
(Sheri) induced people to change the priority order of a hospital waiting list,
privileging Sheri at the expense of other patients who had even been depicted
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as needing the hospital treatment more than she did (Batson, Early, & Salvarini, 1997). Thus, empathy can lead to immoral behavior. In a similar fashion, an empathic response triggered by the perceived cuteness of a person can
lead to more lenient moral condemnations of despicable acts or, even worse,
to some sort of worship of the perpetrator of those actions, as for instance
revealed by the recent public debate following the Boston Marathon bombers.
Some people were reportedly feeling sorry for, and some teenage girls even
reported being in love with, the younger attacker (Bloom, 2013a). In addition,
several recent social neuroscience experiments demonstrated that neural responses to others pain are stronger if the other person is a member of ones
own ethnic group (racial empathy bias, Avenanti, Sirigu, & Aglioti, 2010) or
ones social group. For instance, higher activity in the neural network associated with empathy was found when participants saw fans of their own favorite
football team in pain compared to when they saw members of the rivaling
team in pain (Hein, Silani, Preuschoff, Batson, & Singer., 2010). In addition,
some of these responses were predictive of an ingroup bias toward ones fellow
fans in prosocial behavior. Furthermore, Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, & Fiske
(2010) provided evidence that people change their judgments of an action such
as sacrificing one life in order to save numerous other lives (as an example of
a utilitarian moral decision) depending on whether the person to be sacrificed
is an ingroup or outgroup member. Given that empathy has been shown to be
stronger for ingroups compared to others, it is quite possible that the difference in moral considerations identified in this study resulted from a biased
empathic response. Indeed, as previously mentioned, in a previous study
(Majdandi et al., 2012), we showed that moral judgments involving people
who are perceived as more human are less utilitarian. Thus, in this situation
as well, one can claim that empathy results in morally dubious decisions and
ultimately motivates morally dubious behavior by causing a person to show
partiality toward the (more human) peers of her ingroup.
Another instance of empathy being related to morally wrong decisions
is its tendency to trigger emotional responses that cause study participants
to prefer immediate over long-term effects. This can become problematic in
situations in which one knows that an action may have immediate negative
consequences but would have much better outcomes in the long run. A very
concrete example is given by the policy adopted by many governments (e.g.,
the US government) to never negotiate with terrorists. Imagine that a group
of people has been kidnapped by a terrorist organization, which is asking for a
ransom in order to free them. If the state/family does not pay, they will kill all
the hostages. In this case, the empathic response would most certainly focus
on the immediate negative consequence of the death of the kidnapped people,
and the resulting judgment would probably be that the ransom should be paid
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and that the hostages should be freed unharmed as soon as possible. However,
in the long run, refusing to negotiate with terrorists may better protect the
safety of everybody as terrorists lose the incentive to kidnap people.
Furthermore, our empathic capacity to understand the emotional states of
others can be exploited. In some situations, people might use empathy to develop behavioral strategies that will benefit them by allowing them to take
advantage of the negative affective states generated in others. For instance,
football players might have an overly aggressive attitude at the beginning of
a game in order to induce fear in their opponents and diminish their football
skills. In more dramatic situations, empathy can be used in torture, as it enables the torturer to know whether and, if so, how his methods are inflicting
pain on another person, and in war, when guerrillas repeatedly strike civilian targets to generate confusion and panic and overcome their stronger opponents. Other crude situations in which empathy might motivate immoral
behavior include those in which warlords commit atrocities to increase the
humanitarian aid flowing into their country, aid which they can subsequently
tax, or to force other countries to accommodate their requests, or those in
which parents cripple their children so that they become more productive
beggars (Bloom, 2013b).
C O N C LU S I O N
In this chapter, we have tried to shed light on the relationship between empathy and morality. In the first two sections, we defined and contextualized
morality and empathy, respectively, in order to identify some of the potential
connections between the two. In the resulting theoretical framework, we identified an epistemological and a motivational role of empathy in morality, but
also pointed out that empathy cannot be considered a necessary condition for
morality. Neither the epistemological nor the motivational aspects of empathy
align themselves specifically with judgments or motivations that are morally
right. We propose that empathy contributes to moral judgments by providing
information about the emotional reactions of people affected by an action and
by motivating a person to act in a certain way. Whether these decisions are in
accordance with moral principles depends on the contextual circumstances in
which an agent finds himself or herself. In sum, these views point to a much
more complex link between empathy and morality than the one suggested by
the widely held folk belief that empathy is closely and directly linked to all
aspects of morality.
On Empathy
A Perspective from Developmental Psychopathology
R. PETER HOBSON AND JESSICA A. HOBSON
Over the past two decades, and across the disciplines of philosophy, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, there has been a resurgence
of interest in the nature of human beings psychological connectedness with
each other, and alongside this, debate over the basis for young childrens understanding of peoples minds. For many of those caught up in the intellectual
maelstrom, as well as for many more who catch news from afar that something momentous is being deliberated, there appears to be a relatively clear-cut
option: either people are connected with, and understand, other individuals by
simulating their mental states, or people need to theorize about minds. True,
there are so-called hybrid theories that encompass certain features of each approach, but these inherit the intellectual restrictions and preoccupationsand
in particular, a way of thinking about the gulf between one persons mind and
that of anotherthat characterize a stand-off between two dominant schools
of thought.
At what point does empathy enter the fray? Empathy is an especially interesting case for the study of how young children develop interpersonal relations
On Empathy
173
and come to understand the mind. One reason is that to many people it seems
obvious that if an individual is to have an empathic emotional response to
someone elses suffering (for example), then that individual must already have
a sophisticated conceptual understanding of what it means to be a self with a
subjective orientation. After all, the one person needs to figure out or imagine
what the other is feeling, perhaps on the model of what the observer is prone to
feel under similar circumstances. Opposed to such a view are arguments that
one could not acquire an understanding of other people with minds unless
one could already relate to them in a manner that is empathic (Hamlyn, 1974;
Hobson, 1991). If one were to apprehend people (or more accurately, peoples
bodies) like things, for example, there would be little to justify the ascription
of subjective states to these bodies, even if, implausibly, one could conceptualize such states all by oneself in order to do so (see Hobson, 1991, for further
arguments against a simulationist view). The resolution of these conflicting
perspectives over empathy might have far-reaching consequences for our view
of the development of social cognition and morality.
There is a second reason why the study of empathy could help us clarify
the nature of interpersonal understanding and what it means to hold a moral
stance in relation to others. Let us take it that our having empathy for someone
else reflects our grasp that the person has a subjective orientation of his/her
own. Even if one acknowledges that this grasp is partly intellectual/cognitive
in nature, clearly it is not simply cognitive, because we have feelings about and/
or in relation to that persons state of mind. It matters to us when we witness a
person suffering. Not only this, but we are inclined to do something about the
state of affairs. To be sure, what we are inclined to do varies from case to case
consider the friend who seeks to comfort, the surgeon who prepares his team
to operate, and the torturer who racks up the painbut in each case, the other
persons suffering motivates us to act, and to act in relation to the state of suffering. Does this mean we need a developmental account that traces how empathy
is constructed out of cognitive (thought), affective (feeling), and conative (will)
components? Or to the contrary, should the nature of empathy prompt us to
rethink the justification for dividing up the psychological domain in this way?
Here we offer an account that eschews the division of empathy into cognitive and affective varieties, and entails a reorientation toward empathy as an
evolving mode of interpersonal relatedness with cognitive and affective aspects.
In addressing these issues, we shall adopt the stance of developmental psychopathology. We shall consider early human development, in order to reflect
upon the structure of interpersonal experience that empathy entails. We shall
compare and contrast typical development with a case of atypical development, namely that of early childhood autism, in order to give an extra dimension to these considerations. Through the study of a condition where empathy
174
is seriously compromised, we may acquire insight into the nature of empathy itself. More than this, we might discover that what is often portrayed as a
rather cool understanding of disembodied minds is actually founded upon
dynamic and affectively charged relations between embodied persons, relations that are vividly exemplified by empathy.
A final feature of our approach is that we shall consider empathy alongside
other modes of human relatedness and thinking. Our aim here is to remind
us how empathy is but one among diverse forms of social engagement that implicate human-specific modes of self-other connectedness and differentiation.
Partly for this reason, we do not consider it worthwhile to dwell on the distinction between, say, empathy and sympathy. Suffice it to say that we are taking
empathy to encompass a class of personal relations that provide a basis for
human beings to experience persons as persons and that establish the foundations for what will become conceptual understandings of people with minds.
Having sketched out some of the theoretical issues, we shall dive straight in
to some empirical research on autism.
ST U D I ES I N AU T I S M
Autism is a syndrome. A syndrome is simply a cluster of clinical features that

tend to occur together. Children with autism have profound impairments in
social relatedness and both nonverbal and verbal communication, as well as a
tendency toward rigid and repetitive forms of activity and thinking.
We begin with evidence that autism involves a severe restriction in the childrens empathic relations toward other people. Our intention is not so much to
illustrate that autism involves abnormality in this respect. Rather, we want to
see if we can begin to specify in what the restriction consists, in order that this
might inform our view of what empathy entails.
We have not space to dwell on clinical observations on autism, although
Kanner (1943) gives fine descriptions of what he called the childrens impaired
affective contact with others. However, we shall provide a brief illustration
of what such impairment might mean for affected individuals experience of
other people. Here is what an intelligent young autistic adult said when interviewed by the psychiatrist Donald Cohen (1980). This man described how the
first years of his life were devoid of people:
I really didnt know there were people until I was seven years old. I then
suddenly realised that there were people. But not like you do. I still have to
remind myself that there are people . . . I never could have a friend. I really
dont know what to do with other people, really.
On Empathy
175
Now let us turn to a classic quasi-experimental study by the UCLA team of

Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, and Yirmiya (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992;
also Charman, Swettenham, Baron-Cohen, Cox, Baird, & Drew, 1997). These
researchers tested 30 young autistic children with a mean age of under four
years, along with closely matched children without autism. The approach was
to code these childrens behavior when an adult pretended to hurt herself by
hitting her finger with a hammer, simulated fear toward a remote-controlled
robot, and pretended to be ill by lying down on a couch for a minute, feigning
discomfort.
In each of these situations, children with autism were unusual in rarely
looking at or relating to the adult. When the adult pretended to be hurt, for
example, children with autism often appeared unconcerned and continued to
play with toys. When a small remote-controlled robot moved toward the child
and stopped about four feet away, the parent and the experimenter, who were
both seated nearby, made fearful facial expressions, gestures and vocalizations
for 30 seconds. Almost all the children without autism looked at an adult at
some point during this period, but fewer than half the children with autism
did so, and then only briefly. The children with autism were not only less hesitant than the mentally retarded children in playing with the robot, but they
also played with it for substantially longer periods of time.
These observations extend beyond person-with-person responsiveness,
insofar as the children with autism were less influenced by the fearful attitudes of those around them when it came to their behavior toward the
robot. They appeared to be relatively unengaged not only in their one-toone interpersonal-affective transactions, but also in relation to another
persons emotional attitudes toward objects and events in the environment.
They were not gripped by the others plight, nor moved to adopt the others
affective stance toward a shared world. They were less drawn toward the
stance of the other personor as we have expressed this elsewhere (Hobson,
Chidambi, Lee, & Meyer, 2006), less other-person-centeredthan were the
children without autism.
From the starting-point of this quasi-experimental study, let us move in
two directions. First, we turn to a tightly controlled experiment, because experiments are especially useful in determining the specificity of abnormalities
such as that of childrens unresponsiveness to expressions of feeling. Moore,
Hobson, and Lee (1997) tested children and adolescents with and without
autism, matched for age and verbal ability, and showed them videotape sequences of peoples moving bodies depicted merely by dots of light attached
to the trunk and limbs. First we presented separate five-second sequences
of the point-light person enacting in turn the gestures of surprise, sadness,
fear, anger, and happiness (each of which could be recognized with very high
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reliability by nave adult raters). In the surprise sequence, for example, the
person walked forward and suddenly checked his stride and jerked backward
with his arms thrown out to the side; in the sad sequence, the person walked
forward with a stooped posture, paused, and sighed. The children were told:
Youre going to see some bits of film of a person moving. I want you to tell me
about this person. Tell me whats happening.
In response to this request, all but one of the children without autism made
a spontaneous comment about the persons emotional state for at least one
out of the five presentations, and most referred to emotions on two or more of
the sequences. In contrast, 10 of the 13 children with autism never referred to
emotional states, whether correctly or incorrectly. In the case of the children
and adolescents with autism, it was the persons movements and actions rather
than feelings that were reported. For example, the sad figure was described as
walking and sitting down on a chair, walking and flapping arms and bent
down, and walking and waving his arms and kneeling down . . . hands to
face. Almost none of these responses were wrong, but very few referred to the
depicted persons feelings.
It was not that the children with autism were unable to interpret what they
saw. They did so very well and conveyed this in complex psychological terms
that captured the peoples actions. They were distinctive in failing to report on
the subjective experience of the depicted figures.
Now let us move in a second direction, toward real-life descriptions of how
children with autism relate to others. Colleagues and ourselves (Hobson,
Chidambi, Lee, & Meyer, 2006) conducted semi-structured interviews with
parents of children with autism, and children without autism of similar age
(613 years) and verbal mental age (3.59 years). Most of the questions concerned whether the children showed social emotions such as jealousy, guilt,
and concern. We enquired after specific instances of each emotion. For example, the question about jealousy was: Have you observed jealousy in your
childthat is, resenting the attention you or someone else is giving to other
individuals?
Parents of both groups of children reported that their offspring showed
feelings such as happiness, distress, and anger (although we did not enquire
closely on the person-directedness of the anger). They also reported that their
children were affected by the moods of other people, and here it was clear
that the children with autism were not globally unresponsive. Nor was it the
case that all forms of differentiated relatedness were absent. In particular, the
groups were almost identical insofar as the majority of children with as well
as without autism showed clear signs of jealousy. Indeed, of the only two parents who thought that their children with autism did not show jealousy, one
was our only poor respondent, and the other was far from confident about
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the matter. Here is an example of what one parent said about her child with
autism:
i: He doesnt like S (partner) and me hugging or holding hands sometimes . . .
When he was very tiny, like two, he was very jealous of us I think. He didnt
like us sitting next to each other or hugging. I remember one occasion when
he actually led you [to partner] to the door and shut the door.
On the other hand, when parents were asked about their childrens emotions
of pity, concern, and guilt, there were marked group differences. A majority of
children without autism were said to show clear manifestations of these feelings. In the case of the children with autism, by contrast, a majority showed
possible or atypical signs of pity and concern, but only one was reported to
show clear instances of these feelings. For instance, here are two parents describing their children with autism:
parent 1: When it comes to concern for feelings of others, if he was told we
were upset, perhaps hed be concerned. Im not sure he would be able to
pick it up very easily. He might actually find it quite hard to deal with as he
finds it hard when people are upset. He might actually insist we stop. Idont
imagine he would like it. He might be worried but he doesnt have that empathy sort of concernhe doesnt show that at all . . . Empathetic sadness
isnt there.
parent 2: When Im sad, it disturbs him, he doesnt quite know what to do
and then he just looks and if I dont say anything, he just moves away. A
normal child would ask or say what is happening, he wouldnt.
Again, it is not the case that the children were unresponsive. Rather, it was
in the organization of their behavioral and expressive relatednessand some
theorists might become exercised over whether this is in the organization of
their thinking, feeling, or motivationthat the children with autism were said
to be atypical. To repeat: few parents were able to report that their children
with autism showed clear instances of other-person-centered emotions such
as guilt, pity, or empathic concern for someone else, nor shame or embarrassment before another person.
We trust these observations illustrate the vital links between feeling for
others and moral attitudes such as guilt and concern, as well as behavior that
expresses such an orientation to other human beings. These reports from parents are complemented by what may be gleaned from self-reports given by
verbally fluent children and adolescents with autism. For example, Kasari,
Chamberlain, and Bauminger (2001) described how high-IQ children with
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autism reported feeling guilt, but only 14% participants with autism (versus
42% of those with typical development) spoke of guilt over physical harm to
others, and none referred to emotional harm such as hurting someones feelings. Instead they were more likely (73% of instances) to describe situations of
rule-breaking, disruptiveness, or property damage. In the case of embarrassment, fewer participants with autism explicitly mentioned an audience (also
Capps, Yirmiya, & Sigman, 1992).
Now if children with autism tend to show less concern than children without autism, then does this amount to more than a failure to perceive and/or
respond to expressions of emotion? Or is there a more far-reaching limitation
in the childrens propensity to experience and orientate to other persons as
centres of subjectivity?
Consider the following study (J.A. Hobson, Harris, Garca-Prez, & R.P.
Hobson, 2009). Sixteen school-age children with autism and 16 children without autism of similar age and verbal ability took part. The children were between the ages of eight and sixteen years, with a mean verbal mental age of
about seven years. There were two adult testers who sat around a table with
a participant and played a game in which they each drew an animal of their
choice. Then in a standardized, slow-paced procedure, one tester proceeded to
tear up the drawing of the other tester. The tester whose drawing was torn did
not show any overt emotional reaction to the event, although she did witness
its occurrence. Therefore it could not be the case that an observable emotional
display played a role in triggering participants responses. In a control condition, a blank piece of paper was torn instead of a picture.
Videotapes of the episodes were given to two raters who were asked to find
each look to the tester whose drawing was torn and then evaluate which of
those looks expressed concern. These were looks in which the child appeared
to become involved with the tester whose drawing was torn, apparently taking
on her psychological stance (becoming upset on her behalf), experiencing
concern for her feelings, or showing a sense of discomfort about her position
(e.g., through nervous laughter). The raters had excellent agreement on the
quality of such looks.
The results were that when the blank index card was torn, the children
rarely looked at the tester seated across the table. When it was the testers
drawing that was torn, however, some of the children with autism, but especially those without autism, looked at her during or immediately after
the event. More importantly, while on the blank drawing condition only
one child (a child without autism) ever showed a concerned lookand only
onceon the tear drawing condition, ten out of sixteen children without
autism showed between one and six concerned looks, while only three out of
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sixteen children with autism ever showed a concerned look. We should add
that this group difference was not confined to differences in quality of looks,
because other expressions of concern were relatively lacking among the children with autism.
Any interpretation of the results needs to account for the speed with
which, as well as the feeling with which, participants without autism looked
to the tester whose drawing was torn. One might also take into account how
charged an atmosphere was generated by the procedure. Empathy can be very
powerfula lbeit not, it seemed, for most of these participants with autism.
B E YO N D EM PAT H Y
Now we turn to some research that may help us to see what it is that is missing in the ill-organized and diminished empathic responsiveness of children
with autism. We are hoping that the studies we shall report give substance to
the claim that the children are limited in the propensity to identify with the
attitudes of other peoplea capacity we take to be critical in the development
of a moral sense toward other feeling human beings.
To introduce this idea, let us return to a theoretical point: empathy means
responding to the other persons feelings as the others feelings. The feelings
involved in an empathic response are both ones own and experienced in relation to the subjective state of the other. In what sense is the others subjective
state felt?
One way to approach this question is to consider what it means to identify
with someone else. The important thing about identification is precisely that
one feels in accordance with the other, but one does not entirely become the
other. The other persons feelings-as-experienced are part of ones own complex response, yet these are still partitioned off, as it were, within that response.
One implication is that the other-person-anchored part of the experience can
be relived. It can become a part of ones own repertoire, both in relation to the
world and in relation to oneself.
Now if human forms of empathy entail identification, in the sense of a specially powerful connectedness through involvement with the others actions
and attitudes, then perhaps we should revisit autism to see if there is evidence
for weakness in the propensity to identify with others. This issue becomes even
more pressing once one appreciates that it is in being moved to the emotional
stance of others, and therefore in adopting alternative perspectives through
others, that children with autism are especially handicapped. We have already
seen some implications for social referencing (from the study of reactions to
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a toy robot), and there are further repercussions for joint attention, symbolic
functioning, and language (e.g., Hobson, 2002/4).
We shall cite three research studies, very briefly, to illustrate pertinent
findings.
(a) Imitation
Hobson and Lee (1999) tested matched groups of children with and without
autism for their ability to imitate a person demonstrating four novel goaldirected actions on objects in two contrasting styles, which in most cases
meant executing the actions either harshly or gently. The children with autism
copied the goal-directed aspect of the actions, but showed marked divergence
from the control group insofar as very few adopted the demonstrators style of
acting upon the objects involved.
We believe that this reveals a distinction between childrens ability to observe and copy actions per se, relatively intact in autism (and here you may
recall autistic childrens ability to recognize actions but not attitudes in videotaped point-light displays of humans gestures), and the propensity to identify
with and thereby imitate a persons expressive mode of relating to the world,
something that is relatively lacking in autism.
There was a further finding from this study. In one condition, the investigator demonstrated strumming a stick against a pipe-rack held against his
own shoulder. What happened when the children without autism copied this
action is that a substantial majority identified with the demonstrator and
positioned the pipe-rack against their own shoulders before they strummed
it with the stick. By contrast, few of the children with autism made this
adjustment: most positioned the pipe-rack on the table directly in front
of them. Therefore not only with respect to style, but also with respect to
self-orientation, the children with autism did not assume the manner with
which the other person executed actions, even though they copied the actions per se.
In our view, these results were not merely an index of imitative styles that
followed perception; rather, they rendered explicit what the perception entailed in terms of registering and assimilating the stance of the person demonstrating the actions. Indeed, we interpreted the findings as reflecting how
children with autism have a relative ability to copy (as well as perceive) simple
goal-directed actions on objects, but a reduced propensity to identify with the
person whose actions those were. As in the dots of light study, children with
autism seemed to view the actions from the outside, rather than getting beneath the skin of the person they observed.
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We have conducted more recent studies that have confirmed group differences in the imitation of style and self-orientation (J. A. Hobson & Hobson,
2007; Hobson & Hobson, 2008; Hobson, Lee, & Hobson, 2007; Meyer &
Hobson, 2004). It is intriguing that here, in contexts where the emotional quality of the task appears to be minimal, but where self/other role reversals appear
to play a critical role in determining participants responses, children with
autism are distinctive. This raises the possibility that in typical development,
the self/other structure of empathic engagement derives from something more
general, namely the organisation of identifying-with.
(b) Non-verbal Communication

A study of what identifying-with can mean for communication was conducted
by Hobson and Meyer (2005). We presented a sticker test in which children
needed to communicate to another person where on her body she should place
her sticker-badge. The majority of children without autism pointed to a site
on their own bodies to indicate the testers body, that is, anticipating that the
other person would identify with their act of identifying with her body. The
children with autism rarely communicated in this way; instead, most pointed
to the body of the investigator to indicate where the sticker should be placed.
Although it is possible that flexible self-other transpositions in stance
depend upon thinking or understanding other peoples minds, we consider it
more likely that such seemingly effortless and natural stance-shifting reflects
a more basic form of self-other connectedness and differentiation that has a
cognitive aspect, but motivational aspects too.
(c) Conversation
One of the things that happens in a conversation is that each speaker tends to
pick up features of the other persons language when framing their subsequent
responses. This is more than a kind of echoing, because each conversational
partner builds upon what he or she adopts (and often adapts) from the other
person. Here is an example from a child with autism talking to an interviewer:
i: What are you good at?
p: I am good at, eh, science.
In a collaborative study (Du Bois, Hobson, & Hobson, 2014; Hobson, Hobson,
Garca-Prez, & Du Bois, 2012), we studied conversational linkage between an
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adult and matched participants with and without autism. Our principal prediction was that failures to build on what is adopted from the conversational
partner would be different in the two groups. It turned out that although children with autism picked up linguistic forms from their conversational partner,
they were (as predicted) significantly more likely to follow this with incoherent, truncated, vague, or nonresponsive elaboration. Here is one example:
i: And tell me things about yourself that you dont like.
p: That I dont like.
Why did we predict that such abnormalities would occur more often in the
conversations involving children with autism? Because here, in the linguistic domain, is something closely akin to identifying-with the stance of the
other that we have already described in the domains of empathy, imitation, and self-other coordination of nonverbal communication. Critically,
as Freud (1955/1921) remarked, identification involves not just imitation
but assimilation, a making of ones own such that what is assimilated can
become foundational for what follows. Our results confirmed that in conversation, children with autism are less drawn into adopting the stance of
the other (as linguistically expressed), and to construct their succeeding utterances upon this basis.
BAC K TO T H EO RY
From developmental and epistemological viewpoints, the crux of the matter

is this: Does having and showing empathy require conceptual understanding
of the nature of other people (and perhaps the self) as beings with subjective
experiences and minds of their own? Or is such conceptual understanding
a developmental achievement founded upon earlier and more basic forms of
affective responsiveness in which humans register the otherness of the other
(Hobson, 1993a, b; Hobson et al., 2006; Hoffman, 1984b)?
Within the literature on typically developing young children, as Thompson (1987) points out, the dominance of cognitive-developmental perspectives
on emotional awareness and responsiveness, coupled with an emphasis on
relatively detached and intellectually demanding methods to assess empathy,
may have underestimated infants capacities for feeling toward others who are
apprehended, but not conceptualized, as separate beings. Although someone
who empathizes has the ability to register and sense self/other differentiation,
this does not necessarily entail that he or she conceptualizes this distinction,
nor that imaginative role-taking (or so-called cognitive empathy) is required
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for such responsiveness. The appropriate way to characterize empathy is up for

grabs.
How much might cognitive perspective taking accomplish by way of empathic concern, if the perspective-taker did not bring to the situation a background of affective engagement with others? Consider the philosophical
account of Goldie (2000), which may be taken as an exemplifying an approach
that distills some of the potential value of a cognitive theory while avoiding many of its pitfalls. Goldie himself stresses how there is a nonderived
intentional element to feelings (feeling towards), and criticizes the over-
intellectualization of emotion in contemporary philosophy (p. 11). Despite
this, Goldie considers that our abilities to empathize, to imagine ourselves in
another persons shoes, and to sympathize themselves presuppose some degree
of understanding (pp. 177178). Not only this, but in order to understand and
explain another persons emotion, Goldie claims, it does not require that any
emotion be felt by the interpreter (p. 181, Goldies italics).
Here Goldie is writing about imaginative empathy among adults and
is not concerned with developmental issues. Yet from developmental and
epistemological standpoints, it is critical whether or not there needs to be a
background of feeling for other people if one is to understand and explain
another persons emotion. If Martians were to have no feelings for other Martians nor anyone else, how far would they understand what it is for someone to have an emotion or be in an emotional state? Probably, not far at all.
First, they would not understand what it is to be a someone, because understanding persons is grounded in the kinds of relations we experience with
persons, and those relations are based on feelings (Hamlyn, 1974); second,
they would not understand what it is to have a person-centered subjective
orientation (Hobson, 1993a); and third, they would not have the kinds of socially derived cognitive architecture to understand in the relevant manner
(Hobson, 1993b).
The quotation from Goldie includes the claim that sympathy also presupposes understanding. He considers that sympathy is distinct from the imaginative processes of empathy: It is, I think, best understood as a sort of emotion,
involving thought about and feelings towards the difficulties of another, motivations to alleviate those difficulties where possible, and characteristic facial
expressions and expressive actions (Goldie, 2000, p. 9). Working up a head of
steam, Goldie moves toward a climax: It is entirely mistaken to assume that
in addition to this recognition of, feeling towards, and response to anothers
difficulties, sympathy also involves undergoing difficulties and having feelings
of the same sort as the other persons . . . your feelings involve caring about the
others suffering, not sharing them (p. 214, Goldies italics). Good point, and
nicely expressed. We shall return to sorts of emotion in due course.
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Meanwhile, one might balance Goldies account with that of someone who
defends simulationist views, but whose writings seem to relinquish central
tenets of simulationism. Stueber (2006) specifically rejects a detached conception of simulation and the invocation of analogical inferences from self to
other. Instead, Stueber suggests the following: Mechanisms of basic empathy
have to be understood as mechanisms that underlie our theoretically unmediated quasi-perceptual ability to recognize other creatures directly as minded
creatures and to recognize them implicitly as creatures that are fundamentally
like us (p. 20). Not only this, but Stueber insists that one does not start from a
position of detecting or interpreting others as like me, but rather, I understand my subjectivity as a moment of interpersonal intersubjectivity (p. 143).
One wonders, then, how Stueber places himself among empathy theorists
who claim that in learning of other minds we proceed essentially in an egocentric manner . . . My finding out about another persons mind depends on
using myself and my own mind as a standard or model for the other persons
mind. In particular, proponents of the empathy view claim that I gain knowledge of other minds primarily because I can simulate or imitate others mental
processes in my own mind (pp. 34). Perhaps the reason is that Stueber is
most concerned with a specific mode of re-enactive empathy, a personallevel process central to our understanding of others as agents. His thesis is
as follows: Only insofar as I treat her thoughts as thoughts that could be my
own... can I grasp them as her thoughts and as thoughts that constitute her
reasons for her action (p. 165). Here we find vestiges of a simulationist stance,
yet much of the original theory appears to have been jettisoned.
At this point we can turn to phenomenological perspectives. Phenomenology gives us conceptual tools to loosen the shackles of prejudice that bind us
to a very questionable view of the human condition, namely that we need to
theorize or analogize if we are to understand the minds of our fellow human
beings. Writers such as Scheler (1954) and Merleau-Ponty (1964) point out how
it is simply not so, because we perceive feelings in the bodily expressions and
behavior of other people. More than this, our mode of person perception is
such that we become engaged with the persons whom we perceive. MerleauPonty (1964, p. 146) suggests that Sympathy . . . is the simple fact that I live
in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine. Elaborating
further, he writes:
In perceiving the other, my body and his are coupled, resulting a sort of
action which pairs them [action deux]. This conduct which I am able only
to see, I live somehow from a distance. I make it mine; I recover [reprendre]
it or comprehend it . . . Mimesis is the ensnaring of me by the other, the invasion of me by the other; it is that attitude whereby I assume the gestures,
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the conducts, the favorite words, the ways of doing things of those whom
Iconfront . . . [it] is the power of assuming conducts or facial expressions as
my own. . . . (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, pp. 118 and 145)
It is notable how Merleau-Ponty uses the words live and living in these
quotations. One persons perception of another entails a rich form of intersubjective involvement. From this theoretical starting-point, we encounter no
mystery when addressing how one persons non-conceptually-mediated relations with others provide the basis for that person coming to understand the
nature of people-with-minds. As long as we can explain how a child comes to
acquire the conceptual equipment to think about embodied persons as having
mental states, it will be natural for those states-as-conceptualized to be ascribed to appropriate targets, namely persons or person-like creatures (or occasionally, things). This will be the case even when we are considering mental
states that do not necessarily find overt expression, such as a persons beliefs.
This does not mean that all the philosophical problems are solved, of course.
But the challenges facing a developmental account are no longer those explaining how the gap between one persons experiences and those of another
are bridged. Rather, the tasks become those of explicating the structure of selfother relations, and then explaining how on the basis of such relations, children develop (and adults fluently apply) concepts of mind.
On the question of empathy, there are subtle controversies within as well
as beyond the domain of phenomenology. Zahavi (2010) has discussed points
of agreement and disagreement among Scheler, Stein, and Husserl. For each
of these thinkers, empathy is a basic, irreducible form of intentionality that is
directed toward the experiences of others. They reject the view that imitation,
emotional contagion, or mimicry is the paradigm of empathy. Instead, empathy is like perception in being direct, unmediated, and noninferential. Yet
Zahavi also contrasts the views of Scheler, who argues that emotional states
are given in expressive phenomena so that we are directly acquainted with
anothers feelings, with those of Stein and Husserl, who stress that another
persons experiences cannot be given to me in the same way as my own experiences and that the empathized experience is located in the other. As Zahavi
argues, however, these differences may not be so substantial, if there are ways
of experiencing (rather than imagining, simulating, or theorizing) anothers
subjectivity that is not the same as having first-person experience, but is no less
valid as a primary mode of experience. And this is critical.
Phenomenological views on the direct and unmediated quality of interpersonal experience does not (of course) entail that phenomenologists eschew attempts to determine subpersonal mechanisms that underlie such experience,
whether at a psychological or neurological level. The claim is that whatever
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form these mechanisms might take, at root they do not involve processes such
as inferring mental states from the perception of mindless bodies, nor the projection of feelings based upon ones own experiences.
I want to highlight two features of phenomenological discussions that may
be especially worth bearing in mind.
First, in an interesting review of alternative phenomenological perspectives
on empathy, Zahavi (2001, p 163) elaborates on Merleau-Ponty thus:
Since intersubjectivity is in fact possible, there must exist a bridge between
my self-acquaintance and my acquaintance with others; my experience of
my own subjectivity must contain an anticipation of the other, must contain the seeds of alterity . . . Thus, Merleau-Ponty can describe embodied
self-awareness as a presentiment of the other.
What this means is that, for all the attention we should give to someones experience in actual face-to-face interpersonal encounters, we should also consider
what the individualand from a developmental perspective, the individual in
question may be an infantbrings to such encounters to give self-other structure to such experience (also Brten, 1998, on the virtual other).
Second, there is the issue of role-taking (broadly conceived), as this features
in many aspects of interpersonal relatedness. Merleau-Ponty (1964) cites the
psychoanalytic notion of identification in a passage where he reflects on the
emergence of language in what he refers to as the childs affective environment. He describes how a child assimilates the attitudes of his mother and
continues thus: To learn to speak is to learn to play a series of roles, to assume
a series of conducts or linguistic gestures (p. 109, Merleau-Pontys italics). Not
only in language but also in other spheres of communication, there is an intimate relation between connecting with others and being moved into new orientations and stances vis--vis the world.
I D EN T I F Y I N G -W I T H R E V I S I T ED
How does an account invoking a biologically based process of identifying with

the attitudes of others square with these considerations?
We have seen that research in autism has yielded evidence that, in situations that range from empathy to imitation and from nonverbal communication to conversation, affected children seem restricted in the organization of
their social behavior and experience. This restriction is of a specific kind. In
particular, children with autism are not gripped by the expressions of other
people, they are not so powerfully moved to adopt the stance of the other in
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relation to a shared world, and their communication is often lacking flexibility

and role-responsiveness. In concert with all this, by the way, they also have
specific limitations in self-awareness (see Hobson et al., 2006). In short: individuals with autism have a weakened propensity to identify with the attitudes
of others.
I hope that the studies of autism I have described might help to anchor what
may otherwise seem a rather abstract characterization of identifying-with in
what follows.
The notion of identifying-with comes from psychoanalysis. The definition
provided by Laplanche and Pontalis (1973, p. 205) is a good place to start: Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model
the other provides. Through the process of identifying with others bodily
expressed emotional attitudes, for example, an individual perceives and assimilates the attitudes in such a way that they become possibilities for the persons own relations with the world, including the individuals relations toward
him- or herself. Children who are beaten may come not only to beat others, but
also to have punitive attitudes toward themselves.
There is a complication here, namely that the very nature of identification
changes with development. Although Freud (1955/1921) illustrated his notion
with a cognitively elaborated instance, namely a boys wish to be like his father,
he concluded a brief essay on identification with a footnote in which he made
the following claim: A path leads from identification by way of imitation to
empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which
we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life
(p.110). Clearly this refers to a much more basic level of identifying-with, but
one for which it remains true that . . . identification is not simple imitation
but assimilation(Freud, 1953/1900, p. 150, Freuds italics).
Identifying-with is a process that links individuals without merging their
identities. In the act of connecting with someone else through identification,
one retains a distinction between self and other as a basis for oneself assuming
what one experiences as the other persons stance. To repeat: what is experienced as other-centered within ones own experience can become a feature of
ones self-centered repertoire of feeling and action.
Therefore the notion of identification that we employ does not correspond
with the concept of self-other merging justifiably criticized by Batson (2011,
pp. 145-60). The idea is not that oneself and the other become indistinguishable, nor that one experiences what someone else experiences, nor that there
is a confusion between self and other. Like Batson, we have emphasized that at
the core of empathy is the capacity and propensity to feel for others, for their
own sakes. Where Batson (2011, p. 11) refers to other-oriented emotions,
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we have written of person-centered qualities of relational self-awareness

(Hobson, Chidambi, Lee, & Meyer, 2006, p. vii), where the critical feature is
that the other person is encompassed within a feeling state. In the case of
responding to attitudes, there appears to be a dissociation between being affected by expressions of feeling in others in a rather ill-focussed manner, and
being affected (through identification) by the other persons feelings as the
feelings of another self with whom one is engaged (Hobson, Chidambi, Lee,
Meyer,2006, p. 135).
In order to think about this further, consider the case of sharing experiences. If I have an experience of sharing feelings with someone else, this is
indeed my own experience. On the other hand, it is only (felt to be) sharing
insofar as my experience encompasses the other as participating, with me, in
that experience. In other instances, ones interpersonal experience may encompass a registration of the others attitude, for example of anger, alongside
a complementary feeling of a different kind, say of fear. In yet other cases,
where one might identify with attitudes directed elsewhere than toward oneself, the others attitude may be registered with relative equanimity. In the case
of empathy, ones responsiveness to someone elses suffering encompasses both
what one registers as a result of seeing or imagining the person suffering and
a relation toward the person. In each instance, there is a special structure and
phenomenology to such experiences, one that entails that one registers the distinctiveness of whatever is experienced as originating in the other.
Vital aspects of psychological development occur through the interiorization of interpersonal transactions, as long argued by psychoanalysts and
developmentalists in the tradition of Vygotsky (1978). The conundrum is
that the individual needs to construct the socialor if you like, experience
the social as socialwhere what is social then makes a pivotal contribution
to the individuals development. In virtue of the structure of the process of
identifying-with, certain emotions entail an expectation and/or experience of
otherness (acentral tenet of post-Freudian psychoanalytic thinking). This is
foundational for social experience and at the same time sets the stage for social
experience to shape the self. Identifying-with serves as a mechanism for the
enrichment and development of the individual through his/her engagements
with other people. What results is a mind that is composed of parts of the
self in various states of relatedness to each other and to various degrees felt to
be central to or alienated from the self.
Identifying-with has cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects (Hobson,
2008). To identify with someone else is to be engaged with them affectively, it
is to be motivated to feel and behave in certain ways, and it is to apply cognitive categories of relevant kinds. The earliest forms of identification (or one
might say, the structures of self-other relatedness that provide the basis for
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189
identification proper) appear early in the first year of life. The manifestations
are the uniquely human forms of sharing evident in typically developing infants from around two months of age. Typically developing two-month-old
infants appear not only to share affectively charged exchanges with their
caregivers (Trevarthen, 1979), but also to be upset by disruption in the interactions. A prime example is when a caregiver adopts a still face (Tronick,
Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978)and we have seen two-month-olds
trying to reinstate a pleasureable to-and-fro with their still-faced mothers. On
the other hand, of course, we should not suppose that the infants experience
another person in the way that we do. Rather, it is the case for infants as well as
adults that certain states of mind entail that one registers an embodied other
who plays an integral role in making that state of mind what it is. When we
witness two-month-olds sharing pleasure in face-to-face interaction with their
mothers and then either intermittently averting their gaze or making bids for
re-engagement when the mothers assume a blank face (see Hobson, 2002/4 for
further details), the other is essential to a description of what the infants are
experiencing.
Then more explicit forms of identifying-with become apparent later in the
first year, when infants are moved to adopt the attitudes of another person
toward a shared world. Examples are instances of social referencing, when
infants attitudes to objects and events may change in accordance with their
perception of other peoples attitudes to those same objects and events (e.g.,
Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985), or certain varieties of joint attention
and imitation (Trevarthen & Hubley, 1978, for vivid illustrations, and ZahnWaxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992, for subsequent developments in empathy over the second year). It is possible, albeit hazardous, to
see phenomena such as joint attention and social referencing as amounting
to a form of understanding, but it is important not to suppose one can speak
of the infant knowing that someone else has such-and-such a take on the
world. Rather, as John Campbell (2005, p. 288) has expressed the matter, On
a relational view, joint attention is a primitive phenomenon of consciousness.
Just as the object you see can be a constituent of your experience, so too it can
be a constituent of your experience that the other person is, with you, jointly
attending to the object. In other words, we are still in the realm of what is
structured in the givenness of experience, rather than what is built up out of
component understandings. Or to put this differently: a part of what goes into
childrens (and our) understanding of persons is what they already experience
as sharing with persons, including what they experience as sharing in relation
to a world out there. Finally, there are further versions of identifying-with
that develop later in life, for instance when a child identifies with a parent or
when someone identifies with a religious group.
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Two observations, one from developmental psychopathology and one from

neuroscience, are pertinent here. First, it is commonplace to find young children acting out scenarios in their symbolic play. When the scenarios involve
pretend people, the figures are often given roles in interaction with each other.
Not infrequently, the roles have personal significance for the child. For instance, if the child has been told off by a parentand what one might have seen
at the actual telling-off was an upset child (although more accurately, a childupset-by-being-told-off-by-a-parent)what one may observe subsequently is
the child re-enacting both the figure of the scolding parent and the figure of
the upset child. The self-other structure of the original experience becomes
unpacked, as it were, in the replaying of events. Such patterns of transgenerational identification can be a potent source of psychopathology, for example
when abused children become abusers.
Then from the field of neuroscience there is evidence for something like
resonance of action-readiness and/or feelings between one individual and
another (e.g., as considered by Decety & Chaminade, 2003)and also provisional evidence that such neurofunctional mirroring is relatively absent
among individuals with autism and/or Asperger syndrome (e.g., Dapretto, Davies, Pfeifer, Scott, & Sigman, 2006; Oberman, Hubbard, McCleery,
Altschuler, Ramachandran, & Pineda, 2005; but see Southgate & Hamilton,
2008). Although such evidence supports the notion that there is transmission
or communication of at least certain features of psychological states from one
person and another, one needs to be circumspect about using such terms as
mirroring or simulating, when mirroring is so inexact a metaphor for the
complex processes of identifying-with.
W R A P- U P
It may be appropriate to conclude with some final reflections on where the

present account is situated within current philosophical debate on the nature
of and basis for interpersonal understanding. It diverges in very many respects
from theory theory attempts to explain basic mechanisms of interpersonal
understanding (e.g., Hobson, 1993b). This is notwithstanding that mental
concepts and self-reflective forms of role-taking feature in developmentally
elaborated forms of mind-reading. Perhaps the most important point is that
quintessentially (although not exclusively), early forms of identifying-with are
perceptually grounded emotional processes that are necessary for, rather than
dependent upon, the acquisition of concepts of persons-with-minds.
The present approach also eschews ideas that appear in versions of simulation theory. For example, identifying-with does not work from an egocentric
On Empathy
191
stance. Rather, it is a process that structures interpersonal engagement. Self/

other-awareness and understanding are constructed on the basis of emotionally configured intersubjective experience. Therefore it is not the case that in
the early phases of life, a child uses him- or herself as a model for understanding someone else. Simulationist accounts tend to underestimate how much
development in self-awareness and conceptual ability needs to have taken
place before a child could use him-/herself as a model for anything. Second,
identifying-with does not depend upon imagination, in any of the usual senses
of that term. On the contrary, imaginative role-taking becomes possible on the
basis of infants experiencing specific forms of interpersonally grounded shift
in attitude toward the world though their affectively configured perception of
and alignment with the attitudes of others.
We should add that an account in terms of identifying-with alters the prominence given to a range of self-other and person-world relations in our explanation of what it means to understand oneself and others, and how we come
to such understanding. For example, consider a very young childs ability to
perceive and respond to what one might call a possessive or acquisitive attitude
in someone else. Around the second birthday, a child adopts the adults expression Mine! by identifying with the attitude this expresses when used by
an adult or older sibling (Charney, 1980). Is not this, too, of great significance
for our grasp of what it means to be a self with a set of person-anchored desires
toward and beliefs about the world?
There are very many sorts of emotion, a fact that is obscured only by our
conventional habits of thinking in terms of abstracted feelings such as those
of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust (to mention only the
supposedly basic emotions). To be happy-with-someone-who-is-talking-withoneself is not the same mental state as to be happy-with-someone-who-isgreeting-oneself, never mind the same as happy-with-someone-who-is-
outside-ones-perceptual-field, or even happy-with-a-good-meal. To be angry
with someone who has just expressed an insult is not the same mental state as
to be angry with someone who has forgotten ones birthday, never mind angry
with someone who has abandoned one, or even angry with a broken-down
car. And so on, ad infinitum. Such affective states are not only relational,
they also have specificity in relation to the identity and state of the object of
the relation (that is, how the object of the intentional state is experienced).
Again to cite Goldie (2000, p. 191), when one is in a confrontational interaction, one may very clearly recognize anothers emotion, yet it would be
absurd to presume that one has the same emotion as the other person. If one
feels rage-in-relation-to-the-others dismissiveness, then ones mental state
is not the same as that of the other, but it does encompass ones own version
of the others mental state. This is even true for sharing, when it is only in a
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special sense that one should speak of ones own state being the same as that
of the other.
In conclusion, then, we see empathy as one among a range of states structured by the process of identifying-with the attitudes of another person. The
case of autism helps us to see what happens when this structuring of social
experience is limited or absent. In particular, a limited quality of other-person-centeredness is revealed not only in a restriction in the organization of
affected individuals feelings, thoughts, and actions toward others when it
comes to such states as empathy, concern, and guilt, but also in diminished
role-taking and flexibility in thinking, language, and imagination. This is not
to say that individuals with autism are without any capacity to identify-with.
Nor is it to claim that without such a process, all manifestations of empathy,
guilt, and so on, never mind flexibility in thinking, are impossible. Our claim
is that identifying-with gives a special quality and depth to these modes of psychological functioning and to the moral stance to which they make a central
contribution.
10
Empathy in Other Apes

KRISTIN ANDREWS AND LORI GRUEN
1. I N T R O D U CT I O N
Aldrin was a sickly little fellow and didnt play with the others very much. In
fact, he usually didnt do much besides sit next to his babysitter and hug her leg.
But one day a terrifying turtle appeared, and he was motivated to climb high
in a tree to escape the horror. Later that day when it was time to head back to
camp, the babysitters realized that Aldrin wasnt with them. They never saw
him come down from the tree. Then the babysitters noticed that Ceceb, the
leader of the group of youngsters, wasnt around either. When they went back
to where the turtle had been, they found Aldrin and Ceceb perched high in different trees. Cecebs tree was closest to the path, and he looked back at Aldrin,
caught his eye, and then moved on to the next tree. Aldrin followed Ceceb from
tree to tree until they reached the path back to camp. Though Ceceb had been
looking back at Aldrin from time to time, when he got down to the ground he
just scampered away, joining the rest of the group, with Aldrin following.
Hearing this story, one might be inclined to talk about Aldrins fear, Cecebs
understanding of Aldrins emotional state, and his desire to help. It would not
be unusual to think that Ceceb was responding sympathetically to Aldrin, understanding that he was afraid and trying to calm him. Perhaps one might
suspect that Cecebs sympathetic response was caused by an empathic reaction
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to Aldrins plight. Further, one might dramatize the story by describing Ceceb
as playing the role of the policeman who is trying to keep the peace and make
sure everyone is doing OK. As juvenile rehabilitant orangutans, however,
Ceceb isnt the kind of creature to whom these ideas are generally applied. If he
were human, there may be little protest. However, the cognitive requirements
for empathy, sympathy, and grasping social norms are not generally thought
to be possessed by nonhuman animals.
A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments
in favor of the existence of empathy in other species (see Bekoff & Pierce 2009,
Flack & de Waal 2000, Plutchik 1987). While the evidence is compelling,
claims about empathy in nonhuman apes face two different challenges. The
first challenge comes from a set of empirical findings that suggest great apes
are not able to think about others beliefs. The argument here is based on a view
that empathy is associated with folk psychological understanding of others
mental states, or mindreading, and the existence of mindreading among the
other apes is a matter of some dispute. The second worry comes from a host
of recent experiments suggesting that nonhuman great ape communities lack
certain social norms that we might expect empathic creatures to have, namely
cooperation norms, norms of fairness, and punishment in response to violations of norms (especially third-party punishment). If apes are empathetic, yet
they do not use this capacity to help or punish, what is the role of empathy?
We think that both these challenges can be answered by getting clearer about
what empathy is and how it functions as well as by considering the nature of
empathic societies. We also believe that this analysis will clarify the relationship between being empathetic and being ethical.
2. VA R I E T I ES O F EM PAT H Y
Both the concept of empathy and the phenomenon have been understood
in many different, often contradictory, ways, and this makes it particularly
tricky to determine what is being claimed when someone says that other apes
are or are not empathetic. In everyday use, empathy is usually thought to be
connected with ethical perceptions and behavior. An empathetic person is a
good person, someone with qualities and virtues that are to be praised. One
reason why there is skepticism about whether apes or other animals engage in
empathy is because it is hard to understand the idea that animals have morality. There is a growing acceptance of the idea that they may have what de Waal
has called the building blocks of morality, which includes empathy as well
as reciprocity, conflict resolution, a sense of fairness, and cooperation, but perhaps not full blown ethical agency (de Waal, 2006).
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In the psychological literature, empathy is alternatively used to mean a state

of feeling what another person or being is feeling (an affective state that
may or may not require cognition), knowing what another person or being
is feeling (an epistemic state that involves mindreading or metacognition),
or responding compassionately to anothers distress (perception/action state
that is often associated with ethical engagement) (Levenson and Ruef, 1992,
234). The phenomenological and affective states do not necessarily require
cognition. The epistemic state requires both phenomenological experience
and other affective mental states. Responding compassionately, caring for and
about, or engaging in what one of us calls entangled empathy (Gruen 2012,
2013) requires both cognitive and affective states, but not necessarily the same
sorts of states that are associated with the other types of empathy. But all of
these types of empathic experiences involve the transfer of emotion, and this
transfer occurs in a variety of ways.
The most basic form of empathy, usually called emotional contagion or
affective resonance, involves a spontaneous response to the emotions of another. Anyone who has lived with dogs will be familiar with this phenomenon.
Dogs are emotional spongesthey often become stressed when their person
is stressed, sad when their person is sad, joyful when their person is joyful.
Infants and small children also regularly engage in these spontaneous reactions. Emotional contagion or affective resonance is a kind of mimicry of the
individual(s) in ones immediate environment and does not require any developed cognitive capacities. This very basic type of empathy involves the direct
perception of the emotions of others and automatically triggers or activates
the same emotion in the perceiver, without any intervening labeling, associative, or cognitive perspective-taking processes. (Lipps 1903b) And in the majority of such cases, this initial response seems unavoidable.
With the more automatic forms of empathy, the empathizer isnt distinguishing his or her own feelings or mental states more generally from those
of another. In fact, an awareness of this distinction in agency may not yet have
developed and perhaps never will. And in cases where such awareness already
exists, occurrent recognition of the others individuality may interfere with the
emotional sharing, as between a mother and infant or in a freshly declared love
relationship. Some theorists have limited their understanding of empathy to just
these sorts of experiences and from that point of view it is difficult to see what
role, if any, empathy that involves fellow feeling in which the agent loses herself in the emotions of another should play in an account of ethical engagement.
There are also types of empathy that rely on more complex cognitive capacities. One sort of cognitive empathy involves taking the perspective of
another in order to understand what that other is experiencing and making
decisions about what to do in light of what the other is experiencing. This sort
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of empathy generally requires mindreading or metacognition, and is what the

psychologist William Ickes (1993) calls empathic accuracy. We will discus
the conflicting evidence about metacognition in apes in Section 4 below. The
other sort of empathy is entangled empathy that involves being able to understand and respond to anothers needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, and
perspectives not as if they are or should be the same as ones own. It involves a
reaction to anothers experience and a judgment to act in response. This latter
form of empathy has a clearer connection to ethics, although here too there is
disagreement (Prinz, 2011a, 2011b).
3. F U N CT I O N S O F EM PAT H Y
Among empathys functions is to better understand the individuals in ones

societyto know what they want and why they want it. There has been great
interest in the evolution of this ability as an explanation for cognitive differences across species that led to the development of the Social Intelligence Hypothesis (SIH). Most generally, this hypothesis suggests that social animals
evolved a greater cognitive complexity because of the need to interact with a
great number of autonomous agents. Apes and monkeys (as well as the social
carnivores, birds such as the corvids, and marine mammals such as the bottlenose dolphin) live in intricate social groups that require substantial cognitive
commitment; they must be able to recognize individuals (visually, aurally, and
perhaps via other modalities as well), they must keep track of kin relations
(especially in matrilineal species such as baboons), they must keep track of
dominance relations and alliances, plus they must be sensitive to possible defections. They must be able to remember who did what to whom when, and
who should care about it. In addition, they must decide what to do in the face
of such actions and make judgments about whether they should, for example,
challenge a dominant, join a coup, or court the dominants mate. They must
decide when to let others know they have found food and when to keep it for
themselves. The SIH is premised on the theory that sophisticated cognition
must be adaptive given the high costs associated with developing a large brain.
Evolution does not optimize, and creatures certainly shouldnt be expected to
be cleverer than they need to be. From this it follows that primates developed
sophisticated cognitive abilities for some function.
There are two approaches to this hypothesis. According to Machiavellian
versions of the hypothesis (Humphrey 1976, 1978; Byrne & Whiten 1988), the
ability to understand other minds arose in order to come out on top in a cutthroat environment of scarce resources. By understanding what others believe
and what they want, and by being able to manipulate others beliefs or change
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their desires, one can steer competitors away. The Machiavellian perspective
emphasizes the importance of making predictions in order to thrive in this
competitive environment. For example, if two individuals both want a food
item, and there isnt enough to share, the individual who can predict that an
intervention will lead the competitor away from the food will be the one who
gains the food. Given the fiercely competitive primate social environment,
making better predictions of behavior was instrumental for gaining greater resources; better predictions were used to better manipulate others behavior. As
individuals gain a more sophisticated theory of social action and greater predictive success, they up the stakes for other members of their community, thus
creating an evolutionary arms race. Both active lies and withholding information such as food alarm cries are examples of Machiavellian social intelligence.
The other version of the social intelligence hypothesis was introduced by
primatologist Allison Jolly (1966). Based on her expertise in lemur behavior,
Jolly suggests that cooperative social learning rather than fierce social competition explains why social animals need greater cognitive complexity. Social
learning is a nonpedagogical method of learning, which requires that a demonstrator tolerates the close observation of the learner, and in many cases the
learner gains some of the benefits of the behavior being demonstrated. For example, in orangutan food processing the mother will allow her infant to peer
at her complex manipulation of a ginger leaf or termite nest, and she will allow
her offspring to take pieces of processed food to eat. While this sort of learning doesnt involve active teaching, it does require acting differently toward
individuals with differing abilities and responding appropriately to different
individuals depending on their current skill levels.
We think that Jollys version of the hypothesis is more plausible for a number
of reasons. One of us has argued that the kind of predictions emphasized by
the Machiavellian Intelligence version of the social intelligence hypothesis
could be made without understanding the content of other minds and without
feeling what others feel (Andrews 2012). In addition, as researchers turn to
examine cultural differences between communities of a species, we are finding
that social learning is an essential part of the lives of social animals. Indeed,
when we compare wild apes with captive or rehabilitant apes, we see that the
lack of social learning opportunities among such individuals have led to harm
for the individuals and the new groups, leading to problems such as an inability to properly care for offspring (rehabilitant orangutan mothers who inadvertently drown their infants when crossing through streams, for example)
and inability to find nutritious food to eat. Further, the traditions of ape societies such as orangutan habitual routes appear to be learned by the infants as
they are carried on their mothers backs; juveniles have been observed to begin
leading the way on habitual routes and waiting for mother at the next stop on
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the path (Bebko 2013). Social learning leads to the development of cultural
behavior, defined as a behavior that is transmitted repeatedly until it becomes
widespread through a population (Whiten et al. 1999). A new behavior may
be introduced to the communitys behavioral repertoire by an immigrant or
by a community member who innovated the behavior. Innovation is defined
as the process that generates in an individual a novel learned behavior that
is not simply a consequence of social learning or environmental induction
(Ramsey, Bastian, & van Schaik 2007, 395; see also Reader & Laland 2003). Innovations are beneficial behaviors, and as they spread through a community
they make life better for the individuals.
The way innovations or other learned behaviors spread through a community is not unlike how some hunter-gatherer human adults pass on their social
knowledge. A recent ethnographic survey of learning in hunter-gatherer societies concludes that [t]he sources discussed here suggest that a range of learning processes are involved in acquiring hunting skills, and that teaching and
demonstration play a limited role (MacDonald 2007, 398). In hunter-gatherer
societies, facilitative teaching is the norm, examples of which include allowing
young children to accompany adult experts on hunting trips or to play with
the adults tools or weapons at home.
Infant and juvenile nonhuman apes have much to learn from their mothers
as well (McGrew 1992). Much of this learning occurs via facilitative teaching,
as described by MacDonald, but there are also reports of active teaching among
chimpanzees. At the Fongoli research site in Senegal, chimpanzees make a
variety of sharp stick tools to hunt small bush babies that can involve up to
five steps to construct, including trimming the tool tip to a point. The chimpanzees prepare the tools, take them to a particular area, and then jab them
forcefully into tree hollows where the small primate prey nests. Pruetz has
observed what appeared to be a mother teaching the tool-making and hunting
techniques to infants not only by modeling the tool-making behavior but also
by physically correcting the youngsters tool (Pruetz & Bertolani 2007). In addition, observations of the chimpanzees of the Ta Forest in Cte DIvoire suggest that they also engage in demonstration teaching (Boesch 1991, 1993). An
adult female named Ricci observed her daughter Nina trying unsuccessfully
to crack nuts with a stone hammer. Ricci approached Nina, who immediately
handed her mother the stone. With Nina watching closely, Ricci turned the
odd-shaped stone to its best position for cracking the nut in a very slow and
deliberate fashion. Then Ricci cracked ten nuts, letting Nina eat almost all of
them, dropped the stone, and left. Nina picked up the stone and held it in the
same position Ricci had.
Teaching by inhibition, or by preventing another individual from acting,
is also apparent among chimpanzees. Wild chimpanzee mothers have been
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observed to pull their infants away from plants that are not part of their regular
diet (Hiraiwa-Hasegawa 1990). In captive settings, researchers have observed
mothers intervene when their infant played with unusual and potentially dangerous objects, such as a heavy metal chain (Hirata 2009).
Kim Sterelny (2012) has argued that the complex culture we see in human
societies emerged from the kind of facilitative teaching we think exists among
the great apes, and which MacDonald describes in contemporary hunter-
gatherer societies. While Sterelny doesnt apply his account to the great apes,
we think that much of what he says about the evolution of human culture
through apprenticeship learning can also be said of the other great apes. According to his apprenticeship learning model, humans evolved in an environment organized by humans for learning, and without explicit teaching or any
specific cognitive adaption for teaching humans were able to develop complex culture. Like meerkats, whose young gradually learn how to kill and eat
dangerous scorpions from adults giving the young dead scorpions first and
then half-killed scorpions next, human experts often prepare gradual learning steps for apprentices by task decomposition and ordering skill acquisition (Sterelny, 2012, 35). In great apes societies, as it is with human children,
youngsters are given many opportunities for learning by adults. MacDonald
(2007) points out that in hunter-gatherer societies, adults are tolerant of children closely looking at their activity and playing with their tools. The same
sort of tolerance has been reported among chimpanzees and orangutans (see
Van Schaik 2003 for a review).
If were right and Jollys version of the social intelligence hypothesis is correct, then there is a real relationship between understanding others and the
behaviors associated with different forms of teaching and learning. We should
expect, then, that empathy would have evolved in order to facilitate teaching
and learning and the transmission of social traditions, which in addition to
behaviors such as food processing can also include behaviors that may be understood as examples of social norms, such as the prohibition against infanticide in chimpanzee societies (see Rudolf von Rohr, Burkart, & van Schaik
2011 for a review) and the assistance male chimpanzees provide to females and
children in crossing roads (Hockings, Anderson, & Matsuzawa 2006) that we
will say more about in Section 5 below.
4. EM PAT H Y A N D M I N D R E A D I N G
Part of what it means to understand others is to see those others as distinct

from ones self and to recognize that the other has thoughts and idea of his or
her own, a capacity that is sometimes referred to as having a theory of mind.
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Sarah, a chimpanzee, was the original subject of studies that attempted to determine whether she understood mental states such as intentions, knowledge, belief, thinking, guessing, pretending, and liking of others.
Sarah was shown a set of four video-taped recordings of a human facing a problem and the tape was stopped just before the human was to solve the problem.
She was then presented with photographs, one of which depicted the solution
to the problem. She was asked to pick the photograph that solved the problem
for the human in the video and she passed the test well above chance levels,
which indicated to the authors at the time that she could impute mental states
to herself and to others and thus had a theory of mind (Premack & Woodruff 1978, 515). While this original study did not hold up as establishing that
there was evidence of a theory of mind in chimpanzees and was dismissed by
one of the authors (Premack 2007; Premack & Premack 2003), it led to further
attempts to determine what chimpanzees know about other minds.
At first, the focus was on visual perception, and the results were not promising. When chimpanzees at other laboratories were tested on a perspective
taking task, they failed miserably (Povinelli & Eddy 1996). It appeared that no
other chimpanzees could pass what are called non-verbal false belief tests,
often used with human children before they can speak. A test was designed
to determine whether chimpanzees understood that seeing meant knowing.
Two humans would stand outside an enclosure with a desirable food item. One
of the humans would not be able to see the chimpanzee. (Her eyes might be
covered; she would have a bucket over her head; or she would be looking away.)
The other human would be looking right at the chimpanzee. If the chimpanzee went to the human that could see him and asked for food, rather than
going to the human who could not see him to ask for food, researchers could
conclude that the chimpanzees understood that seeing was an important part
of the way individuals formed mental states. But the chimpanzees approached
the humans randomly in this set of experiments.
But when chimpanzees were not viewed as hairier, stronger versions of
human children and researchers started to pay attention to chimpanzee difference, the theory of mind tests could be reformulated. Brian Hare and his
colleagues noticed that chimpanzees did seem to understand something
about the visual perception of other chimpanzees. Hare created an experiment in which a subordinate chimpanzee and a dominant chimpanzee were
put in competition over food, and showed that the subordinate would systematically approach the food the dominant could not see and avoid the food
the dominant could see. In a variation on this theme, a subordinate watched
food being hidden that the dominant could only sometimes see, depending on
whether or not the dominant chimpanzees door was open or closed during
the time of hiding. When the dominant was released, the subordinate would
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only approach the food that the dominant had not seen being hidden, even
though the dominant could see it now. They concluded, We now believe that
our own and others previous hypotheses to the effect that chimpanzees do not
understand any psychological states at all were simply too sweeping (Hare
etal. 2000; Hare. Call, & Tomasello 2001; Tomasello, Call, & Hare 2003).
There is also evidence that chimpanzees understand goals and intentionality (Uller 2004; Tomasello & Carpenter 2005; Warneken & Tomasello 2006).
For example, Claudia Uller found that chimpanzees, like human children
(Gergely, Nadasdy, Csibra, & Br 1995), seem to perceive the behavior of geometric shapes moving in the right way as intentional (Uller 2004). Just as children do, chimpanzees expect that a little ball should move directly toward
a larger mother ball, rather than taking the more circumspect path it was
previously taking when there was a barrier to avoid. This behavior led Uller
to conclude that chimpanzees understand agency and saw the little ball as an
agent.
Chimpanzees also seem to understand the differences in peoples intentions. Call and colleagues found that chimpanzees are more impatient with
humans who are unwilling to give them food compared with humans who are
unable to give them food; they beg more from the capable person who is unwilling than they beg from the person who is unable to access the visible food,
and they get more upset with people who are unwilling (Call, Hare, Carpenter, & Tomasello 2004). Chimpanzees also are able to identify a humans goal
and will spontaneously help a friendly human achieve his goal. While engaged
in what appeared to be informal social interactions with the experimenter,
the young chimpanzees were tested on their ability to respond to a nonverbal
request for help. For example, when the experimenter was using a sponge to
clean a table and dropped the sponge onto the floor, the chimpanzee he was
interacting with responded to his gestural request to retrieve the sponge by
picking it up and handing it to him (Warneken & Tomasello 2006).
Apes understanding of intentionality has also been investigated by looking at contingent responsivity. For example, a chimpanzee named Cassie responded differently when being imitated by his caregiver than he did when his
caregiver engaged in non-imitative behavior (Nielsen, Collier-Baker, Davis,
& Suddendorf 2005). Like human infants, Cassie would systematically vary
his behavior while closely watching the imitator. Nielsen and colleagues describe one bout of behavior while Cassie was being imitated: Cassie poked his
finger out of the cage, wiped the ground in front of him, picked up a piece of
straw and placed it in his mouth, pressed his mouth to the cage, then poked
his finger out of the cage again (Nielsen, Collier-Baker, Davis, & Suddendorf
2005, 34). Such repetitive sequences were the norm when Cassie was being
imitated, but not when the caregiver engaged in non-imitative behavior or
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no behavior at all. Cassies response demonstrates that he was aware that his
caregiver was acting purposefully, further evidence that the chimpanzee has
a notion of agency.
Chimpanzees also seem to recognize the emotional expressions of other
chimpanzees (Parr 2001). In an experimental study on captive chimpanzees,
chimpanzees were shown videotapes of other chimpanzees being injured as
part of routine veterinarian procedures that the subjects themselves had previously been exposed to (such as getting an injection or being darted). After
watching the video, the chimpanzee subjects were given the opportunity to use
a joystick to match the scene with photographs of different chimpanzees displaying five different facial expressions: a play face, a fear grimace, a screaming
face, a pant-hoot, or a neutral face. The chimpanzee subjects were experts at
matching the painful videos with the photographs of chimpanzees expressing a fear grimace or screaming. When the chimpanzees were shown positive
images of fun things, such as desirable food, the chimpanzees matched those
scenes to positive facial expressionsthe play face.
While there is evidence that chimpanzees understand quite a bit about
others mental states, are able to distinguish intentional agents from the nonintentional objects in the world, are able to understand the visual perspective
of others, and are able to respond appropriately to others goals, intentions,
and emotions, there is currently little evidence that the great apes are forming
beliefs about the beliefs of others. But there is evidence that they can think
about others emotions, intentions, and even personality traits (Subiaul, Vonk,
Okamoto-Barth, & Barth 2008). It would be wrong to infer from that lack of
evidence that apes read minds that there is no evidence of cognitive empathy in great apes. Cognitive empathy and perspective taking involves much
more than understanding the content of others beliefs. It just as importantly
considers others physical or social situation, their capability, their emotions,
and their differing goals. Being able to determine such things about others
provides the elements required for entangled empathy, including the ability
to understand and respond to anothers needs, interests, goals, strengths, and
weaknesses. It requires seeing others as somewhat different from oneself, and
from one another, and we see evidence of that among chimpanzees and the
other great apes.
5. EM PAT H Y A N D SO C I A L N O R M S A M O N G A PES
In addition to the evidence that other apes can understand some mental states
in others, and that they can identify others goals, intentions, and interests,
there is a growing body of literature that supports the view that cooperation
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and sanction occur among relatively large groups of chimpanzees who are apparently genetically unrelated (individuals that are not direct kin). In natural
settings where populations are not significantly threatened, chimpanzees live
in fission-fusion societies in which their smaller, tighter knit groups of between four to ten come together with the larger community of approximately
one hundred individuals on a fairly regular, although not day-to-day, basis.
The ability to share resources, exchange information, and to manage social interactions in such a large group would best be facilitated through adherence to
some sort of norms, particularly with a species as volatile as chimpanzees. The
complex behaviors exhibited in these regular meetings would also be best explained by the existence of norms. Chimpanzees have long-term memory; they
are socially tolerant and intelligent; they have quite flexible social repertoires;
they have complex communicative abilities; they respond to the emotions of
others; they understand the consequences of their and others actions; and
there is at least some evidence that they are able to inhibit their behaviors. They
also engage in complex behaviors that researchers have variously described as
fairness, other-regarding behavior, inequity tolerance, punishment or
sanction, targeted helping, cooperation, and retaliation.
For example, in Bossou, chimpanzees are occasionally observed crossing
roads that intersect with their territories. One of the roads is busy with traffic,
the other is mostly a pedestrian route, but both are dangerous to the chimpanzees. On video recordings of chimpanzee behavior at the crossings, adult
males were found to take up forward and rear positions, with adult females
and young occupying the more protected middle positions. The positioning
of dominant and bolder individuals, in particular the alpha male, was found
to change depending on both the degree of risk and number of adult males
present. Researchers suggested that cooperative action in the higher risk situation was probably aimed at maximizing group protection. This sort of risk
taking for the sake of others is also often observed in male patrols of territorial boundaries in other parts of Africa. In these instances, a bold male, who
may or may not be the alpha of the group, together with others with whom he
has an alliance, begin a patrol with the goal of potential food rewards as well
as protecting the group from neighboring threats. (Hockings, Anderson, &
Matsuzawa 2006)
Across different chimpanzee communities researchers have observed that
infants enjoy a special status in the community and are tolerated to a much
greater degree than are juveniles or adults (as discussed in Rudolf von Rohr,
Burkart, & van Schaik 2011). Adults, including alpha males, are extremely tolerant of infants climbing over them and even stealing their food or tools, and
adults have been observed to self-handicap when playing with infants. However,
from time to time infanticide does occur among chimpanzee communities,
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though it is rare; for example, in one community of Gombe chimpanzees, over

a period of 40 years only 5 out of 112 infants were the victim of infanticide
from a group member (Murray, Wroblewski, & Pusey 2007). Those who have
observed intragroup infanticide report that the females respond with massive
reactions, including screaming, barking, and risky attempts to intervene.
There is a unique case in Senegal in which an infant chimpanzee who had
been the victim of poaching was ultimately retrieved from the poachers by
the research team. The team left the infant in a burlap sack close to the chimpanzee group and an adolescent male helped return the infant to the mother.
The mother was injured in the human attack and when she would fall behind
the group as they were travelling, the unrelated adolescent male assisted her
by carrying the infant. According to Pruetz, this targeted helping behavior
could not be explained by reference to self-interest and may best be explained
as empathetic action. The male recognized the difficulties the mother was experiencing keeping up with the group while carrying her infant as well as her
need for help during group travel (Pruetz 2011).
There is some evidence of cooperation and sanction in experimental studies
with captive chimpanzees as well. Formal experiments have indicated willingness to cooperate with a social partner in order to gain food to be shared
(Hirata & Fuwa 2007), spontaneous helping behavior when engaged with a
human caregiver (Warneken, Hare, Melis, Hanus, & Tomasello 2007), and responses to requests for help from another chimpanzee even when there is no
direct benefit to self (Yamamoto, Humle, & Tanaka 2009). Chimpanzees have
also demonstrated that they can strategically share the appropriate tool with
another chimpanzee in a task that requires two chimpanzees to coordinate the
use of different tools in order to gain access to food (Melis & Tomasello 2013).
However, the case isnt as clear as we have been presenting it. Both the experimental studies and the field observations are subject to interpretations that
must be considered. In addition, there are several studies that suggest to some
that chimpanzees do not have social norms that permit cooperative behavior.
The sort of evidence we see in favor of cooperation in great apes, such as
food sharing, might be interpreted in a self-interested way. In one captive experiment, Frans de Waal and Sarah Brosnan developed a series of tests to try to
analyze food sharing among chimpanzees. They found that adults were more
likely to share food with individuals who had groomed them earlier in the day.
They suggested that the results could be explained in two ways: the goodmood hypothesis, in which individuals who have received grooming are in
a benevolent mood and respond by sharing with all individuals or the exchange hypothesis, in which the individual who has been groomed responds
by sharing food only with the groomer. The data indicated that the sharing
was specific to the previous groomer. The chimpanzees remembered who had
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performed a service (grooming) and responded to that individual by sharing

food. De Waal and Brosnan also observed that grooming between individuals
who rarely did so was found to have a greater effect on sharing than grooming between partners who commonly groomed. Among partnerships in which
little grooming was usually exchanged, there was a more pronounced effect
of previous grooming on subsequent food sharing. They suggest that being
groomed by an individual who doesnt usually groom might be more noticeable and thus warrant greater response, in the form of food sharing, or it could
be what they call calculated reciprocity (Brosnan & de Waal 2002).
Others have argued that all the evidence of so-called cooperative behaviors
seen among chimpanzees can be explained in self-interested terms. The tasks
in which two chimpanzees have to cooperate to gain food that is then shared
is an obvious case, but even in the tasks when a partner responds to a request
for a tool to help another gain a food reward, with no reward to himself, might
also be explained in terms of expectations of future help by the partner (Vonk
et al. 2008).
In addition, there have been a number of captive experiments that failed
to find social norms like cooperation or fairness among chimpanzees. In one
study, chimpanzees failed to take advantage of a situation to offer food to a
companion at no cost to self (Silk et al. 2005). The chimpanzee was given two
ropes to pull; each would deliver food to oneself. However, one of the ropes
also delivered food to a chimpanzee in the cage next door. Chimpanzees
randomly pulled the ropes to deliver food to self, seemingly uninterested in
whether the visible chimpanzee next door received any food. In addition, in
a chimpanzee version of the ultimatum game in which a chimpanzee is given
a choice between making one of two offers, which the other chimpanzee can
accept or reject, the chimpanzees accepted all offers, while humans tend to
reject unfair offers thereby punishing the provider (Jensen, Call, & Tomasello
2007a). This suggests to the authors that chimpanzees are not concerned with
fairness. Finally, while there is evidence that chimpanzees will punish others
who directly target them (Jenson, Call, & Tomasello 2007b), researchers failed
to find that chimpanzees will engage in third-party punishment in an experimental setting (Riedl Jensen, Call, & Tomasello 2012).
But the negative results and the noncooperative interpretations of the positive results shouldnt lead one to reject the notion that there are social norms
among chimpanzees because there are alternative explanations for the negative results as well. Chimpanzees may have failed to pull a rope that supplied
food to a neighboring chimpanzee because they were so excited by the food
they failed to notice the consequences their action had on their neighbor
(Warneken & Tomasello 2006). Alternatively, they may have failed to offer assistance to the neighbor because they were not particularly interested in that
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individual. All the experimental studies fail to report the quality of relationship between the individuals who are asked to cooperate. Certainly among
humans the quality of relationships is a salient variable in determining when
to apply human social norms of fairness and cooperation. It is fair to share
foods with friends and family, but not unfair to fail to share food with the
stranger sitting next to you on the bus (at least in North America). Indeed,
when the quality of relationships are taken into account, we see that the willingness to exchange food for grooming with particular individuals may be less
of a calculated reciprocity than it is an instance of nurturing existing social
relationships and creating new ones. In a recent study that found a positive
relationship between grooming and food sharing, the authors also calculated
a relationship score for the dyads. They found that short-term contingencies
disappeared when considering long-term relationships, which significantly
predict the willingness to share food and engage in grooming (Jaeggi, de
Groot, Stevens, & van Schaik 2013). This consideration reminds us that fairness and cooperation are not relationship-neutral social norms for humans
either. Finally, in a more recent study looking at chimpanzee performance
on the ultimatum game, researchers found that in the iterated version of the
game, chimpanzees will start out by making selfish offers, but upon verbal
protest of the partner they shift to making the fair offer (Proctor, Williamson,
de Waal, &. Brosnan 2013).
Any study of social norms in chimpanzees must take more seriously two
variables: the relationship between interacting individuals and the resource
in question. We know that chimpanzees recognize the relationships between individuals. Group members know the relationships between mother
and infant and relationships between males who form a coalition. They can
identify familiar individuals, individuals from rival groups, and unknown
individuals. In experimental set ups they make choices based on individual differences; chimpanzees prefer to cooperate with partners who share
rewards more equitably (Melis, Hare, & Tomasello 2009), and they know
which partners will best help them to achieve the task at hand (Melis, Hare,
& Tomasello 2006). And we know that among humans the resource at question is a relevant variable that can help to predict whether someone will share
a resource. Humans have social norms of fairness even though they do not
share equal amounts of every resource with every individual. We may share
a bag of chips with a colleague sitting next to us on the bus, but we might not
share them with a stranger. And when we consider different resources, things
change; we may not offer that same colleague half our vegemite sandwich or
a drink from our water bottle. As the specific content of social norms differ
across human cultures, we should expect them to differ among different species as well.
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6. EM PAT H Y A N D E T H I C S
The nature of social relationships has not often been discussed in studies
of chimpanzee behavior, and the importance of social relationships is not a
central feature of most theories of human morality. Of course, that we are
constantly navigating such relationships is why we need ethicssocial living
involves conflicts and ethics is a way of justifying resolutions to those conflicts. But the nature of these relationships is generally not thought to be relevant. Within ethical theory, there is a long tradition of seeking to overcome the
partiality of social relationship in order to justify ethical behavior. The ethical
point of view, as it is sometimes put, is associated with the point of view of
the universe or more helpfully, a view that is not partial to any particular
group or set of individuals. Theories that privilege or favor the needs, interests,
attitudes, or practices of members of ones own family, friends, nation, gender,
race, or ethnicity over others generally are not considered moral theories at all.
The ability to reason plays a central role in achieving this impartial point of
view. As Peter Singer has noted:
Reason makes it possible . . . to see that I am just one among others, with
interests and desires like others. I have a personal perspective on the
world... but reason enables me to see that others have similarly subjective
perspectives, and that from the point of view of the universe my perspective is no more privileged than theirs. Thus my ability to reason shows me
the possibility of detaching myself from my own perspective, and shows me
what the universe might look like if I had no personal perspective. (Singer,
1993, 229)
So the standard view suggests that in order for one to behave ethically one
must have the reasoning capacity to detach from particular interests and particular relationships, as well as ones immediate desires and inklings, and once
we do that we can work out what to do from an ethical perspective. The partial attitudes and relationships that we have arent good or bad but rather
are the sorts of things that cannot serve as the basis for moral judgments and
behaviors.
This standard view informs the spectatorial nature of cognitive empathy,
which requires mindreading and the accurate attribution of beliefs and desires to another. When we step back from our engaged interactions with others
as whole persons with relationships, past histories, personalities, social roles,
emotions, and moods and take others instead as bags of skin filled with beliefs
and desires, we are adopting the sort of impartiality and intersubstitutability
championed by the standard view, aiming for objectivity and accuracy. But
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we are missing the whole story, and missing the entangled nature of empathy,
when we strip away the context in which the subject forms beliefs and desires.
Because these partial attitudes and our social situatedness, features of our
human experiences that other apes also experience, are precisely what are supposed to be overcome when we are acting ethically, it appears that the most
we can say is that our social natures are precursors or building blocks to
full-blown ethics (de Waal, 2006). Apes may be empathetic in some of the ways
we have discussed here, but behaving empathetically isnt the same as acting
ethically. The standard view elevates the capacities thought to be truly ethical and finds that they belong to socially detached, unencumbered, rational
deliberators.
But this view assumes that it is possible to step outside of the social or to
detach from the experiences of our particular embodiments and deny that
we are entangled with other beings, as well as the practices and the ways of
making meaning that we not only share with others but that make us who
we are (Meyers 2004). However, ethical problems may only become visible as
problems in a social context and some, perhaps most, solutions only make
sense in the process of interacting with the parties to the conflict. As Shirley
Strum notes in her discussion of baboon social contracts, problems are solved
in social interaction before being appropriated by individuals; the flow of cognitive solutions goes from the social to the individual rather than the other
way around (Strum 2008).
Adoption of the standard view informs the empirical work that has been
done to try to generate evidence for or against the claim that other apes are
empathetic, are capable of understanding the interests and perspectives of
others, or behave according to social norms. When one assumes that we can
detach ourselves from our specific relationships, attitudes, and beliefs, we
overlook the relationship between experimenter and subject and the effect the
quality of that relationship has on research results (Smith 2012). That relationships differ between researchers and subjects may explain why studies have
resulted in diverging conclusions. By assuming this sort of detachment, there
is also a danger of unwitting anthropomorphism in that the ethical norms that
are being tested are thought to be the same across species and cultures. Questioning the acceptability of the standard view does not entail the rejection of
meaningful generalization, but rather refocuses inquiry on the socially and
affectively entangled nature of individuals in their communities.
For example, in recent studies of chimpanzee cooperation, researchers have
chosen testing pairs based on their levels of tolerance for one another (Melis
& Tomasello 2013). By recognizing that the quality of relationships matters,
researchers are already acknowledging that cooperation as ethical behavior
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is not unrelated to the realities of situated individuals with different kinds of

social connections to one another.
The focus on empathy as mindreadingthe accurate attribution of beliefs
and desiresis related to the aspect of morality that focuses on autonomy.
This argument is made by Christine Korsgaard, who argues that since animals
cannot mindread, they cannot self-govern, because they cannot consider their
reasons for action and decide whether or not they are justified (Korsgaard
2006). But Kantian autonomy is just one form of autonomy (Gruen 2011), and
it is not the only piece of the morality puzzle. Other aspects, such as Shweders
Community dimension of morality (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park 1997)
or Haidts Care/Harm dimension, which focuses on the ability to feel and dislike others pain and Fairness/Cheating, which focuses on reciprocal actions
(Haidt & Graham 2007) are largely ignored by the standard view. Yet it is exactly these dimensions that we find evidence for in nonhuman ape behavior.
It is no surprise that when we focus on the most rarefied and linguistically
mediated form of a behavior we will fail to find it in other species. Once we
are able to look past the most salient examples of human morality, we find that
moral behavior and thought is a thread that runs through our daily activities,
from the micro-ethics involved in coordinating daily behaviors like driving
a car down a crowded street (Morton 2003), to the sharing of someones joy
in getting a new job or a paper published. If we ignore these sorts of moral
actions, we are overintellectualizing human morality, something the British
psychology C. Lloyd Morgan warned against: To interpret animal behavior
one must learn also to see ones own mentality at levels of development much
lower than ones top-level of reflective self-consciousness. It is not easy, and
savors somewhat of paradox (Morgan 1930, 250).
By also attending to the entangled empathy aspects of morality, we are
embracing the paradox. The nature of particular entanglements and how
and whether empathic responsiveness emerges (or doesnt) within them is an
important area of study, and exploring empathy among other apes with this
framework in mind may lead to insights not just about what apes can or cant
do, but also how humans might rethink empathy and ethics.
11
Psychological Altruism, Empathy,

and Offender Rehabilitation
TONY WARD AND RUSSIL DURRANT
The science of offender rehabilitation has come a long way over the last thirty
years or so, and there is now general acceptance of what good intervention
programs for offenders ought to look like (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Research
has helped correctional practitioners and policy makers to ascertain what
type of treatment programs are likely to result in reduced recidivism rates and
which ones they would expect to be ineffective. For example, a number of welldesigned studies have determined that treatment programs that are cognitivebehavioral in nature, focus on high risk offenders and characteristics that
are statistically related to reoffending, implemented by qualified and trained
staff, and adhere to explicit and detailed treatment manuals firmly rooted in
research should reduce reoffending rates by at least 10 percent (Andrews &
Bonta, 2010; Andrews, Bonta, & Hoge, 1990).
More specifically, Andrews and Bonta (2010) have formulated a number of
normative principles to guide correctional practice derived from extensive
empirical research. Three of these principles constitute the core of what is referred to as the Risk-Need-Responsivity model of offender rehabilitation. The
Psychological Altruism, Empathy, and Offender Rehabilitation
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principles state that: (1) individuals who are higher risk should receive more
resources (i.e., interventions, treatment programs) than lower risk individuals; (2) correctional interventions should target criminogenic needs (dynamic
risk factors) that are causally related to individuals criminal behavior; and (3)
interventions should be tailored and responsive to individual offenders learning style, ability, and motivational factors (Andrews & Bonta, 2010; Andrews,
Bonta, & Hoge, 1990).
Generally speaking, treatment programs for specific groups such as sex and
violent offenders have been constructed with these principles in mind (Laws
& Ward, 2011). In a recent review Hanson, Bourgon, Helmus, and Hodgson
(2009) investigated whether the principles of effective interventionthose of
risk, need, and responsivityfor general offenders (Andrews & Bonta, 2010)
also applied to sex offenders. They found that treated sex offenders had lower
reoffending rates (10.9%) than members of the comparison groups (19.2%).
Furthermore, treatment also reduced the rates of general offending in those
individuals who participated in specialized sexual offending programs (31.8%
vs. 48.3%). Thus, programs that adhered to the principles of risk, need, and
responsivity produced better outcomes than those that did not.
While the reduction of offending through the use of empirically validated
techniques is an important and socially responsible goal, in our view it is
narrowly conceived and fails to grasp the fundamental nature of offender
behavior change and desistance (Evans, 2012; Laws & Ward, 2011; Ward &
Stewart, 2003). Ethical, prudential, and epistemic values infuse all aspects of
correctional assessment, intervention, and follow-up and are central drivers
of change (Ward & Maruna, 2007). Practice values are reflected in norms that
outline obligatory standards or ideals thought to result in human benefits (or
harms) such as wellbeing enhancement, increased autonomy, and the reduction of suffering. They inform professionals about the outcomes or experiences
they should be seeking to achieve with clients and which ones they should try
to avoid. In brief, values are evident: (a) in the definitions of risk assessment
and the goal of crime reduction: to assess the probability of harmful outcomes
occurring and to reduce the amount of harm; (b) in intervention targets such
as increased empathy, emotional control, or social functioning. In fact, empathy work is viewed in the sexual offending domain as a critical component
of the change process because of the powerful way it impacts on individuals
sense of responsibility and determination to commit themselves to therapy. In
our view, in part this reflects a desire to make amends and to seek redemption;
(c) in the concept of narrative identity that resides at the heart of the change
and desistance process. This is essentially a value-laden idea as it contains offenders personal ideals and guides self-evaluation; and (d) in every correctional practitioners professional commitment to specific codes of practice that
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regulate the ethical, relationship-building, and knowledge-related aspects of

their work.
If you accept these observations, then it is apparent that the process of successful offender rehabilitation is actually an evaluative and capacity-building
process, and importantly, should be so. The capacity-building part of correctional interventions draws from empirical research concerning how best to
establish the social and psychological resources needed to live prosocial and
personally meaningful lives. The evaluative component involves a diverse range
of norms stipulating such things as what constitutes good relationships, nondistorted beliefs and attitudes, healthy emotional management, appropriate
and normal sexual fantasies and drives, appropriate responsiveness to other
peoples desires and interests, and adaptive problem solving. A crucial aim of all
offender interventions is to strengthen offenders perception of other peoples
mental states, especially their needs, interests, and emotions, and by doing so,
make it less likely they will behave in harmful ways in the future. This is an
emotional/cognitive task as arguably altruistic actions are reliably generated by
sympathetic or empathic affective states (Batson, 2011). The interest in empathyrelated therapeutic work in treatment programs for groups such as sex offenders
is underpinned by an assumption that empathic responses inhibit aggression
and promote prosocial behavior (Barnett & Mann, 2013; Maibom, 2012a).
In this chapter we briefly examine the concept of empathy and discuss its
application in the domain of sex offending treatment. We conclude that focusing on empathy change in offenders during treatment is a little narrow, and a
more useful way of considering the interests of other persons is through the
application of the concept of psychological altruism, and altruism failure. An
advantage of viewing therapy through this multidimensional concept is that it
enables practitioners to appreciate the value-laden nature of all of correctional
treatment while also building in a role for empirical research. Furthermore,
the related notion of altruism failure reminds practitioners that there are a
number of ways that the interests of victims and members of the community
can be disregarded and that a singular focus on remedying empathy deficits
is not the whole story. After outlining Philip Kitchers concept of psychological altruism we systematically apply it to offender treatment and demonstrate
how therapeutic tasks undertaken represent a way of forestalling the possibility of altruism failure. We conclude the chapter with some observations on
the implications of structuring treatment around the concept of psychological
altruism (and altruism failure). The discussion in our chapter centers on sex
offenders although the implications of our analysis apply to all types of offenders. It is simply that the concepts of empathy and empathy interventions
have been well developed in this field compared to other correctional-practice
domains.
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T H E C O N C EP T O F EM PAT H Y I N T H E S E X UA L
O FFEN D I N GFI EL D
The treatment of sex offenders has evolved considerably over the last 30 years
and now consists of multiple components, each targeting a different problem domain and primarily delivered in a group format. Treatment is typically based around an analysis of individuals offending patterns and takes
a cognitive-behavioral/relapse-prevention perspective. The major goal is to
teach sex offenders the skills to change the way they think, feel, and act and to
use this knowledge to avoid or escape from future high-risk situations. There
are usually discrete treatment modules devoted to the following problem
areas: cognitive distortions (offense-supportive beliefs and attitudes), deviant
sexual interests, social skill deficits, impaired problem solving, empathy deficits, intimacy deficits, emotional regulation difficulties, impulsivity, lifestyle
imbalance, and post-offense adjustment or relapse prevention (Marshall, Marshall, Serran, & Fernandez, 2006). Recent outcome studies of the effectiveness
of treatment are encouraging although there is no real understanding of why
people desist from further offending and how the various therapy components
interact to produce psychological and behavioral change (Hanson, Bourgon,
Helmus, & .Hodgson, 2009; Lsel, & Schmucker, 2005; Ward & Laws, 2010).
As stated earlier, a key component of most treatment programs around the
world is the empathy module and its constituent therapeutic strategies. In this
module, individuals are typically asked to write victim autobiographical accounts of their offending, to participate in a role play of their own victim in a
dramatization of the abusive episode, and are exposed to multimedia narrative
accounts of the impact of sexual abuse on victims and their families (Marshall,
Marshall, Serran, & Fernandez, 2006; Pithers, 1999). Practitioners often note
the powerful emotional effects of empathy work on the men they work with,
and in our experience many offenders regard it as a turning point in their lives
(Marshall, Marshall, Serran, & Fernandez, 2006).
But how is empathy conceptualized within the field of sexual offending?
In a useful recent review of cognition, empathy, and sexual offending Barnett
and Mann (2013) point out that treatment programs often assume the validity of a two-component empathy model and base their interventions on this
perspective. More specifically, it is assumed that empathy comprises two, related sets of psychological processes: perspective taking (a cognitive factor) and
experiencing an appropriate emotion when confronted with another persons
distress or suffering (an affective component). While more nuanced models
have emerged since this early theoretical effort, a combination of perspective
taking and affective interventions are evident in most treatment programs.
For example, asking offenders to participate in victim role-plays and to write
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victim autobiographies seems to be clearly targeting perspective taking and

emotional responsiveness. Subsequent theoretical innovations such as the
models developed by Marshall, Hudson, Jones, and Fernandez (1995), and
Barnett and Mann (2013) have argued that a greater number of psychological
processes are involved in generating an empathic response. For example, in
their recent theory Barnett and Mann (2013) define empathy as
a cognitive and emotional understanding of another persons experience,
resulting in an emotional response for the observer which is congruent
with a view that others are worthy of compassion and respect and have
intrinsic worth. (p. 23)
They state that offenders display victim empathy when they are able to accurately identify and understand, free from their own biases what the person
they abused was likely to have experienced during the sexual assault (p. 23).
In essence (and rewording their language slightly), Barnett and Mann hypothesize that five sets of processes converge to create an empathic response: (a) the
ability to accurately infer what another person is experiencingperspective
taking; (b) the ability to experience an appropriate emotion when confronted
with another persons distress or pain; (c) the belief that other persons, aside
from the offender, ought to be respected and treated with compassion; (d)
the absence of contextual variables or competing motivational states that
may override the empathic processes and motivations; and (e) the capacity to
modulate any resulting personal distress experienced by the individual concerned so that his or her empathic responses (likely to be generated by the
first three processes) are not blocked or avoided. Barnett and Mann are careful to point out the weakness of the research evidence on empathy, especially
the claim that empathy deficits are causal contributors to the occurrence of
sexual crimes. They also think that the complex and nuanced nature of empathic responses means that future research will need to be more contextual
and researchers should take greater care in the conceptualization and measurement of empathy, and in the design of any subsequent treatment initiatives
based on this research. According to Barnett and Mann, at this stage it is far
from clear whether sex offenders display generalized or focal empathy failures
(i.e., linked to a specific context or person) or whether demonstrated empathic
failures are caused by psychological deficits rather than reflecting a failure to
utilize perfectly adequate empathic capacities in some contexts. In many respects their comments echo what Maibom (2012a) says in her excellent paper
on the concept of empathy and its hypothesized role in inhibiting violence.
Maibom carefully distinguishes between a cluster of empathy-related concepts
and argues that in order to avoid conceptual confusion and muddled research
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practice, it is important when engaging in theorizing and empirical research to

be clear which ones you are referring to. That is, clarify whether you are talking about sympathy (essentially, feeling bad in response to another persons
sufferingyour emotions are directed to that personand being motivated
to help that person in some respect because they are suffering), perspective
taking (essentially, being able to imaginegive an account ofwhat a person
in a particular situation is likely to be experiencing or be able to imagine yourself in such a situation, and give an account), emotional contagion (essentially,
feeling bad when the other person feels bad without necessarily knowing that
your own feelings are caused by the others situationyour focus is on your
personal distress not the other persons situation), and empathy (essentially,
when a person feels the same emotion another is experiencing and where this
emotional response is caused by their perception of what the other person is
feeling).
Examining the sexual offending theoretical and empirical research literature with Maiboms distinctions in mind, it is apparent that they are rarely
observed. It is difficult to know exactly what kind of empathic phenomenon
is being referred to when, for example, Barnett and Mann state that empathy
involves an emotional response that is congruent with the belief that others
are worthy of respect and compassion. It could be sympathy, contagion, or
an empathy response in the narrow sense of that term. However, for our purpose this terminological imprecision is not that crucial. What matters for our
overall argument is that (a) there is limited direct evidence that an empathic
responseof any typeinhibits persons from committing sexual offenses,
and (b) a number of factors appear to play a role in creating empathy, including adherence to moral-status norms. This is not surprising because in our
view what matters from a treatment perspective is that offenders act toward
others in an altruistic manner, rather than that they feel empathic. Additionally, the trouble with the concept of an empathy response as used in the correctional field is that empathy tends to be viewed as either present or absent
within an individual, and there is a failure to make room for the important
role of context and moral norms. First, human beings are not simply empathic
(or altruistic) or not; they tend to exhibit a more fine-grained picture varying
along a number of dimensions (see Kitcher, 2011). Second, as we will argue
later in this chapter, the concept of psychological and behavioral altruism is
underpinned by normative concerns and by virtue of its multidimensional
nature, is responsive to issues of context and scope not easily handled by the
concept of empathy.
Building on the first point, sexual offenders present a somewhat variable
clinical picture when it comes to their interpersonal actions and responses.
First, sometimes the cause of an apparent lack of empathy and subsequent
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violence appears to be related to the fact that the circle of persons an individual
cares about is far too small and unreasonably excludes classes of individuals
(e.g., adult females or specific individuals) who are then subject to sexually
abusive actions. Second, on other occasions, offenders only act in caring and
altruistic ways in certain contexts, for example, when they are emotionally
stable. However, if depressed or feeling threatened and vulnerable, the motivation to commit sexual offenses slowly begins to dominate. Third, at other
times people fail to act in prosocial ways because they lack the knowledge and
skills to accurately infer peoples mental states and therefore do not know what
others are actually experiencing. This makes it extremely difficult to realign
their own desires and preferences to others in an adaptive way. Fourth, sometimes individuals act in violent and abusive ways because they are unable to
identify the consequences of their actions for other people. This could reflect
a lack of knowledge, limited problem-solving and inductive cognitive skills,
and/or a lack of interpersonal competence. Finally, it is possible that offenders
simply fail to make sufficient adjustments to other peoples situations on some
occasions. The problem is one of failing to frame the demands of a situation
sufficiently well, and therefore there is a mismatch between these demands
and the motivation, effort, and skills actually employed (and required).
In our view, researchers and practitioners should be concentrating on incidents of altruism failure rather than empathy failure. The concept of altruism
(psychological and behavioral), as developed by theorists such as Kitcher, is
richer and provides a more useful way of linking ethical norms and concern
for others to the kinds of psychological and social interventions employed in
treatment programs for sex offenders. The fact that its stress is on action is also
an advantage: it is what people do, or fail to do, when committing offenses that
is of interest to practitioners.
We argue that all of the treatment modules typically implemented with sex
offenders play a role in addressing the major classes of problems evident in
altruism failure (which includes empathy failure as currently construed). In
our view, the multidimensional, rich account of psychological altruism created
by Philip Kitcher (2010, 2011) has the conceptual resources to incorporate the
contributions that the concept of empathy and the interventions associated
with it play in treatment, while avoiding its weaknesses.
A M U LT I D I M EN S I O N A L C O N C EP T O F PSYC H O LO G I CA L
A LT R U I S M
Philip Kitcher (2010, 2011) has recently developed a theory of ethics based on
the assumptions of naturalistic pragmatism. According to this perspective,
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ethics is a form of social technology that emerged during the evolution of

human beings to stabilize social cooperation and coordination. He argues that
when human beings lived in relatively small groups cooperation was essential
for survival. Foraging for food, dealing with predators, or simply being faced
with the vicissitudes of the environment and weather meant that groups that
were motivated to take each others interests into account were more likely to
survive and reproduce. Kitcher, along with other evolutionary theorists such as
Tomasello and Boehm (e.g., Boehm, 2012; Tomasello, Melis, Tennie, Wyman,
& Herrman, 2012), points to the crucial role of early Homo sapiens emotional
and cognitive capacities in creating strong social bonds within groups. However, the problem with relying on psychological states such as altruistic emotions and social motivations is that they can be unreliable at times, particularly
once the population grew substantially and human beings started to live in
much larger groups. The cost of altruism failure would be extremely high and
most likely result in significant harm to the interests of group members, and of
the group itself. Kitcher argues that ethical norms were initially constructed
to coordinate the actions of group members and were arrived at through a
process of consultation and group consensus. Over time these norms were
codified into oral language and later in a written form, which made it easier to
transmit them to successive generations, thus consolidating cultural practices
designed to sustain the group/society. The important point is that according to
Kitcher, ethical norms are essentially social tools that were designed to piggyback on human beings evolved (natural) cognitive and emotional capacities.
The emergence of ethical norms bestowed an advantage to Homo sapiens as
they functioned to stabilize altruistic responses and also solved the problem
of encouraging members of a social group to act ethically when no longer in
the line of sight of other members of the group; in other words, they promoted
self-control. The fact that human beings are intentional animals capable of
accurately inferring the mental states of conspecifics made it easier to acquire
the capacity for self normative guidance though the internalization of a groups
ethical norms.
In the exposition of his ethical theory Kitcher distinguishes between biological, behavioral, and psychological altruism. Biological altruism occurs
when a biological entity promotes the reproductive success of another entity at
the expense of itself. Essentially, psychological altruism is concerned with the
intentions of an agent and is evident when an individual adjusts his or her actions to take into account the interests and desires of other people. Behavioral
altruists act to further their own, self-serving interests while seeming to intentionally act in ways that promote others interests. Kitcher argues that ethical
norms are especially important in preventing altruism failure by prompting
people to behave altruistically even if they are not inclined to do so. Ideally,
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we would all be committed and competent psychological altruists, but given

the complexities of modern living, and taking into account out psychological
nature, this is unrealistic. In this chapter our focus is solely on psychological
and behavioral altruism.
We would now like to look at the concept of psychological altruism more
closely. Kitcher (2010) states that
To be an altruist is to have a particular kind of relational structure in your
psychological lifewhen you come to see that what you do will affect other
people, the wants you have, the emotions you feel, the intentions you form
change from what they would have been in the absence of that recognition.
Because you see the consequences for others of what you envisage doing,
the psychological attitudes you adopt are different. (p. 122)
In offering a rigorous analysis of psychological altruism Kitcher (2010, p. 123)

distinguishes between the desires (or other relevant mental states) an altruistic
person is likely to have when his/her actions only have consequences for him
or herself and those when his/her actions will have an observable impact on
other persons. In this kind of situation (we have paraphrased Kitcher here) he
stipulates that (a) the desires an agent acts on will be more closely aligned with
those he/she attributes to another person than it would be if he/she acted in a
solitary context; (b) the desire that leads an agent to act follows from his/her
perception of the other persons desires; and (c) the desire that caused the agent
to act in this context was not intended to further his/her own interests. Rather,
he gives priority to the desires of the other persons and relegates his/her own
desires to the background. Kitcher makes it clear that there are likely to be
other mental states such as emotions that accompany the altruistic persons
desires when he/she acts altruistically, for example, compassion or sadness.
Once he defined psychological altruism Kitcher states that because altruism
is a multidimensional concept it makes little sense to assert that a person is
either altruistic or not. Rather, he proposes that [i]ndividuals can be placed
in a multi-dimensional space where complete egoism is represented by a
single plane, and the various forms of altruism range over the entire rest of
the space (p. 126). More specifically, Kitcher contends that an individuals
altruism profile can be established by using five dimensions. The intensity of
an altruistic response involves the degree to which people realign their own
desires or interests to accommodate those of another. The range of someones
profile refers to the list of people whose desires or interests (could involve all
human beings or be restricted to family and friends) he/she normally takes
into account when acting. The scope of an altruism profile denotes the internal and external contexts in which an individual is likely act altruistically.
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For example, a male might usually take his partners desires into account in
their relationship unless he was feeling angry or depressed. An individuals
discernment refers to his/her ability to identify the consequences of his/her
actions for relevant others. Finally, someones empathetic skills speaks to the
ability to accurately infer another persons desires, or more broadly, relevant
mental or physical states. This is similar to the notion of perspective taking
and theory of mind ability. Kitcher comments that typically individuals altruistic profiles consist of an inner circle of valued people whose interests they
almost always take into account when acting in ways that are likely to influence them. However, it is likely that the interests of persons on the periphery
or beyond this circle would be overlooked or downplayed. Another important
aspect of Kitchers concept is the idea of second-order psychological altruism.
This occurs when an agent X perceives that his interaction partner Y wishes
to confer a benefit on X and sets out to realign his/her (Ys) actions in a way
that acknowledges Xs desires and interests. In this situation X is exhibiting
second-order altruism when he permits Y to act in this way because of his
perception that this is important to Y.
Kitcher presents an analysis of psychological altruism as a multidimensional concept, and the point of describing the five dimensions is to encourage researchers to think of the type of psychological altruism individuals
display, or alternatively, to elucidate the nature of altruism failures. Taking
a step back it is possible to transform the concept of psychological altruism
into a theoretical framework that is capable of guiding theorists and empirical researchers in the formulation of explanations of altruism (and empathy)
failures. From the perspective of this framework individuals act in ways that
disregard the interests of others (altruism failure) in situations where other
peoples desires and interests should have high priority, when (1) they do not
sufficiently modulate their own desires (etc.) to adequately respond to the
situation at hand (intensity); (2) they unreasonably exclude certain classes of
people or specific individuals from the list of those toward whom they ought
be behave altruistically and therefore would not sexually abuse them (range);
(3) they fail to behave altruistically in certain contexts because of the influence of cognitive emotional, physiological, social, or environmental factors
(scope); (4) they are incapable of or fail in certain contexts to exhibit their
capacities to discern the consequences of their actions for the individuals
they sexually abuse (discernment); and (5) they lack the capacity to accurately
detect the mental states of people they abuse or, if they posses this capacity,
they fail to exercise it in certain contexts (empathetic skill). Of course, these
claims are abstract and overly general, but they function as useful indicators
of the social, psychological, and physical variables researchers ought to concentrate their efforts on.
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Relationship between Empathy and Psychological Altruism

It seems to us that the multidimensional concept of psychological altruism
has several advantages over the concept of empathy within the correctional
domain. First, conceptualizing altruism in a graduated way means that it is
not simply a question of whether a person is responsive to anothers interests or is not. It is more likely that individuals will possess their own altruism
profile consisting of the weightings on each of the five dimensions described
earlier.
Second, empathetic responses and their constituents have a role to play in
psychological altruism. For one thing, empathic emotions such as compassion or sadness may accompany a persons desire to take anothers interests
into account in certain contexts. Furthermore, the perspective-taking component of empathy, as construed in the sex offending literature, is evident in
the empathetic skills and discernment dimensions of psychological altruism.
The more complex empathy models such as the one formulated by Barnett and
Mann (2013) also map onto the multidimensional concept of psychological
altruism. Or more accurately, it maps onto the theoretical framework we derived from Kitchers analysis. It seems clear that the emotion and perspectivetaking components of Barnett and Manns theory map nicely onto Kitchers
dimensions of empathetic accuracy and discernment. While the claim that
emotions can accompany the perception of anothers distress incorporates
the construct of empathic emotions. The assertion that empathic responses
are mediated partly by compassion and respect for target persons seems to
be directly related to issues of range. That is, the class of individuals who are
accorded a certain moral status is thought to merit our respect and compassion when experiencing hardship. The requirement that contextual variables
and competing motivations do not override an empathic response appears to
be a straightforward example of Kitchers notion of context. Finally, Barnett
and Manns assumption that individuals levels of personal distress be suitably
modulated in order for an empathic response to occur is also an example of the
importance of context from an altruism viewpoint. One element of Kitchers
concept of psychological altruism that is not mentioned by Barnett and Mann
is that of intensity, or the matching of the degree of an altruistic response to
the demands of a situation.
Third, problematic aspects of the concept of empathy as formulated by theorists and some puzzling research findings can potentially be accommodated
by the employment of the concept of psychological altruism. For example,
the finding that some sex offenders appear to lack empathy only for their victims rather than for all children or adult females (for example), may reflect
a narrowness of range or problem with scope. That is, in certain contexts an
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individuals normal altruism inclinations are overridden. In addition, some

sex offenders may lack the ability to accurately discern a victims mental states
and thus suffer from skill deficits while other offenders may have the relevant skills but fail to utilize them when angry, or sexually aroused (a scope or
context failure). Thus an etiological implication of the psychological-altruism
perspective is that while sexual offenses can occur in the absence of empathy
deficits every act of sexual aggression displays a lack of psychological altruism.
By way of contrast, the altruism framework also predicts that individuals may
inhibit sexually aggressive actions and act altruistically without demonstrating the cognitive and affective elements of an empathic response. This could
be because they do not want to let their friends down, because they are committed to specific moral norms, or because they calculate that it is in their best
interests to do so. In our experience, offenders often give these types of reasons
for inhibiting sexually deviant or aggressive desires and impulses.
Fourth, the multidimensional concept of psychological altruism offers
practitioners an overarching ethical/psychological framework with which to
approach treatment with sex offenders. As we shall demonstrate below, locating problems in the intensity, range, scope, discernment, and empatheticskills components of psychological altruism can help to highlight key areas of
clinical concern and focus intervention efforts more tightly. The fact that the
presence of psychological altruism directly reflects the recognition of others
needs and supports the legitimacy of adjusting ones own actions in the light
of others relevant mental states, points to its moral relevance.
Fifth, the concepts of psychological and behavioral altruism have certain
advantages over that of empathy when it comes to appreciating the norm
laden nature of offender treatment and rehabilitation. An empathic response
is likely to motivate individuals to act in an ethical manner because of their
awareness of others mental states and the fact that empathy-related emotions
(or affective states) such as compassion, guilt, shame, remorse, and concern
are action directing. However, if for some reason a person fails to experience
empathy in the face of a potential victims suffering or confusion, it can play
no role in accounting for their inhibition of sexually deviant desires or inclinations. However, the concept of psychological and behavioral altruism
can do so. A person may be strongly inclined not to sexually offend against
someone, even in the face of conflicting motivations, because he is committed to acting in accordance with norms that are directed toward the desires
and needs of the potential victim. The investment in certain norms, in conjunction with the other requirements for acting in a psychologically altruistic
manner, can promote actions despite the lack of empathic emotions. In other
words the experience of empathic affective states is not required for altruistic
actions, either of a psychological or behavioral form. In addition, because a
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primary aim of offender treatment is to reduce the chances of altruistic failures occurring, all of the specific treatment modules delivered to offenders
are underpinned by norms that specifically link each to this overarching goal.
For example, in treatment sex offenders learn how to establish adaptive social
relationships, and by doing so, are less likely to use sex with children as a
means of securing intimacy. The specific instructions or norms outlining how
treatment ought to proceed are undergirded by a general norm: it is good
to establish sexually intimate relationships with adults (and wrong to do so
with children). There are both prudential and moral aspects to this norm. On
the one hand, adults are more likely to be able to meet offenders needs for
companionship and love, and on the other, sex with children is harmful to
them and therefore wrong. Because the overall goal of treatment is to reduce
altruism failureswhich offending surely representsand also to increase
the chances of offenders experiencing second-level altruism, the concept of
psychological altruism provides a comprehensive psychological and ethical
guide for practitioners.
In conclusion, while empathetic responses are useful treatment targets
because they can motivate altruistic actions (e.g., inhibit aggressive behavior), people can behave altruistically without feeling empathetic emotions
or inclinations. This may be because they are committed to certain norms,
they do not want to let down a mentor, or for a number of other reasons.
There may in fact be multiple pathways to acting altruistically. An advantage
of orientating interventions with offenders around the concept of altruism
is that it broadens the range of therapeutic targets and can explain (a)why
empathetic responses such as sympathy can facilitate prosocial behavior
and also (b) why a person might act in ways that are clearly other serving
while not experiencing empathy-related emotions such as sympathy. This is
not to downgrade the importance of empathy in morality, merely to locate
it in its appropriate place in the context of offender rehabilitation. An additional issue is that an individual may fail to act altruistically because of
the influence of external contextual factors and not because he or she lacks
the capacity to feel for others or to accurately infer their mental states. Thus
it is not sufficient for therapists to assist offenders to cultivate appropriate
psychological predispositions such as sympathy, perspective taking, or compassion; it is not simply a question of character or personality development.
Sometimes contextual or environmental factors will override someones
normally empathetic nature, for example, social isolation or extreme stress.
What are required in these instances are social interventions that seek to alleviate problems such as poverty, lack of support, or environmental threats.
In our view, the altruism framework sketched above is able to accommodate
these variables with relative ease.
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PSYC H O LO G I CA L A LT R U I S M A N D T R E AT M EN T
O F S E X O FFEN D ER S
Aims of Rehabilitation
The aims of treatment from the framework of psychological altruism is to make
it less probable that an offender will experience altruism failure and therefore
fail to take the desires and interests of relevant individuals into account in the
course of their daily lives. Failure to do so could adversely impact on them and
other members of the community in two ways. First, once in a high-risk situation, disregarding the desires and interests of a potential victim makes it easier
for an individual to commit an offense. Second, consistently acting in ways
that ignore the preferences and interests of other people is likely to impair the
reintegration process because of the corrosive effects on offenders vocational,
social, and intimate relationships (Ward & Laws, 2010). A downstream effect
of any subsequent social rejection may well be further offending. Minimizing the likelihood of altruism failures occurring by strengthening the social,
psychological, and situational constituents of psychological altruism through
correctional interventions should also make it easier for offenders to live more
fulfilling and meaningful lives.
Etiological Considerations
The Risk-Need-Responsivity model (RNR) of offender rehabilitation states
that effective correctional interventions should follow the principles of risk,
need, and responsivity. While a number of conceptual and practice problems
have been identified in this model, most researchers and practitioners working with offenders agree that ethical and effective practice should be guided by
the RNR principles (Ward & Maruna, 2007; Ward & Stewart, 2003). One core
requirement of RNR practice is that clinicians concentrate their therapeutic
efforts on managing or eliminating dynamic risk factors. These psychological
and environmental variables are thought to causally contribute to the onset
of criminal events and their successful reduction typically results in lowered
reoffending rates (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). The theoretical framework we
derived from Kitchers multidimensional concept of psychological altruism
can easily accommodate the RNR principles in the following way. Criminogenic needs such as offense-supportive beliefs and attitudes, intimacy deficits,
emotional regulation problems, substance abuse, and impulsivity represent
causal variables that are likely to impair the ability of offenders to act in a
psychologically altruistic way. For example, offense-supportive beliefs, or what
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have been termed cognitive distortions, typically cast potential victims in

ways that permit the offender not to consider them as having the same moral
status as them or else as possessing desires and preferences that make sexual
abuse acceptable. This is a problem relating to the range dimension. Two good
examples of this type of cognitive distortions are the belief that women are
untrustworthy or dangerous, and that children are sexual agents (Gannon &
Polaschek, 2006). The former depicts women as belonging to a class of beings
whose desires and interests are not that relevant when engaging in sex and the
latter portrays children as competent sexual beings who are capable of making
decisions about sex for themselves. We suggest that all of the dimensions of intensity, range, scope, discernment, and empathetic skill can be linked to causal
factors resulting in a sexual offense, directly or indirectly (see below).
Assessment
The aim of the assessment phase of sex offender treatment is to systematically
collect clinically relevant information about individuals offending, functional
life domains, personal characteristics, and developmental and social history.
Once a sex offenders problems have been identified a case formulation (or
miniclinical theory) is constructed in which the nature of the problems, their
onset, development, and interrelationships are described. Following the development of a case formulation, clinicians construct an intervention plan in
which the various treatment goals, their sequencing, and strategies for achieving them are noted. As outlined earlier, the components of a comprehenisve
sex offender treatment program should include the following types of interventions: cognitive restructuring/offense reflection, sexual reconditioning,
sexual education, social skill training, problem solving, (empathy) perspective taking/constructing victim biographies/victim impact work, intimacy
work, acquiring emotional regulation skills, lifestyle/leisure planning and experience, vocational training, and reentry or adjustment planning including
relapse prevention (Marshall, Marshall, Serran, & Fernandez, 2006; Laws &
Ward, 2011).
When formulating a case the theoretical framework we derived from
Kitchers altruism dimensions can be used to direct and concentrate clinical attention to certain kinds of problems. Drawing from the assessment data
(comprising interview information, psychological measures, archive data, behavioral observations, etc.) practitioners can ask the following questions, each
covering one of the five dimensions of altruism.
Range. Are there any individuals or classes of people explicitly excluded
from Xs list of altruism targets? Does he hold certain beliefs or attitudes that
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effectively disenfranchise persons from a consideration of their interests, for

example children or young adult women? Does he lack the skills to communicate openly and honestly with adults?
Scope. Are there any internal contexts in which Xs ability to act altruistically are compromised in some way? For example, does he find it hard to take
account of someone elses interests when feeling angry, sexually aroused, or
lonely? What about external contexts? Does X struggle to control his sexually deviant desires and preferences when alone with a child or woman? What
about if he is in the company of certain groups of friends? Or when he is socially isolated?
Discernment. Does X lack an adequate understanding of the psychological
and developmental needs of children? Are his problem-solving and inductivereasoning skills of poor quality, making it difficult for him to think through
the consequences of acting in sexually abusive, or offense reacted ways?
Empathetic skills. Does X struggle to accurately identify other peoples
mental states during an interaction? Is he able to adjust his actions in light of
his reading of others mental states?
Intensity. Does X possess the general practical reasoning and self-
management skills in order to frame other peoples situations in ways that accurately describes what is going on for them? Having done this, can he realign
his own desires (and other relevant mental states) and actions in order to respond in an appropriate manner? We view intensity as a more global capacity
that builds on the skills and so on aligned to the other altruism dimensions.
It is anticipated that the answers to the above questions will enable practitioners to pinpoint the reasons why a sex offender acted in ways contrary to the desires and interests of their victim. This information can then be recruited in the
construction of the case formulation and subsequent intervention plan. A clinical benefit of using the psychological altruism framework in this way is that it
functions a bit like a fishing net: it guides clinical attention to a broad range of
possibly relevant offense variables, and then by drawing the threads of the net
together, focuses energies on the issue of altruism failures and building competencies to promote psychological altruism. It has a certain elegance about it.
Practice
In discussing the practice implications of the theoretical framework derived
from Kitchers concept of psychological altruism, we will describe briefly a
number of typical sex offender treatment modules and trace their potential
for strengthening altruistic actions. The description of the modules content
is based on our clinical experiences and the work by Marshall and colleagues
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(e.g., Marshall, Marshall, Serran, & Fernandez,2006) and Ward and colleagues
(e.g., Ward, Mann, & Gannon, 2007).
Understanding Ones Offense/Cognitive Restructuring

The aim of this treatment module is for offenders to acquire an understanding of their offense process and the psychological and contextual triggers and
precursors to their offending. With gentle prompting and feedback from the
group, often individuals start to question their interpretations of their victims
actions and their own justifications for what they did. Ideally, an offender will
exit this phase of treatment with a sense of accountability for their actions,
awareness of the problematic nature of some of their beliefs and attitudes, and
a grasp of their own suite of risk factors for further offending.
The foci of this model are individual offense-supportive beliefs and attitudes
and acceptance of responsibility for their abusive actions. It is normal to see
the emergence of an awareness of their cognitive and emotional barriers to accepting victims as moral equals: beings who merit equal consideration of their
desires, needs, and interests when contemplating sex. Furthermore, clinicians
may obtain insight into offenders knowledge of sex and interpersonal relationships, and their level of empathetic skill. Finally, it should be possible to
ascertain how emotionally competent individuals are and what relationships
exist between emotional states and offending (contextual dimension).
Empathy Training
As stated earlier in this chapter, the major aim of the empathy module is to encourage offenders to reflect on the impact of sexual abuse on victims and their
families. This is achieved through the use of victim biographies, role-plays of
the index offense, and the assimilation of information about sexual abuse and
its consequences for victims. Offenders often describe this as an emotionally
devastating experience and report that it helped them to grasp the self-serving
nature of their behavior and the callous disregard for the wellbeing of vulnerable children and unconsenting adults.
Victim perspective-taking and appropriate emotional responding are therapeutic targets of this module, classical components of an empathy response. In
the language of psychological altruism, an expectation is that empathetic accuracy is improved, discernment skills are sharpened, and contextual features
of high-risk situations that increase the likelihood of sexual crime occurring,
are discovered.
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Sexual Reconditioning
The aim of the sexual reconditioning module is self-evident: to shift sexual
preferences in sex offenders from inappropriate targets (children and unconsenting adults) to appropriate targets (i.e., consenting adults). The techniques
used in this module include covert desensitization (whereby formerly arousing deviant sexual fantasies lose their power to arouse) and reconditioning
procedures (where individuals learn to become aroused to nondeviant adult
sexual stimuli).
It seems pretty obvious that individuals whose sexual preferences involve
sex with children or coerced sex with adults usually lack empathetic accuracy when committing their offenses. They typically believe that the child is
receptive to their advances or that the adult victim was really willing, or if
not, consent was not required because of their perceived lowered status. Thus,
cognitive distortions tend to accompany deviant sexual preferences and there
is often problem of a range. The way sexual arousal overrides any existing internal inhibitions may also indicate the occurrence of scope difficulties.
Social Skills and Intimacy Interventions

The social skills/intimacy module seeks to equip offenders with the internal
and external capabilities to adaptively navigate their way though the social
world and to learn how to establish and maintain intimate relationships. Research has indicated that some offenders commit sexual offenses because of
their feelings of loneliness and social isolation (Ward, Mann, & Gannon, 2007).
In addition, there is emphasis on dealing with social conflicts and learning
how to communicate feelings in a range of interpersonal contexts, from work
to disagreements in close relationships. Frequently, the impact of offenders
early interpersonal relationships are explored and the resulting influence on
their internal working models of attachment figures and romantic partners
are clearly identified.
The human world is pretty much a social world, and there is no practically
possible way to escape or avoid the demands and impact of interpersonal relationships. Offending is an interpersonal event and involves an interaction
between at least two people: the offender and the person he sexually assaults.
Internal working models of relationships that are characterized by distrust or
perceptions of vulnerability may impair offenders perceptions of children and
adults and result in sexual crimes. Problematic beliefs of these types, and the
strategies that accompany them, make it difficult for offenders to function in
a psychologically altruistic way. There is frequently a problem of range, where
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the needs and interests of certain people are dismissed as irrelevant, or else are
misperceived in ways that promote sexual offending (empathetic skill). There
may also be problems of context (e.g., experiencing altruism failure when feeling lonely) that would benefit from therapeutic attention.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation modules tend to look closely at offenders competence
on a number of emotional tasks. These include being able to accurately identify
and label an emotion, in oneself and in others; once the emotions have been
correctly identified, knowing how to act in (adaptive) ways prompted by the
emotion in question; and being able to manage powerful emotional states so
they do not overwhelm the person concerned.
Powerful emotional states can disinhibit individuals and create immense
pressure on them to act non-altruistically. For example, if an offender is experiencing strong feelings of anger, self-control could prove to be particularly
challenging. Norms directing him to attend to his potential sexual partners
desires or preferences may be overlooked and his own desires are thought to
trump all other motivations; he commits an offense. Alternatively, another
sex offender could use sex as a soothing activity and when feeling vulnerable,
anxious, or depressed seeks out a sexual partner. These kinds of problems are
unfortunately relatively common and point to issues with psychological altruism. Perhaps the most obvious issue relates to one of internal context, where
failure to effectively modulate certain moods makes it hard for an offender to
interact in a psychologically altruistic manner; his own desires and needs take
precedence in a context when the reverse should be true.
Problem Solving
The final module we will consider is that of problem solving. Basically, in this
module offenders learn how to frame problems and work toward effective solutions. The aim is to increase their ability to step back from social and personal crises in order to reflect on the nature of the difficulty, and by thinking
in a flexible and pragmatic way arrive at a workable solution. Offenders learn
the various phases of problem solving and how to seek relevant information
when deciding between a number of options to resolve their difficulties.
The acquisition of good problem-solving skills is most likely to improve the
way offenders think about the consequences of their actions (discernment dimension) although it does have implications for the other dimensions as well.
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For example, when faced with an interpersonal problem or experiencing a

negative emotion such as intense fear, the offender would ideally sit back and
ask himself what is going on. Creating cognitive space between feeling and
acting should open up further opportunities to explore his difficulties and to
consider alternative ways of dealing with them. This could result in a shift of
focus from his own needs to what the potential victim is experiencing, and
ultimately, to a decision to realign his own desires to those of the other person
and not to engage in a sexual assault. It is also to be expected that improved
problem-solving skills could impact in a positive manner on offenders cognitive distortions and thus contribute to dealing with any possible altruism
failures associated with the dimension of range.
In this chapter we have explored the relevance of the concept of empathy for
sex offender research and practice. In doing so, it became apparent that empathy may play an important role in motivating individuals to act in morally
acceptable ways, and importantly, to cease offending. After examining empathy and its conceptualization in the sexual offending field more closely, we
concluded that the concept of psychological altruism and its associated five
dimensions could incorporate valued aspects of empathy, while avoiding some
of the conceptual and practice-related problems that attend it. After describing Kitchers concept of psychological altruism, and using it as the basis for
an altruism theoretical framework, we investigated its implications for practice. In our view, the capacity of the psychological altruism concept to provide
an ethical and theoretical framework for viewing correctional practice is encouraging. It reminds practitioners that work with sex offenders has a strong
normative as well as a scientific or empirical dimension and that the concept
of psychological altruism is much better positioned to provide this broader
perspective than that of empathy.
12

inEthnographic Perspective
DOUGLAS HOLLAN
What is the relationship between empathy and morality? Is empathy inherently prosocial, leading to altruistic acts and behaviors as some evolutionary-
minded psychologists (Hoffman 2011, Haidt 2012, Batson 2012), neurobiologists (Harris 2007), ethologists (de Waal 2009), and care ethicists (Slote 2007)
have suggested? Or is it instead certain moral climates that promote the development of human empathy and that encourage or use empathy to promote
peoples care and well-being? In this chapter, I address these and related questions by reviewing some of the recent ethnographic work on empathy and morality, work that attempts to describe and analyze these phenomena in social
and cultural contexts, as a part of ongoing, naturally occurring behavior. I
begin by discussing recent anthropological definitions and conceptions of
empathy and morality before turning to the ethnographic evidence as to
how these two phenomena are related to one another. I argue that while there
is ample evidence from neurobiology and ethology to suggest that basic
forms of empathy (Stueber 2006)rooted in automatic, biologically based,
embodied forms of imitation and attunementare critical to human sociality
and communication anywhere, the ways in which these basic forms become
developed and elaborated into more complex, marked forms of empathy
Empathy and Morality inEthnographic Perspective
231
(Hollan& Throop 2008, Hollan & Throop 2011b) that can be mobilized to help
or to harm others may vary considerably across communities, across individuals within communities (Hollan 2008, 2011, Groark 2008), and through time.
R EC EN T A N T H R O P O LO G I CA L C O N C EP T I O N S
O F EM PAT H Y A N D M O R A L I T Y
Anthropology, like a number of other fields including philosophy (Kogler &

Stueber 2000, Stueber 2006, Zahavi & Overgaard 2012), neuroscience (Decety
& Ickes 2009, Goldman 2011) evolutionary studies ethology (de Waal 2009),
medicine (Halpern 2001, Farrow & Woodruff 2007), and psychoanalysis
(Bohart & Greenberg 1997, Teman 2012), has recently rediscovered (Stueber 2006) empathy and its significance in human life.1 And much like many
of the scholars in these other disciplines, many anthropologists have been
impressed by new research into phenomena such as mirror neurons (Iacoboni
2008) and neurobiological processes of facial recognition, emotional contagion, and mimicry (Preston & Hofelich 2012) that suggest the critical importance of evolved, embodied forms of attunement and imitation in animal
sociality, including human sociality, intersubjectivity, and cooperativeness.
Yet from the point of view of anthropologists who base their work in ethnographic research, many of the claims made about the centrality of more
complex and enacted forms of empathy and related processes in human life,
including morality, remain tentative and untested, since we still know so little
about how empathy actually unfolds in the context of everyday forms of behavior around the world (Throop and Hollan 2008, Hollan and Throop 2011,
Hollan 2012). Nevertheless, the limited ethnographic data that does exist
sheds interesting light, I will argue, on the issue of how (and if) empathy and
morality are related to one another.
To begin with, ethnographic studies raise the issue of just what it is we mean
by empathy in a cross-cultural context. Contemporary, formal definitions of
empathy, though themselves often contested and unsettled (Coplan & Goldie
2011b, Engelen & Rottger-Rossler 2012, Zahavi & Overgaard 2012), usually
emphasize that it is a way of recognizing and assessing what another person
is thinking, feeling, doing, or intending from a quasi-first-person perspective,
and that this process involves both cognitive and emotional aspects. Some
such as Halpern (2001:9192) suggest that it is the emotional, experiential part
of the response that guides and provides a context for what one imagines or
1. For more extended discussions of how the study of empathy in anthropology has evolved
over time, see Hollan and Throop (2008, 2011a).
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understands about the others experience. Formal definitions also usually note
that while empathy entails an emotional resonance between the empathizer
and the object of empathy, it is also characterized by the maintenance of a
clear cognitive and experiential boundary between the two, such that the empathizer can always distinguish between her own thoughts and feelings and
those of the other. For many researchers, this is what distinguishes empathy
from sympathy, compassion, pity, or some form of emotional contagion.
As I have noted elsewhere (Hollan 2012, Hollan & Throop 2011b), recent
ethnographic work suggests that while many people around the world identify
and label forms of social knowing and assessment that overlap with this definition, few seem to have concepts that are identical to it. One area of overlap
is the idea that first-person perspective taking involves both emotional resonance and cognitive or imaginative aspects (e.g., Feinberg 2011, Hollan 2011,
Throop 2011, Mageo 2011, Lohmann 2011). Yet this finding in itself is not all
that surprising, given how few non-Westerners attempt to make or maintain
the sharp distinction between thinking and feeling that is so central to
post-Enlightenment American-European folk and scientific psychology (Lutz
1988; Wikan 1992). But beyond this, definitional issues get murky. In the Pacific region, for example, what might be identified as empathic-like responses
shade much more closely, both semantically and behaviorally, to what English
speakers would refer to as love, compassion, sympathy, pity, or some
combination of these states (Hollan & Throop 2011b). In the eastern Indonesian society of Toraja, terms suggesting empathic-like feelings, but translating
more literally as love-compassion-pity, imply a strong identification with the
subject of attention, such that one feels moved to intervene and help, as if one
had no other choice (Hollan 2011, Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994, 1996). While
such responses resemble in some respects the evolved altruistic impulses that
de Waal (2009) posits, they also raise the more general issue of whether empathy per se is ever found as a relatively pure, isolated experience, or whether
in fact it is an awareness that must be carved out of other closely related social
sentiments, with boundaries that remain semantically and behaviorally fuzzy
and open to cultural and symbolic mediation (cf. Zahavi 2012). This might explain why even academic researchers seem to have such a difficult time maintaining a clear distinction between empathy and other social sentiments, and
also partly why the renowned cultural anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, was so
adamant that anthropologists not use empathy as a primary means of ethnographic investigation (Geertz 1984) to avoid the danger of projecting ones own
ethnocentric emotional experience onto the unsuspecting subjects of study.
Ethnographic studies also underscore the important distinction that the
philosopher Karsten Stueber draws between basic empathy and what he
refers to as reenactive empathy (Stueber 2006). For Stueber, basic empathy
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entails all those sensory and perceptual mechanisms that allow us to determine that another person is angry, sad, elated, or in some other emotional or
intentional state. Reenactive empathy, in contrast, refers to all other cognitive, emotional, and imaginative capacities that allow us to use our own firstperson, folk psychological knowledge and experience as actors to model and
understand the experience of others. Significantly, the concept of reenactive
empathy emphasizes the doubly culturally- and historically-bound nature of
complex empathic awareness and knowledge: that is, the fact that the subjects
of our empathy are people who think, act, and feel in very specific culturally
and historically constituted moral worlds while we ourselves, as empathizers,
are similarly bound and constrained. Given the challenges this poses for accurate understanding of others behavior, especially in a cross-cultural context, Stueber discusses at some length the fallibility and limits of empathic
knowledge and indicates why it can never be as rote and automatic as some
hardcore simulation theorists would suggestan important point that is often
underemphasized or ignored in the contemporary literature but which is reaffirmed by every ethnographer forced to recognize that it is much more difficult
to grasp why someone has become angry than to recognize that he or she is
angry.
Stuebers distinction, while only heuristic, is an important one because it
draws attention to the complexity of the empathic process, including the many
ways it can go wrong, and opens up a conceptual space for us to examine the
ways in which basic, evolved capacities to attend to and attune to other people
and minds become elaborated into more complex, culturally and symbolically
mediated forms of empathy (Hollan & Throop 2008, 2011b) or suppressed and
elided in specific social and moral contexts. I refer to and imply this distinction between basic and reenactive empathy throughout the chapter; however,
because I think the term reenactive suggests a literalness to the simulation
process that is unwarranted by our current understanding of it, I will instead
use, as I have elsewhere (2012), complex empathy to contrast with basic
empathy. Complex empathy refers to and includes the culturally and historically informed awareness and knowledge any person must have to understand
why a person is in a certain emotional or intentional state. Such awareness is
certainly dependent on all the basic processes of intersubjectivity discussed
above, but is both more conscious and fallible than basic empathy.
Anthropology has also begun to reexamine the concepts of morality and
ethics in social life Of course the study of norms and values has been central
to modern anthropology and the social sciences since the foundational work
of Durkheim and Weber. Irving Hallowell (1955), for example, argued long
ago that all human societies are moral societies since they require people to
evaluate their own behavior and that of others relative to a set of culturally
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established norms and values. Yet much of this earlier work was focused on
merely identifying these culturally variable sets of norms and values and the
hierarchical relations among them or on demonstrating how values both
shape and are shaped by social, economic, and political relations and structures of various types. More recently, however, anthropologists have become
more concerned with how values and conventions actually become embodied
and enacted, both consciously and unconsciously, in the everyday flow of life
(see for example, Zigon 2008, Lambek 2010, Throop 2010, and Fassin 2012).
This has led to a renewed interest in virtue ethics in anthropology, this is,
to the study of how a person comes to enact moral behavior not passively and
unreflectively, but through particular embodied practices of self-care, selfcultivation, and the development of practical wisdom. In an insightful review
and analysis of some of this recent work, Mattingly (2012) has identified two
basic strands of virtue ethics in contemporary anthropology, one inspired
more directly by neo-Aristolelian, humanistic influences, which she refers to
as first person virtue ethics, and one largely influenced by Foucaults project
(1990) of identifying how ethical regimes are reproduced through training in
self-care practices within predefined ethical modes of life, which she refers
to as poststructural virtue ethics. While Mattingly emphasizes how different and incommensurate the analytical implications can be of following one
or another of these strands of ethics, she also notes clearly what they have in
common:
Both these post-Enlightenment moral frameworks are in broad sympathy
with anthropological critiques of universal reason. That is, both claim that
a moral decision or action cannot be determined through some universal
set of rules, procedures or reasoning processes that one derives from an archimedian position. Rather the moral is always historical, always shaped by
social context . . . Both contend that the moral in any society is dependent
upon the cultivation of virtues that are developed in and through social
practices. The moral is centrally bound up with practices of self-care and
self-cultivation; it is not captured by espoused beliefs but rather involves
the emotions, the body, everyday activity. It is an integral and pervasive
aspect of social life. Both frameworks also emphasize that the moral is a
communal enterprise; there are no persons here who are independent of
the practical communities which shape the technologies of virtue and the
aspirations of the good life to which individuals ascribe.
There is an obvious overlap, then, in these new anthropologies of empathy

and morality. The ethnographic study of empathy involves examining how
basic, evolved, intersubjective, and embodied capacities to attend to and
attune with other people, become culturally elaborated (or not) into more
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complex (Hollan 2012), reenactive (Stueber 2006, Hollan & Throop 2011b),
higher-level (Goldman 2006) forms of social knowing and awareness, elaborations that may or may not include encouraging the development of empathiclike capacities by placing a moral value or worth on them. The contemporary
ethnographic study of morality and ethics, on the other hand, examines how
people come to embody and enact, through culturally elaborated practices of
self-care and self-cultivation, moral values and orientations. Here, the way one
becomes virtuous may or may not involve the cultivation of empathic-like
capacities in oneself and in others.
Interestingly, even though this new field of moral anthropology (Fassin
2012) or the anthropology of morality (Mattingly 2012) derives some of its
inspiration from the moral sentimentalism of David Hume and Adam Smith
(cf. Throop 2012)emphasizing that moral values and judgments are often
linked to or motivated by such basic social emotions as sympathy, compassion,
and pityanthropologists working within this tradition have not yet investigated very explicitly or systematically the link between morality and empathy
per se. This may be because neither Hume nor Smith had access to the modern
concept of empathy and so did not use that term, or because contemporary
anthropologists have not yet seen the need to focus on empathy more centrally
than the other social sentiments that Hume and Smith discussed and brought
attention to. In any case, currently, anthropologists focusing on empathy address the link between empathy and morality more directly and explicitly than
those focusing on morality per se. For example, one of the central findings
of the empathy researchers is that from an ethnographic perspective, complex empathy is never neutralas its clinical uses and definitions sometime
implybut is always found deeply embedded in a moral and political context
that affects its likelihood and means of expression, and its social, emotional,
and even its political and economic, consequences (Hollan & Throop 2008,
2011b).
In the following sections, I review some of the ethnographic work that
relates empathy and morality, focusing especially on how this material can
be used to evaluate some of the claims from moral psychology and philosophy that empathy either is or is not central to morality. I specifically address
the questions of whether empathic processes are inherently prosocial or not,
whether they are inherently biased toward the near and dear, and the extent
to which they provide a reliable and consistent framework for moral action.
I must begin, though, by underscoring an observation about human social
life that Anthony Wallace (1961) made many years ago. Wallace pointed out that
much of social life anywhere in the world goes on without intimate knowledge
of others motives and intentionsthrough habit, routine, common expectation, and widely shared rules of language, social engagement, and etiquette. At
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a time when empathy has become rediscovered and made a central focus of
research in a large number of disciplines, Wallaces observation is important
to keep in mind. While basic empathic processes may indeed play an important role in how humans orient to one another at the most fundamental levels
of intersubjectivity, their role in more day-to-day forms of cultural behavior
remain to be clarified and spelled out. Wallace reminds us that there is much
to social life besides empathy, and that we must be careful not to exaggerate its
role in human life. Rather, we should be attempting to specify as precisely as
we can when and in what contexts empathic knowledge becomes important in
the everyday flow of human life and when and why it does not. Ethnography,
the description and analysis of naturally occurring behavior, becomes an essential tool in this task.
IS EM PAT H Y I N H ER EN T LY A LT R U I ST I C A N D PR OSO C I A L?
Many researchers influenced by evolutionary models of behavior and culture

argue that empathy is an essentially altruistic impulse or response leading
to prosocial, moral behavior unless or until it is suppressed or inhibited in
some way (e.g., de Waal 2009, Harris 2007, Hoffman 2011, Haidt 2012, Slote
2007). This is of course different than the clinical view of empathy as a morally neutral form of evaluation or understandingmoral neutrality being the
very thing thought to distinguish empathy from other types of social emotions
and sentiments, and the very thing that makes it useful as a nonjudgmental,
therapeutic technique. Harris promotes the prosocial view of empathy when
he writes, The consequences of empathy are compassionate behavior towards
others, moral agency and ethical behavior based on mercy and justice (Harris
2007:169). Similarly, Hoffman argues,
The overwhelming evidence . . . is that most people, when they witness
someone in distress, feel empathically distressed and motivated to help.
Thus empathy has been found repeatedly to correlate positively with helping others in distress, even strangers, and negatively with aggression and
manipulative behavior. More important, experiments show that empathy
arousal leads observers to help victims, and furthermore they are more
quick to help the more intense their empathic distress and the more intense
the victims pain. (Hoffman 2011:231)
The prosocial view of empathy accords well with the evidence that many cultural and linguistic groups identify and label forms of prosocial, positively
valenced behavior and sentiments that resemble what English speakers call
empathy. I mentioned above, for example, that one can find a strong cultural
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value placed on developing and maintaining emotionally positive and loving

ties among people, especially among kin, throughout the Pacific region (Hollan
& Throop 2011a). While none of these linguistic terms or concepts is identical
to the academic concept of empathy, many of them do overlap with its meaning. Feinberg (2011) notes that some version of the Anutan term designating
positive feeling and concern for others, aropa, is found throughout Polynesia,
including aloha (Hawaiian), aroha (Maori), alofa (Samoan), and ofa (Tongan).
And as mentioned above, in the eastern Indonesian society of Toraja, terms
that suggest English translations of love-compassion-pity for others often
imply a moral obligation to intervene and help these others, as if one had no
other choice. Conversely a lack of such fellow feeling in Toraja often implies
not only that one does not understand anothers thought and feelings, but that
one is not moved by his or her plight, feels no need to intervene in it, and does
not oneself feel diminished or hurt by it (Hollan 2011, Hollan & Wellenkamp
1994).
The Toraja inclination to do something with ones empathy is widespread
in the Pacific, where empathy is expressed more as a doing or a performing
that as a passive experiencing and where material exchanges of various kinds,
including the exchange of labor and service, play a large part in such doing
(Mageo 2011, Throop 2011, Feinberg 2011, von Poser 2011, Hollan 2011). This
emphasis on the pragmatics of empathy, literally its material consequences
and effects, is of a piece with a larger ethnopsychological constellation in the
Pacific in which the cultural focus is on action and effects, not internal states
and motives (White & Kirkpatrick 1985, Shore 1982, Throop 2011). In other
words, in much of the Pacific area the proof of ones empathic, caring response
is in ones action or inaction with regard to the target of empathy, not in ones
mere understanding of the other, no matter how accurate or sensitive that understanding might be.
There are paradoxical effects to this form of empathy and fellow feeling. On
the one hand, the entailment to do something for the other resonates with
some contemporary conceptualizations of empathy as an essentially altruistic,
prosocial, impulse. Yet on the other hand, it is this very awareness that others
can and do use their knowledge of one that makes many people around the
world fear empathic-like knowledge as much as they may encourage it at times
(Hollan & Throop 2008, 2011b). This is so because while empathy can be used
to help people or to interact with them more effectively, it may also be used to
harm or embarrass them, either consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or
unintentionally.
Even in the Pacific region, for example, where the love-compassion-pity
idiom is pronounced, many people are just as concerned with concealing or
protecting first-person subjective experience from others as in revealing it
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(Rumsey & Robbins 2008). Indeed, one of the reasons why the Pacific region is
such an interesting place to study empathy and basic processes of intersubjectivity is because of the widespread notion there that it is often difficult, if not
impossible, to know another persons heart or mind. While some anthropologists have suggested that this belief in the opacity of other minds means that
people actually avoid acting upon or even speculating about other peoples
thoughts, feelings, or intentions (Robbins 2008), most have argued that the
opacity doctrine is not so much an epistemological claim that one cannot know
the mind of another as a political and moral one about what is proper to say
or publicly acknowledge about another persons unexpressed feelings or intentions (Duranti 2008, Rumsey 2008, Keane 2008). As Keane (2008:477) puts it,
The problem is not psychological, or at least not epistemological. The problem
concerns a persons capacity to hide their inner thoughts from others. It is not
that thoughts are inherently unknowable, but that they ought to be unspeakable. Or at least, it matters greatly who gets to speak about those thoughts.
This concern for the right to be the first person of ones own thoughts, and
acknowledgement of others right to be the first person of theirs (Keane
2008:478) demonstrates the ambivalence people can have about empathic-like
awareness. On the one hand the opacity doctrine demonstrates a high degree
of respect for the autonomy of others. On the other hand, though, it is an acknowledgment of peoples vulnerability to the intimate knowledge that others
may have of them.
Moral ambivalence about empathic-like knowledge can be found many
places in the world. In the Mexican highland Maya group that Groark (2008)
studied, people often presume the ill-will and antipathy of others, up to and
including their use of witchcraft to cause illness or death. In a social and emotional climate such as this, people enact positive politeness to block others
intimate knowledge of themselves and to mask their own thoughts and feelings about others, since people can experience unmediated awareness of this
kind as an intrusion or attack. While certain curers are periodically allowed
familial and social access and diagnostic tools, such as pulse taking, necessary
to encourage communication and reconciliation among people, such mobilization of marked empathic resourcesones that are culturally elaborated
and that often involve special modes of discernment(Hollan & Throop 2008,
2011b) usually occurs, ironically, only in the aftermath of miscommunication
among people, lack of empathy, and harm done.
The Inuit of the Canadian Arctic also fear that intimate knowledge can be
used to hurt rather than to help, especially in relation to the shaming and
humiliating of people into conventional, morally acceptable behavior. Children in particular become the focus of such empathic-like surveillance. Briggs
reports (1998, 2008) that Inuit adults may use their empathic awareness of
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the fears, desires, and motives underlying childrens misbehavior to draw attention to misbehavior and to create fear and doubt in childrens minds about
the propriety and acceptability of their own actions and impulses, often in a
way that disguises the surveillance with humor or playfulness. For example,
a child who becomes overly friendly and unguarded with a non-kin person or
stranger might be told jokingly that she or he will be will be taken home by
the stranger and kept there. Such types of interactions lead both adults and
children to wonder, are these people commenting on my behavior playing with
me or hurting me? Am I being evaluated negatively by these people and so in
trouble with them or not? Interestingly, Briggs (1998) argues that it is just this
kind of emotional ambivalence, stirred up by empathic-like surveillance, that
makes core cultural values and behaviors of the Inuit (or of anyone) so salient
and motivating to people, because it generates an awareness on the part of
actors that something is at stake here.
The Mayan and Inuit cases illustrate how people may fear how other members of the in-group, those who are most likely to have either direct or indirect access to potentially damaging or hurtful information about oneself or
intimates, might use empathic-like knowledge. Yet people fear the use of such
knowledge by outsiders as well, as in cases of psychological warfare or dirty
political campaigns. Bubandt, for example, has reported how individuals from
a Muslim group in North Maluku (eastern Indonesia) forged a letter from the
head of a local Christian church in which the leader ostensibly encourages his
membership to attack Muslims in order to pave the way for a Christian takeover of Northern Maluku and, eventually, the whole eastern part of Indonesia
(Bubandt 2009:554). The motive of the forgery, apparently, was not to merely
slander the Christians in the community, but rather to scare the Muslim population of Maluku into a united front against Christians by leading them to
believe that the Christians were out to get them. But for the forgery to succeed
in this regard, it must first appear to capture as authentically as possible what
some of the concerns, worries, and ambitions of the Christians might actually
be. Bubandt uses the forged letter to illustrate how groups may sometimes attempt to empathize with their enemies in order to gain the kind of knowledge
or insight that might ultimately be used to undermine or defeat them.
From a cross-cultural point of view, then, it is clear that in the context of
everyday social practice, first-person-like knowledge of others is rarely, if ever,
considered an unambiguously good thing, despite the many positive connotations empathy has in the European-American context. Although empathic
knowledge may be used to help others or to interact with them more effectively, it may also be used to hurt or embarrass people. As a result, everywhere
we find complex concepts of personhood that convey what is appropriate to
know about people and what not, that sketch out how porous or impermeable
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the boundaries of the self should be ideally, and that hint at the kind of
damage empathic-like knowledge can do when psychic integrity is breached
inappropriately.
T H E M O R A L I T Y O F EM PAT H I C B I AS
De Waal (2009) argues that empathy is an evolved, automatic response of approach and concern for others that is generally targeted toward the welfare of
a relatively small circle of family, friends, and partners (de Waal 2009:115).
He suggests that while we are certainly capable of feelings for others based on
hearing, reading, or thinking about them, our concern based purely on the
imagination lacks strength and urgency (De Waal 2009:221). Preston reaches
a similar conclusion, noting that imaginary objects require more neural activation to be held in working memory than do actually perceived ones (Preston 2007:429). As a result, the strength of activation in imagined empathy
is rarely as high as in direct empathy because of the increased difficulty in
attending to internal over external stimuli (2007:429). True empathy, then,
according to de Waal, needs a face (2009:83). It builds on proximity, similarity, and familiarity, which is entirely logical given that it evolved to promote
in-group cooperation (2009:221).
The idea that empathy may be naturally limited to the more near and dear
poses interesting interpretational challenges for those who accept this finding and who are interested in its moral implications. Care ethicists such as
Michael Slote argue that it is the focused, targeted nature of empathy that actually underlies and explains why so many people make the implicit, intuitive moral distinctions and evaluations they do (cf. Haidt 2012)such as the
widespread inclination to assist or save the person immediately in front of one
rather than those who may be equally needy but farther removed in space,
time, or perceptionand that such empathy-based distinctions are indeed
morally defensible and useful in determining moral action, including the resolution of moral dilemmas. Yet for others (Prinz 2011a, Battaly 2011, Batson
2012), this empathic bias, automatically and unselfconsciously feeling more
strongly about some than others, is one of the things that makes empathy so
incomplete and misleading as a measure of or guide for morality and ethical
action, since it may lead to preferential treatment and requires no voluntary,
virtuous effort or cultivation on the part of the actor.
From an ethnographic and social psychological (Echols & Correll 2012) perspective, however, the extent to which empathy may be imaginatively extended
beyond the immediate circle of friends, family, and the in-group, and the implications of this for morality, remains an open question. While it is clear that
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many groups around the world do indeed act preferentially toward immediate kin, or at least assert that close kin deserve special care and concern, this
preference for the kin group may not be as automatic and limited as de Waal
suggests. For example, in a comparative study of empathy in Samoa and in
the contemporary United States, Mageo (2011) argues that empathic responses
become triggered and mobilized specifically through attachment mechanisms
and behaviors, and that these mediating attachment behaviors are themselves
highly sensitive to varying enculturation practices. She demonstrates how attachment in communally oriented Samoa is directed outward to the extended
family and community, while in the United States more inwardly to a much
smaller number of intimates, often limited to members of the nuclear family.
She argues that empathy flows along and through these varied patterns of attachment and kinship and that it is through such flows of empathy that important boundaries between groups are constructed and maintained, including
class and status distinctions (cf. Hermann 2011, Throop 2011). An important
point that Mageo makes is that empathy may have a sharp moral edge to it:
in bestowing it on some, we may pointedly and deliberately withhold it from
others, as when Samoan and Inuit children are actively taught not to become
too friendly and attached to outsiders. Patterns of empathic withholding and
boundary maintenance thus often shadow patterns of empathic bridging.
While Mageo describes how Samoans direct empathy beyond immediate
kin outward to the larger community, this larger community is itself relatively
homogenous from an ethnic and religious point of view. In contrast, Hermann
(2011) discusses how the Banabans of island Fiji make an effort to extend
their empathic feelings and responses beyond their own ethnic and religious
groups. She argues that as a result of a history of colonization, Chistianization,
and displacement, Banabans have made the idea of empathy and compassion
a central aspect of their ethnic identity and behavior, representing themselves
not only as a people who take pity on others, whether Banaban or not, but
also as a group entitled to the empathy and concern of others, including that of
non-Banabans most especially. Hermann uses historical data to demonstrate
how empathic-like behaviors can be used over time to bridge and connect diverse groups as well as to separate them. Her larger point is that expressions of
empathy, and their moral implications, are always embedded in historical and
transcultural processes that make any overly naturalized, static conceptions
of them untenable.
Hermann also makes the point that though empathy may motivate prosocial, compassionate behavior toward others, it may also entail and mark, as it
does among Banabans and other Pacific groups, a hierarchy between those
giving empathy and those receiving it, those giving empathy being better off
socially and economically and those receiving empathy being less well off and
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of lower social position. On the island of Yap, for example, an individuals

ability to take up a compassionate stance or not is necessarily an indication
and enactment of an elevated position in the social hierarchy (Hollan &
Throop 2011b:14). These hierarchical dimensions of empathy raise the issue
of whether empathy must inevitably be contaminated with feelings and attitudes that English speakers associate with pity and whether it is an attitude
and behavior that, anywhere, only the relatively more secure and well off can
afford to display or enact.
While the Banaban case illustrates how cultural and moral practices and
mediations can extend the flow of empathy beyond the immediate kin or
ethnic group to more outside people, such flows can be extended even further, to include nonhuman animals and numinous beings of various kinds.
As Lohmann (2011) notes, the empathic imagination can be directed toward
any being or entity one presumes to be mind-bearing. Throughout the world,
including the Pacific region (Hollan & Throop 2011a), we find people who
enact empathic practices of worship and veneration directed toward deceased
ancestral kin and assorted deities. What is important to note about such displays is that while some of them are based on relatively pure forms of faith or
imagination alone, many involve embodied practices that embed and stimulate imagination and empathy in a variety of very concrete sensory and perceptual experiences. For example, a Toraja person who presents an offering of
food to the spirit of a deceased parent or grandparent may first dream of the
ancestral spirit asking for care or attention. Since Toraja conceive of dream
life as being just as real, though immaterial, as waking experience (Hollan
& Wellenkamp 1994), the emotional presence of the ancestor is felt and experienced in a very direct, visceral way. Further, during the feast at which
the offering is made, the sights, smells, and sounds of the gatheringwhich
may sometimes include an effigy or photograph of the ancestormay evoke
vivid memories of times and experiences when the ancestor was still alive
and physically present. Through such practices, numinous spirits are given
a face toward which an empathic response can be directed, though not the
flesh and blood one that de Waal posits. This would indicate, then, that imaginative extensions of basic empathy beyond the concretely near and dear can
be made highly motivating and morally salient, depending on the cultural
and interpersonal context.
T H E M O R A L FA L L I B I L I T Y O F EM PAT H Y
Though the ethnographic data is still fairly limited, it appears that empathy
can be culturally extended and mediated beyond its most basic, viscerally
243
based forms to be directed toward distantly related kin and non-kin, as among
Banabans on Fiji, and even to nonmaterial, numinous beings such as ancestral spirits and deities of various kinds, as in Toraja and many other places in
the world. Yet this says nothing about how morally fallible or infallible forms
of empathy may be, whether more limited, basic forms or the more imaginatively extended ones. I noted above, for example, that while many people
around the world appear to encourage the development of empathic-like behavior, they at the same time often fear its inaccuracy or misuse, suggesting
that even where empathy is culturally valued, there is awareness of its fallibility as a guide or structure for moral action.
One aspect of this fallibility is how easily empathic-like feelings can be overridden by the empathizers own needs, concerns, or fears. In rural Toraja in the
mountains of South Sulawesi, where many people live at the margins of subsistence, it can be difficult if not impossible to always respond to other peoples
needs with empathy and generosity because of ones own limited resources.
Indeed, this inability to always live up to cultural expectations of sharing and
empathy is one of the reasons Toraja villagers so often doubt others when
they claim they are empty-handed or bereft, because it is thought they may
be hiding resources for their own purposes (Hollan 2011). In a context such
as this, where many people are feeling burdened and overwhelmed by their
reciprocal obligations to others, Wellenkamp and I discovered (1994) that the
accurate perception and understanding of others often became clouded by
peoples own preoccupations. In particular, people often seemed to exaggerate the dishonesty and untrustworthiness of others, which then justified them
in focusing on their own worries and concerns rather than the worries and
concerns of others.
The idea that personal distress of various kinds may interfere with ones
ability to empathize accurately has been widely discussed in the clinical and
psychological literature (Coplan & Goldie 2011b, Coplan 2011, Decety & Meltzoff 2011, Decety & Lamm 2009, Ickes 1997, 2009, Mast & Ickes 2007). The
distress may be of a nature that interferes with ones ability to recognize at
all the situation of another, such as self-centered preoccupation with ones
own worries and concerns. Or the distress may itself be rooted in an over-
identification with the target of empathy, such that the empathizer confuses
the targets situation with his or her own, leading to efforts to sooth and comfort self rather than the target. In either case, we see how vulnerable accurate
empathic perception and concern is to situational factors of various kinds,
and why any moral action based upon such perception must be vulnerable as
wellespecially in places where political or economic uncertainty increases
the likelihood that people must worry more about the well-being of themselves
than of others.
244
This of course raises the issue of the overall accuracy of higher, more complex forms of empathy as a means of social awareness and moral action even
in the best of circumstances (Ickes 1997). As Coplan suggests (2011:917), the
necessity of the empathizer to maintain a clear distinction between self- and
other-oriented perspectives, in order not to confuse or conflate the two perspectives, is always a challenging one, requiring, ideally, attempts to imagine
the others situation while simultaneously suppressing and inhibiting the mobilization of ones own preferences, values, and beliefs in the process. When for
any reason the distinction between self and other breaks down, either because
the imaginative and affective connection to the other is lost or because the
self perspective begins to intrude upon and overshadow ones imagining of
the other, then empathy breaks down as well: Sharing anothers affect in the
absence of self-other differentiation provides minimal connection or understanding of the other or his experience. Taking up ones perspective without
clear self-other differentiation can result in enmeshment or in self-oriented
perspective-taking, which prevents one from successfully representing the
others experience and leads to personal distress, false consensus effects, and
prediction errors (Coplan 2011:17). The challenges of developing and maintaining an empathic stance that accurately captures anothers situation in
Toraja or anywhere else suggests that while empathy may be a basic intersubjective capacity that all humans engage in, it does not become a reliable
guide for moral action unless or until it becomes culturally elaborated into a
virtue, requiring people to self-consciously hone and cultivate it in themselves and others (Battaly 2011).
Apart from situational constraints such as poverty and other forms of personal distress that may affect peoples ability to empathize, individuals within
any cultural context, even those that strongly encourage empathic behavior, will
vary in their willingness or ability to respond to others empathically, depending
on a variety of developmental experiences and dispositional traits (cf.Nezlek
et al. 2007). Elsewhere (Hollan 2011) I have discussed differences in the empathic displays of two Toraja men whom I knew intimately. One tended to be
very generous and empathic with people, even those whom, from a Toraja perspective, were not especially deserving of such concern. He was a man who had
suffered many hardships in his youth, including failed marriages and work ventures and near starvation, and as a result, seemed to identify closely with others
who were suffering or struggling in some way. In contrast, another man only
grudgingly extended to others the empathy and material resources he properly
owed them as a relatively well-to-do and high-status person. Not only had he
become quite cynical of the many people whom he thought had attempted to
take advantage of his obligation as a wealthier, higher status person to protect
and nurture, but he also had developed a more generalized wariness of other
245
people that extended back into his childhood, was reinforced during a period of
political unrest in South Sulawesi, and often gained expression in his dreams.
From an ethnographic point of view, it is clear that situational, developmental, and dispositional constraints and affordances may all affect, and
sometimes compromise, peoples abilities to empathize in culturally appropriate ways. Such findings do not undermine the claim that human morality is
rooted in powerful social sentiments of various kinds, including empathy, but
they do indicate that such sentiments may be difficult to cultivate and enact on
a consistent basis. Further, beyond cases where social sentiments are undermined, suppressed, or abandoned for relatively innocent reasonsas when
rural Toraja wet-rice farmers find it impossible to honor all their obligations
to fellow villagers and find the money to send their children to school or as
when women and mothers in very impoverished areas of Brazil must learn
to detach from starving, near-death infants so that very limited emotional
and material resources may be redirected toward those more likely to survive
(Scheper-Hughes 1992)there are those in which people are more deliberately
and self-consciously suppressing empathy and related sentiments in order to
protect themselves from those thought to be potentially dangerous or to dominate others more directly and explicitly. A growing body of literature on the
ethnography of violence examines the various ways in which people learn how
to dis-identify from and dehumanize others in order to control them or to act
violently against them (e.g., Daniel 1996; Das 2007; Hinton 2005; Kleinman,
Das, & Locke 1997; Robben & Suarez-Orozco 2000). The active denial of empathy to others may be rationalized as itself a type of moral action in defense
of self and community, but only at the expense of humiliating and alienating
those so denied, who may then themselves attempt to suppress and deny empathy to others. Such schismogenesis-like patterns (Bateson 1972)2 of mutual
recrimination and denial of empathy again indicate just how fragile empathy
may be as a framework for moral action. They also underscore that displays
of empathy always unfold in a political and economic context, as well as a
moral one. Although the active suppression of empathy and dehumanization
of others in order to cause harm is an extreme example of this, the hierarchical
structuring of empathy giving and receiving found throughout the Pacific is
no less political and economic.
2. Schismogenesis refers to patterns of progressive differentiation that may emerge between
people or groups. Bateson identified two basic types, symmetrical schismogenesis, as when
the display of aggression on the part of person or group A elicits a similar display of aggression from person or group B, leading to yet more aggression on the part of person or group A.
And complementary schismogenesis is when the display of aggression on the part of person
or group A elicits submissive displays on the part of person or group B, which then elicits
even more aggression from person or group A, and so on.
246
C O N C LU S I O N
I have used some contemporary ethnographic studies of empathy and morality

to examine some of the claims from moral psychology and philosophy about
the significance of empathy in human life. Ethnographic studies are helpful
in this regard because rather than presume the centrality of empathy on theoretical or conceptual grounds, they examine how empathic processes manifest
themselves and unfold in the course of everyday, naturally occurring behavior,
and how these processes are related to, if not contingent upon, other forms of
social knowing, awareness, and communication. One of the first things ethnographic studies make evident is just how difficult it is to define empathy in a
cross-cultural and historical context. While many groups appear to have concepts that resemble or overlap with the formal academic definition of empathy
as a quasi-first-person perspective on anothers situation that involves both affective resonance and imaginative perspective taking, few have terms or concepts that are identical to it. Many groups seem to have concepts that shade
more closely, both semantically and behaviorally, into what English speakers
would call sympathy, compassion, love, pity, or some combination and
blending of these terms. This raises the issue of whether empathy per se is
ever found as a relatively isolated experience, or whether it is an awareness
emanating from very basic processes of intersubjectivity that must be culturally developed and then carved out of other closely related social sentiments,
with boundaries that remain semantically and behaviorally fuzzy and open
to cultural and symbolic mediations of various types, including cultural and
symbolic suppression and inhibition.
Beyond these basic definitional issues, though, I have used ethnographic
data to evaluate claims about the extent to which empathic processes are inherently prosocial and altruistic, whether they are inherently biased toward
the near and dear, and whether they can be used as a reliable and consistent
framework for moral evaluation and action. While it is clear that many cultural
and linguistic groups identify and label forms of prosocial, positively valenced
behavior and sentiments that English speakers sometimes refer to as empathy, it is equally evident that many of the same groups hold ambivalent attitudes toward such sentiments. Among many of these groups, there is an acute
awareness that though empathic-like knowledge can be used to help people, it
may also be used to hurt or harm them. This wariness regarding first-person
perspective taking takes particularly stark form in the Pacific region, where
many groups assert the fundamental opaqueness of other peoples hearts and
minds. I have argued, following Keane (2008), that this opacity doctrine is
not so much an epistemological claim that one cannot know the mind of another as it is a political and moral one about what is proper to say or publicly
247
acknowledge about another persons unexpressed feelings or intentions. However, the doctrine does seem to express not only an empathic-like respect for
the autonomy of other peoples minds, but also an acknowledgement of peoples
vulnerability to the intimate knowledge others might have of them. From an
ethnographic perspective, then, it is clear that empathic-like like knowledge of
others is rarely, if ever, considered an unambiguously good thing, despite the
positive connotations empathy has in many European-American contexts.
The question of whether empathic-like attitudes are necessarily limited to
the more near and dear at the expense of those who are less similar, less familiar, and less proximate remains an open question from an ethnographic point
of view. Of course there are many groups around the world that do indeed act
preferentially toward immediate kin. Yet this preference may not be as limited and automatic as De Waal (2009), Preston (2007), and others contend.
Mageo (2011), for example, has shown that the circle of people toward whom
empathy is directed and encouraged is much larger in community-oriented
Samao than among most middle-class Americans in the United States. And
among Banabans on Fiji, the circle is extended even further, to include almost
any genuinely forlorn and needy person, no matter what ethnicity or religion
(Hermann 2011). Further, there is much ethnographic evidence to suggest that
morally salient and motivating forms of empathy can be and are extended to
nonhuman animals and numinous beings as well. While some of these extensions are based on relatively pure forms of faith and imagination, many of
them involve embodied cultural practices such as dream interpretation that
establish a face to whom empathy may be directed, though not necessarily
the flesh and blood one that de Waal posits. The question of whether these
culturally mediated faces are as powerfully eliciting of empathic processes as
are the flesh and blood ones can only be answered by more direct and explicit
comparisons between the two.
The ethnographic evidence regarding the relative fallibility or infallibility
of empathy as a framework for moral evaluation and action is more definitive. I have already mentioned that even where empathic attitudes and behaviors are valued and encouraged, people often fear their inaccuracy or misuse.
There seems to be a relatively widespread awareness that empathic-like feelings and processes can be easily overridden by the empathizers own needs,
fears, and concerns, leading him or her to misinterpret the targets behavior or
to confuse the targets situation with his or her own. People such as the Toraja
also recognize that even in the best of circumstances, individuals differ in
their willingness or ability to empathize in culturally appropriate ways, even
though they might not attribute these differences to differences in disposition
or developmental experiences, the way an outside observer might. Apart from
these relatively innocent ways in which empathy may be lost, suppressed, or
248
overridden, we have far too many ethnographic examples, unfortunately, of

people deliberately and self-consciously denying empathy to other classes or
types of persons for political or economic reasons. Whether for more innocent
or sinister reasons, then, ethnographic evidence suggests that empathy may be
a highly fallible form of moral orientation, subject to disruptions and countervailing influences of many different kinds.
None of this is to deny the importance of basic embodied processes of
mirroring, attunement, affective resonance, and perspective taking in providing a scaffold for many forms of human sociality and communication, including morality. And indeed, one of the primary lessons from contemporary
ethology and evolutionary studies is that Adam Smith and David Hume were
probably right in arguing that socially oriented emotions and intuitions play a
critical role in enabling and promoting human sociality everywhere. But these
foundational intersubjective processes, as Battaly (2011) suggests, are probably
best thought of as involuntary capacities, or, when they are self-consciously
practiced and honed, as voluntary skills, not as morally virtuous attitudes or
sentiments in themselves. They can perhaps become powerfully motivating
social sentiments, of course, but only if people become self-conscious of them,
value them in themselves and others, and make it politically and economically feasible for them to be culturally elaborated into more marked, complex
forms of social knowing and awareness (Hollan 2012), rather than politically
or culturally suppressed, inhibited, or punished.
The anthropologist Robert Levy (1973) once argued that cognitive and
emotional states could be differentially heightened and made experientially
vivid by hypercognizing them, that is, by naming them, labeling them,
and bringing cultural and moral attention to them. Conversely, such states
could be experientially downplayed or elided by hypocognizing them, that
is, by not naming them, not labeling them, and by not bringing cultural and
moral attention to them. In village Tahiti in the 1960s, anger, according to
Levy, was hypercognized while grief was hypocognized. Levy argued that this
was because anger was an extremely dangerous emotion in the small face-toface communities of Tahiti. By hypercognizing and bringing conceptual and
symbolic mediation to emotional states of anger, Tahitians brought heightened social and self awareness to them, which made their open display more
threatening and therefore less likely to occur. By knowing anger well, so to
speak, Tahitians could manage it better. Prolonged grief, on the other hand,
was thought to interfere with and disrupt the casual attitude that one ideally
was expected to bring to interpersonal attachments. By hypocognizing grief,
Tahitians culturally elided it, depriving people of the conceptual and linguistic
resources necessary to know it and experience it in a focused, explicit way.
As a result, people might report symptoms of physical illness such as head- or
249
stomach-ache in the aftermath of a broken or lost attachment, but they rarely

complained of experiencing a focused or prolonged sense of grief per se. We
can certainly imagine that empathic processes become differentially enculturated in a similar way, making them more or less central to a communitys
behavioral repertoire and more or less central to its moral orientations.
Levy also noted that the cultural centrality or marginality of certain emotions and experiential states could change over time. For example, in 1960s
village Tahiti, shame, relative to guilt, was still a highly salient, hypercognized emotion that played an important role in local morality and social
control. When Levy asked people why they did they not commit socially disapproved of behaviors, they invariably told him that they did not do such
things for fear of being caught and shamed, not because the behaviors were
inherently wrong or because they felt guilty about committing such acts.
Levy makes the point that in face-to-face communities like village Tahiti,
people were likely to be seen if they committed disapproved of acts, so that is
was unnecessary to hypercognize other types of inhibitory emotions, such as
guilt, when shame remained such a powerful means of inhibition and social
control. As Tahiti changed, however, and became more a society of relative
strangers, Levy hypothesized that Tahitians too, like people in many other
modern, developed societies, would begin to hypercognize guilt more,
since it is an inhibitory emotion that relies on an internalized audience for
its motivational force and saliency, not an actual audience of neighbors and
friends, as with shame.
With these examples, Levy is pointing out that human behavioral and emotional repertoires are not set in stone, not simple expressions of an underlying
human nature, but rather they are in dynamical relationship with the social
environment, both responding to changes in the social world, but also initiating changes within it.3 Although Levy made his observations at a time when
Tahitians were hypercognizing shame and hypocognizing guilt, he could
imagine a time when this pattern would be reversedthough both shame and
guilt remaining in dynamical relationship with each other and with other elements of the social and moral ecology. Empathic processes are also embedded in larger behavioral and social ecologies, of course. Though they can be
given more or less moral valence, and perhaps even be made morally virtuous,
nowhere do they operate in a social or behavioral vacuum. They operate in
the context of, with and beside, other behaviors and social restraints. This is
important to remember because while I have underscored how morally fallible empathy appears to be from an ethnographic perspective, no other moral
3. Levy was a student of Gregory Bateson and was very much influenced by his ideas about an
ecology of mind and behavior (Bateson 1972).
250
orientation is any less subject to disruptions and countervailing influences of

various kinds. The ecology of morality in any place or time is a complex, dynamic one. Empathic processes can and do play an important role in these
ecologies, but the exact ways in which basic embodied capacities for attuning
to others are elaborated into more complex forms of empathy and related to
other social sentiments and behavioral repertoires still requires much more
ethnographic analysis and specification.
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INDEX
Note: Letter n followed by the locators refer to notes.

aggression, 2324, 33, 40, 45, 65, 68, 84,
100, 149, 221, 236, 245
inhibition of, 2930, 40, 212
altruism, 23, 26, 31, 3435, 41, 4346,
5152, 54, 60, 218, 22022, 224, 229
arguments against, 53
behavioral, 21518, 221
biological, 217
connection with morality, 56
dimensions of, 22425
empathy-induced, 4547, 4952,
5458
evolutionary, 4344
evolution of, 26, 34
failure of, 212, 21617, 219, 22223,
225, 22829
profile, 218, 220
psychological, 4344, 21012, 21623,
22526, 22829
second-level, 222
second-order, 219
see also empathy-altruism hypothesis;
motivation, altruistic
amygdala, 148, 152, 154
Andrews, Kristen, 26, 30
anger, 11, 18, 36, 6869, 75, 80, 95, 103,
107, 146, 14950, 15253, 168,
17576, 188, 191, 248
empathic, 1, 5, 8, 2526, 33, 76, 8387,
94, 98, 100, 106, 11718
animals, 194, 209, 217

nonhuman, 10, 30, 36, 123, 12526,
148, 242, 247
social, 19697
anterior insular cortex (AIC), 16,
16263
anthropology, 231, 23435
Antisocial Personality Disorder, 16 n.10,
65, 150
see also psychopathy
anxiety, 4, 9, 1415, 21, 60, 140, 14445,
14748
approbation/disapprobation, 28, 32,
1068, 166
Asperger syndrome, 17 n.11, 190, see also
autism
association, direct-, 7273
association, verbally mediated, 74
arousal, emotional, 6, 52
attention, 1314, 17, 22, 46, 66, 68, 74, 76,
78, 9091, 9394, 105, 143, 158, 176,
186, 189, 232, 242, 248
autism, 14, 1718, 3536, 101, 142,
17382, 18687, 190, 192
cure for, 76
empirical research on, 174
hypotheses of, 19
see also Asperger syndrome
autist, 101 n.2
see also autism
298 I N D E X
Baron-Cohen, Simon, 17, 19, 99 n.1,

101 n.2
Barron, Shaun, 17
Basic Empathy Scale (BES), 22, 168
Bateson, Gregory, 245 n.2, 249 n.3
Batson, C. Daniel, 68, 13, 19, 2122,
2426, 28, 31, 3435, 38, 99, 16970,
18788
Baumeister, Roy, 40
besire, 159
bias, empathic, 28, 76, 85, 9396, 10406,
108, 11921, 16970, 214, 240, 246
bias, in-group, 9394
bias, here-and-now see empathic bias
Blair, James, 1516, 2932, 3435, 142
see also Violence Inhibition
Mechanism
borderline personality disorder, 18, 138
Bryants Index of Empathy, 1, 20, 22
Buddha, Gautama, 136
see also Eightfold Path
Bundy, Ted, 142
callous-unemotional traits, 14041
Campbell, John, 189
Campbell, Joseph, 37
CAT scan, 92
categorical imperative, 54
Cleckley, Hervey, 13840, 147
cognition, 56, 13, 40, 56, 72, 173,
19596, 213
collectivism, 46, 53
common good, 5051, 13334
compassion, 1, 15, 20, 32, 39, 42, 50, 53,
5657, 59, 71, 7677, 80, 86, 90, 95,
146, 155, 16062, 166, 168, 21415,
218, 22022, 232, 23537, 241, 246
link between empathy and, 156
see also sympathy
concern, empathic, 1, 57, 15, 18, 2122,
26, 4142, 4446, 49, 5153, 57, 67,
84, 11314, 138, 151, 153, 16163,
166, 168, 177, 183
see also sympathy; Concern
Mechanism
Concern Mechanism, 14 n.7, 3031
conditioning/reconditioning, 7273, 75,

117, 224, 227
Conduct Disorder, 16 n.10, 141
consequentialism, 3738, 116, 157
contagion, emotional, 36, 9, 15, 20,
2324, 26, 151, 16061, 185, 195, 215,
23132
crying, contagious, 61, 161
crying, reactive, 4, 27
Cultural Transmission Theory (CT),
11719
Dark Side, 3637, 119
Darwall, Stephen, 33
Darwin, Charles, 26, 34, 41
Decety, Jean, 13, 16, 25
De Waal, Frans, 2, 5, 10, 26, 194, 20406,
232, 24042, 247
deontology, 157
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V
(DSM-V), 14041
disapprobation, see approbation/
disapprobation
disgust, 97, 146, 14950, 159, 168, 191
empathic, 9, 11, 75, 85
distress, 2
empathic, 48, 28, 31, 33, 62, 7283,
8586, 95, 236
personal, 38, 1415, 16 n.10, 1819,
2125, 3031, 52, 6061, 6667,
69, 93, 104, 119, 163, 166, 21415,
220, 24344
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, 15253
Down Syndrome, 142
Durrant, Russil, 24
effortful control, 6667
see also emotionality
egoism, 4344, 4647, 5051, 53, 218
Eightfold Path, 136
Einfhlung, 2 n.1, 160
Eisenberg, Nancy, 46, 8, 14, 1925, 30,
33, 3940, 99, 104
embarrassment, 17778
effects of, 12
empathic, 9
INDEX
emotion recognition, 36
impairments in, 16
psychopathy and, 15051
see also facial expression
recognition
emotionality, 30, 6667, 69, 104
emotional contagion, see contagion,
emotional
empathy
affective, 13, 910, 1415, 1718, 20,
2224, 2627, 33, 99101, 161
basic, 184, 23233, 242
cognitive, 3, 11, 1617, 20, 2223, 26,
99101, 182, 195, 202, 207
cognitive impairment in, 16
combined, 100101
complex, 20, 220, 23335
dispositional, 18, 20, 2223
egocentric, 61
entangled, 19596, 202, 209
evolution of, 2627, see also altruism
global, 61
hedonic, 98, 104, 107, 116
ideal-regulated, 98, 105, 1112, 116,
120
immediate, 98, 108, 11319
male-female differences in, 1819
natural, 114, 11921
reactive, 100, 117
reenactive, 23233
self/other-focused, 99
situational, 2022, 24345
sufficient, 13037
truth-adjusted, 101 n.4
quasi-egocentric, 61
unregulated, 98, 104, 11314
war on, 71
ethics, 156, 21617
empathy and, 20609
normative, 97, 157
of care, 32, 3940, 119
practical, 157
virtue, 23335
ethnography, 236
of violence, 245
ethology, 30, 23031, 248
299
facial expression recognition, 16, 19, 22,

7475, 125, 144, 151, 161, 18485
fear, 2122, 80, 88, 118, 140, 14748, 191
empathic, 9, 11, 1415, 25, 237
expression of, 16, 144, 146, 14849,
175, 202
impairments in, 15051
in children, 6768
fellow feeling, 2728, 195, 237
lack of, 237
see also sympathy
feminists, see feminism
feminism, 40
Feshbach, Seymour, 29
fMRI, 85, 152
Foucault, Michel, 234
Freud, Sigmund, 182, 187
Galilei, Galileo, 46
game theory, 50
Gandhi, Mahatma, 3536, 57
Garrett, K. Richard, 29
Geertz, Clifford, 232
Gods command/law, 3738, 142
Golden Rule, 52, 54
Goldie, Peter, 23, 18384, 191
Goldman, Alvin, 1012, 122
Good Samaritan, 42, 135
Grandin, Temple, 17
Graham, George, 29
Griffith Empathy Measure, 16 n.10
Gruen, Lori, 26, 30
guilt, 7, 17, 24, 27, 29, 33, 60, 68, 73, 85,
118, 138, 153, 162, 17678, 192, 221,
249
empathy-based, 83
lack of, 140, 143
Haidt, Jonathan, 20, 32, 39, 97, 118, 159,
209
Hallowell, Irving, 233
Hamlin, Kiley, 117
happiness, 4, 6, 69, 100, 13233, 146,
14950, 191
Hare, Brian, 200
Hare, Robert M., 12324, 139, 149, 151
300 I N D E X
harm, 20, 3032, 3436, 91, 100, 114, 124,

129, 132, 13435, 146, 153, 156, 158,
197, 209, 217, 231, 23738, 24546
aversion, 16667, 169
norms, 3739, 46, 54, 211
personal/impersonal, 14445
physical/emotional, 178
helping, 7, 2326, 4344, 62, 68, 70,
7577, 82, 84
behavior, 3031, 43, 60, 132, 204, 236
targeted, 203204
empathy-induced, 4445
response, 104
heuristic, 94, 233
Hobson, Jessica A., 17
Hobson, R. Peter, 17
Hoffman, Martin, 2, 6, 8, 10, 2728, 31,
33, 56, 6162, 117, 236
Hogans Empathy Scale, 20, 22, 23 n.12
Hollan, Douglas, 20
Holocaust, 72, 8182
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer, 26
Hume, David, 13, 26 n.13, 2730, 32, 41,
74, 97, 10510, 11920, 13436, 158,
164, 166, 235, 248
Ickes, William, 196
ideal observer, 28
see also sympathetic impartial
spectator
imagination, 1213, 5253, 74, 19192,
242, 247
empathic, 95, 24042
imagine-self, 13, 5253
imagine-other, 13, 5253
see also perspective taking
injustice, 39, 46, 79, 88, 9091, 95
feeling of, 8385, 87
victims of, 5657, 85
see also justice
Integrated Emotion Systems Model (IES),
14344
intelligence, 84
social, 197
internalism, 28, 3234
empirical, 32 n.19
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), 1,

222, 23 n.12, 168
Jesus, 105, 135
Johnson, Lyndon, 82, 87, 89, 90, 93
Jolly, Allison, 19799
judgment, moral, 34, 3539
justice, 58, 7172, 84, 9596, 111, 119,
146, 236
fairness and, 8485
norms, 39
principles of, 5354
see also injustice
Kamisar, Yale, 90, 92
Kanner, Leo, 174
Kant, Immanual, 35, 5354, 100, 114,
15658, 16364, 209
Kauppinen, Antti, 2829, 40
Kennett, Jeanette, 3536
Kiehl, Kent, 16
Kielburger, Craig, 82
King, Jr., Martin Luther, 57
King Solomon, 5758
Kitcher, Philip, 212, 21620, 22325, 229
knowledge
empathic, 156, 23640, 24647
folk psychological, 233
moral, 119, 159
semantic, 152
Korsgaard, Christine, 209
Kozol, Jonathan, 57
Lamm, Claus, 8, 13, 28
Lenin, Vladimir, 87
Levy, Robert, 24849
Lewin, Kurt, 46
liberals/conservatives, 20, 39, 71, 89
liberty, 92, 96
Lipps, Theodore, 2 n.1, 73, 160
love-compassion-pity, 232, 237
Mageo, Jeanette, 241, 247
Maibom, Heidi, 21415
Majdandi, Jazminka, 8, 28
Marsh, Abigail, 16, 36, 14647, 151
INDEX
McDougall, William, 41
medial cingulate cortex (MCC), 16263
metacognition
in apes, 19596
see also mindreading
metaethics, 97, 106
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 18486
Mill, John Stuart, 84
Miller, Paul, 2324
mimicry, 4, 7273, 185, 231
emotional, 117
motor, 161
neural substrate of, 75
mindreading, 11, 19496, 206, 209
deficiencies in, 17
low-level, 10
high-level, 12
see also simulation; theory of mind
mirror neurons, 1011, 17, 7576, 231
mirror neuron system, see mirror
neurons
mirroring, 11, 123, 190, 248
Moral Foundations Questionnaire
(MFQ), 146
Morgan, C. Lloyd, 209
motivation
altruistic, see altruism
moral, 34, 38
egoistic, 24
natural selection, 75, 96
evolution by, 34
narcissism, 14, 18
Neo-Classical Explanatory Sentimentalism
(NCES), 98, 11314, 11619
nervous system
autonomous, 30
sympathetic/parasympathetic, 149
neuroscience, 910, 19, 76, 190, 231
cognitive, 172
social, 13, 170
neurotypical, 17
see also autism
Nichols, Shaun, 23, 14 n.7, 3032, 35,
9798, 113, 11719, 154
Nucci, Larry, 3738
301
Obama, Barack, 71
over-arousal, empathic, 8, 7679, 8284, 89
pain, 2, 11, 75
empathic, 9, 13, 25, 79, 85
expression of, 77
pariacqueductal gray area, 16
Patrick, Christopher, 14, 150
perception-action model, 2, 5, 10
perspective taking, 2, 6, 1012, 15, 1920,
22, 26, 29, 33, 52, 60, 65, 68, 72, 74,
86, 91, 99, 166, 183, 195, 20002,
21315, 21920, 222, 224, 226, 232,
244, 246, 248
personality trait, moral, 70
phenomenology, 18485
Pinker, Steven, 71, 96
Plato, 3738, 72
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 138
pragmatism, 21617
Preston, Stephanie, 2, 5, 10, 240, 247
Prichard, James Cowles, 138, 141
principlism, 46, 50, 54
Prinz, Jesse, 27, 35, 38, 9798, 110, 113,
11620, 122, 13637, 158
projection, 12, 186
psychoanalysis, 18, 187, 231
psychology, 8, 4749, 102, 120
developmental, 172
folk, 161, 194, 23233
moral, 3940, 114, 168, 235, 246
social, 9, 25, 169
psychopath, see psychopathy
Psychopathic Personality Inventory
(PPI), 15 n.8
psychopathy, 1416, 18, 25, 29, 30, 3236,
10001, 112, 13854, 165, 17273,
190
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, 14,
15n.8, 139
Questionnaire Measure of Emotional
Empathy, 1, 23
Rawls, John, 53
Rachels, James, 124
302 I N D E X
reactive barking, 4
Reagan, Ronald, 92
recidivism, 21011
psychopathy as a predictor of, 148
reciprocity, calculated, 20506
regulation, 33, 60, 107, 109, 112, 163
emotional, 25, 30 n.6, 40, 6667, 69,
9798, 10205, 117, 213, 22324,
228
moral, 159
self-, 40, 102
sociomoral, 14 n.7
religion, 72, 81, 87, 125, 132, 135, 247
rights, 39, 142, 169
civil, 57, 8284, 87, 9596
constitutional, 92
legal, 85
property, 111 n.5
Risk-Need-Responsivity Model (RNR),
21011, 22324
Rush, Benjamin, 138
sadness, 4, 6, 9, 11, 27, 42, 68, 73, 80, 100,
118, 146, 14950, 15253, 162, 191,
218
empathic, 177, 220
expression of, 16, 22, 144
Scheler, Max, 6, 18485
schismogenesis, 245 n.2
sentimentalism
classical, 106, 112
moral, 235
neo-classical, see Neo-Classical
Explanatory Sentimentalism
self, moral, 68, 70
serf, see serfdom
serfdom, 82, 8789
see also slavery
sex offenders, 16, 21, 23, 36, 21114, 216,
22123, 227, 229
shame, 7, 60, 177, 221, 249
simulation, see also high-level
mindreading
offline, 1213
theory, 101, 17273, 184, 19091,
233
Singer, Peter, 207

Singer, Tania, 13
Skelly, Laura, 16
skin conductance, 15, 21, 148
slave, see slavery
slavery, 76, 8182, 95
abolition of, 86, 134
opposition to, 57, 90
see also serfdom
Slote, Michael, 32, 9798, 11317, 240
Smith, Adam, 26 n.13, 27, 2930, 4142,
7374, 9798, 106, 10911, 120, 235,
248
Sober, Elliot, 6, 26, 4344, 101 n.4
Social Intelligence Hypothesis, 19697,
199
Socrates, 38 n.21, 72
Sontag, Susan, 82
Spencer, Herbert, 41
Spinrad, Tracy L., 40
startle reflex, 1415, 21
Sterelny, Kim, 199
stereotype, 18, 21, 74, 81
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 57, 82, 8586,
8890, 95, 134
Strawson, Peter, 100
Strum, Shirley, 208
Stueber, Karsten, 2 n.1, 184, 23233
surprise, 16, 17576, 19
sympathy, 18, 11, 14 n.7, 15, 2534,
3640, 48, 53, 5961, 6367, 6970,
84, 95, 99, 101, 104, 10708, 15556,
16062, 16668, 174, 18384, 194,
215, 232, 23435, 246
culture and, 20
deficiencies in, 14
dispositional, 24
expression of, 66
feelings of, 42, 68
male-female differences, 19
measures of, 18, 2023
pro-social behavior and, 98, 222
situational, 21, 24
see also empathic concern
sympathetic impartial spectator, 105
see also ideal observer
INDEX
theory of mind, 13, 65, 142, 199200, 219

see also mindreading
theory theory, 190
threat-detection system, 25
tribalism, 13537
Titchener, Edward, 2 n.1
Trolley Dilemma, 14447, 153, 16667,
169
Tsar Alexander, 82, 88
Turgenev, Ivan, 8889
Ugazio, Giuseppe, 8, 28
Uller, Claudia, 201
utilitarianism, 50, 54, 144, 153, 15657,
16467, 16970
Veil of Ignorance, 5354
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC),
16, 165
violence, 23, 30 n.16, 79, 94, 142, 14546,
21416, 245
303
Inhibition Mechanism, 2931, 143

interpersonal, 138
per capita, 7071
physical, 78
sexual, 141
victims of, 31
see also aggression
Wallace, Anthony, 23536
Ward, Tony, 24
welfare, 6, 10, 3738, 41, 4647, 57, 82, 96,
142, 240
anothers, 12, 4, 37, 4243, 54, 162
consideration, 30, 37
justification, 14, 3435
ones own, 50
victims, 14243
Whitman, Walt, 90
Williams, Bernard, 37
Wilson, David Sloan, 6, 26, 4344,
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Empathy and Morality

Empathy and Morality

Oxford University Press 2014

List of Contributors vii

11. Psychological Altruism, Empathy, and Offender Rehabilitation 210

Kristin Andrews is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at

LIST OF CONTR IBUTORS

Empathy and Morality

Introduction: (Almost) Everything

is what many philosophers and psychologists talk of as sympathy (Darwall

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Goldie who maintains that to empathize, I must be aware of the other as a

1. A FFECT I V E EM PAT H Y A N D EM PAT H Y- R EL AT ED

It is typical to distinguish between emotional contagion, empathy, sympathy,

and C is a circumstance or a situation. To say that S feels E for O is to say that

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

whose activation are probabilistically related to the firing of such neurons

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

children and adolescents with psychopathic tendencies (Dadds et al. 2009,

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Another important factor in shaping differences in empathy between people

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

studies have associated it with an intake of information and an outward focus

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

felt when someone is mistreatedhas distinct behavioral effects: it increases

Most of the literature on the evolution of empathy or sympathy is really about

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

As discussed above, the first sign of empathy-related responding is reactive

Historically, so-called sympathy played an important role in Adam Smiths

the foundation of our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, which

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

2011). Typically, empathy is thought to be foundational to morality because it

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Recently, a number of people have voiced concern that the importance of

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

will it because it is good?21 It is far from certain that ordinary individuals

Introduction: (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy

Knowing anothers thoughts and feelings.

Each of these phenomena is distinct from other-oriented empathic concern.

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality

psychological altruism. The empathy-altruism hypothesis concerns psychological altruism.

E V I D EN C E O F EM PAT H Y- I N D U C ED A LT R U IST I C M OT I VAT I O N

Given the stated definitions of altruism and egoism, helping a person in

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality

predicted by the empathy-altruism hypothesis and have failed to support any

Websters defines moral as: 1. of or concerned with principles of right or wrong

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality

empathy-induced altruism may lead the employer to act unfairly, violating a

Assigning Workers to Tasks

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality

Partiality in Social Dilemmas

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality

induced through experimental manipulation; in Study 2, the level of empathic

altruism is moral. Empathy-induced altruism is weak. There is now rather

Two Different Perspectives on Anothers Situation;

Empathy-Induced Altruism andMorality