No one argues in favor of empathy. That’s because no one needs to: Empathy is an unalloyed good, like sunshine or cake or free valet parking. Instead we bemoan lack of empathy and nod our heads at the notion that, if only we could feel the pain of our fellow man, then everything would be OK and humanity could, at long last, join hands together in song.
Bah, says Paul Bloom. In his new book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (Ecco), Bloom argues that when it comes to helping one another, our emotions too often spoil everything. Instead of leading us to make smart decisions about how best to use our limited resources altruistically, they cause us to focus on what makes us feel good in the moment. We worry about the boy stuck in the well rather than the thousands of boys dying of malnutrition every day.
Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, calls on us to feel less and think more.
Can you explain the difference between empathy and compassion?
If you want to be a moral person, empathy is the wrong way to do it.
Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, feeling what they feel, their sadness or their rage and being drawn to that. Compassion is caring for people, being concerned about them, but not feeling their pain. Just loving them. There’s evidence that it’s entirely possible to help people and to do so cheerfully and positively without any sort of vicarious suffering. You can’t do it entirely rationally, you need some sort of emotion, but I suggest that it’s compassion that does the trick, not empathy.
Tell me about the reactions you get when people hear you’re against empathy.
People assume if I’m against empathy I must be some kind of psychopath. I explain that I’m against empathy in a very specific sense. My argument is that if you want to be a moral person, empathy is the wrong way to do it.
You write that empathy is not all bad and can be used to motivate people to do the right thing in certain situations. So should there be an asterisk next to your provocative title?
I don’t doubt for a minute that empathy can do good things. My claim is that, on balance, it’s bad for us. If I wrote a book called Against Racism, people wouldn’t demand that asterisk, even though racist sentiments could be exploited for all sorts of good things. Imagine there are two political candidates and one of them is a wonderful person, the other is totally awful, and imagine you use racist sentiments to get people to vote for the good guy. In the end, that wouldn’t persuade you to be pro-racism.
During this past election season, there have been pieces written about whether liberals don’t empathize enough with the white working class, or conservatives with Syrian refugees. I suppose you don’t think more empathy is the answer in either case.
I’ve always been tempted to write an article called “Donald Trump, Empath?” because he exploited empathy extremely skillfully throughout the election. And he used empathy for people who were murdered by undocumented immigrants and people who lost their jobs. Liberals often think that empathy is on their side. But empathy is a tool used by everybody.
Have you changed anything specific in your life as a result of thinking through these issues?
I’ve started to give more to charity and to think harder about where I give. I try not to do it in an emotional rush, but to think about what could provide the most help. I’ve learned that I should distrust my emotional reactions. In some way, the book has been self-therapy because I think I’m overly empathic, and I’ve made some bad choices due to empathy.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
