Aporia likes to pass on older articles they think important. Here is one from 2019 that claims that liberals and conservatives differ greatly in who they extend concern to. Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle
The present research suggests they reflect core psychological differences such that liberals express compassion toward less structured and more encompassing entities (i.e., universalism), whereas conservatives express compassion toward more well-defined and less encompassing entities (i.e., parochialism). Here we report seven studies illustrating universalist versus parochial differences in compassion. Studies 1a-1c show that liberals, relative to conservatives, express greater moral concern toward friends relative to family, and the world relative to the nation.
The further studies show a preference of liberals to expand their circles of concern to animals, all living creatures, and the universe as a whole.
In 2006, then Democratic Senator Barack Obama bemoaned the country’s “empathy deficit,” telling college graduates, “I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern.” In 2012, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney said, “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
Those quotes capture the distinction.
Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Note. The highest value on the heatmap scale is 20 units for liberals, and 12 units for conservatives. Moral circle rings, from inner to outer, are described as follows: (1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence
I will tell you that this looks so dramatic, so perfect that it can't be quite true. We can't be that different. Can we? It is the stereotype, certainly, but this would be a profound difference. I would have found a milder result more plausible. But...there it is, and I am not seeing much problem with the study. It may be that the definitions of conservative and liberal are so tight in the study, specifically to try and identify an effect, that it exaggerates what we might see between neighbors who have different yard signs.
I will tell you where my sympathies lie, if you have not already guessed. The people near at hand are the ones God has given to us and are primary. We should try to expand out from that circle, yes. But Steve Sailer once pointed out that there is a belief among liberals that there is some moral superiority in skipping over circles in order to love The Whole World. I don't fault loving the whole world as a goal - "for God so loved the world" - I just think once you have skipped a circle you have entered the world of illusion, where kindness becomes easier because it costs little. If you think you are skipping many circles, then I think you are just showing off.
Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Uncle Screwtape to his nephew and advisee Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters, Chapter VI. CS Lewis 1942
5 comments:
On Grim's post and my own I complained that the heat map approach didn't seem to be definitive: the paper's Fig 1 and 2 show similar data without such a dramatic flair. Two other things show up on inspection of the graphs (I haven't looked at the data): the error bars suggest that either they didn't have a lot of conservatives in the sample or they varied a lot. And the color scale on the two plots is different--why?
I suspect you're right that their definitions of liberal and conservative force a skewing of the data.
Claire Lehmann, writing about Trump's reaction after the shooting, said ""our modern, civilised societies ostensibly prioritise qualities like compassion, integrity, and empathy"
My response was that much of the 'empathy' that is projected in order to gain power is either fake, highly-selective, or both. I"ll note the loud expressions of empathy for people in Gaza by those who have no empathy at all for murdered and raped Israelis.
And the projection of empathy can be a way to *achieve* brute power: note Obama's remark 'turns out I'm really good at killing people," or something like that.
Also: Empathy by itself, even when well-intentioned and well-directed, is often of limited value without some of those other characteristics. Empathy for victims of the Nazis was a lot more effective when coupled with strong determination and moral/physical courage, which might come down to knife or bayonet fighting. If you were in an airline flight that was in trouble, would you prefer your flight crew and ATC to be bathing in empathy for the lives lost and family suffering that might be about to happen, or would you prefer them to be strictly task-focused?
https://quillette.com/2024/07/15/courage-and-cowardice-in-pennsylvania-donald-trump/
Re the heat maps, I'll note that is easier to project highly-diffused empathy than it is to project more focused empathy that might actually require you to do something about it.
David your comment on top of James's may go a long way to explaining. these are verbal expressions of desire, not actual acts of compassion.
But where does your dog come in this diagram? I think it's about the fifth circle.
Always been disturbed that I can look at pictures of starving Africans and feel virtually nothing. I thought it was
densensitisation caused by television, but I've been an extreme right-winger - in the view of most people - since
I was 20.
Because it's your dog, and in some limited way part of the family? It's close and has some human characteristics? Do you care that much about dogs in Japan, for example?
I am thinking of this in terms of cat ladies who will openly say they prefer cats to people, and sometimes say out loud that they prefer them to children. It seems like admitting one is still a little girl, unwilling to take on permanent responsibilities, but only temporary, disposable creatures one can project human feelings on.
And yes, CS Lewis loved cats. I know.
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