Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: A "Revolutionary Emotion": Empathy, Public Opinion and the March to Equality

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This research explores the revolutionary role of empathy in American politics. This dissertation is concerned primarily with the effects of empathy across social group lines, and specifically, how empathy for individuals from marginal groups influences dominant group members' attitudes and behavior toward those marginal groups. Central to this research is the distinction between sympathy, which refers to feeling sorry for another, and empathy, which involves "putting oneself in another's shoes," feeling what the other is feeling, and understanding the other's perspective. These two emotional phenomena can lead to very different political outcomes. By definition, because empathy involves putting oneself in another's place, it puts people on an equal plane--at least mentally--and thereby increases awareness of existing inequalities and desires to remedy them using political means. Empathy is a revolutionary emotion. In contrast, in sympathy, no shift to the other's perspective or increased awareness of inequality occurs. Instead, the observer's pre-existing worldview remains, and while she may feel sorry for the other and want to help with the other's plight, the type of help supported is often private in nature and does not challenge the status quo or change systemic inequalities. Arguably the greatest political achievement of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is just one historical example of an important political outcome that may be attributable to public empathy. The passage of this landmark legislation is often linked directly to events that occurred earlier that year in Selma, Alabama on "Bloody Sunday," when images of extreme police violence against peaceful African American protestors were broadcast around the nation, producing public shock and outrage, which some believe ultimately provided the political will and urgency to pass the Voting Rights Act (Lee 2002). However, political scientists still do not have a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms behind this massive egalitarian shift in white Americans' opinions. In the subfield of political psychology, there are numerous theories about why and under what conditions groups conflict and harbor negative out-group attitudes--whether in-group favoritism, stereotypes, prejudice, or intolerance--particularly with regard to the attitudes of dominant group members toward lower status groups. But there is comparatively little about what produces favorable or egalitarian attitudes among dominant group members for lower status groups. Scholarship on the other-regarding values of altruism, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism is somewhat of an exception, but more work needs to be done in order to understand what motivates people to consider and value the rights and well-being of others in the first place, particularly when those others belong to an out-group. Drawing from the rich literatures on empathy and perspective-taking in the fields of psychology and philosophy, this dissertation suggests that empathy is a key emotional mechanism that can explain egalitarian shifts in public opinion, like that which occurred among whites during the 1960s. The proposed project represents one of several tests in the dissertation of the theory of empathy and equality. In the simplest terms, this theory is that empathy can increase equality by increasing public preferences for equality, which may manifest as increased support for egalitarian policies or increased adherence to egalitarian values. To test this proposition, empathy will be exogenously elevated in a large, population-based survey experiment of white Americans (n=1400). Methodologically, this technique combines the best of both the observational and the experimental worlds: the generalizability of representative surveys and the causal inference of traditional experiments (Mutz 2011). The 2x2 study design builds upon treatments used in pilot testing, which supported the main hypotheses. First, a pre-treatment survey containing emotional trait measures will be administered a month prior to the experiment in order to assess individual differences in sensitivity to empathy cues. In the experiment, empathy will be manipulated for a single mother and Hurricane Katrina survivor, whom is described in a fictional newspaper editorial and pictured (randomly) as either African-American or white. Subjects will be randomly assigned to either a treatment editorial that facilitates empathy or a control editorial that contains the same information but lacks empathy appeals. A post-treatment survey containing preference measures for policies affecting Hurricane Katrina survivors, single mothers, women, and African-Americans (the key dependent variables in the analysis) will immediately follow the experiment. OLS regression models that include a treatment dummy variable, treatment-partisanship interaction terms, and standard control variables will be used to evaluate the overall causal effects of empathy, and, also, its possibly unique effects on Democrats and Republicans. This research is of broad social value because, in many societies including the United States, the attitudes of dominant majorities toward minorities shape how societies ultimately deal with their minorities, including the level of civil rights, privileges, and protections they grant them. Variation in dominant group members' egalitarianism toward minority groups has significant implications for whether a society will engender conflict or peace, injustice or justice, and inequality or equality. If the proposed research finds evidence to support the theory of empathy and equality, real changes in U.S. society could result. With this knowledge, political actors could strategically use empathic appeals to erode discrimination against marginal groups and rally public support for policies designed to address inequalities in citizens' life opportunities and basic civil rights. In short, this research could spur reductions in inter-group conflict and advances toward greater justice and equality in American society.