Bruneau Emile G, Cikara Mina, Saxe Rebecca
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2017 Nov;8(8):934-942. doi: 10.1177/1948550617693064. Epub 2017 Jun 7.
Empathic failures are common in hostile intergroup contexts; repairing empathy is therefore a major focus of peacebuilding efforts. However, it is unclear which aspect of empathy is most relevant to intergroup conflict. Although trait empathic concern predicts prosociality in interpersonal settings, we hypothesized that the best predictor of meaningful attitudes and behaviors might not be the general capacity for empathy (i.e., trait empathy), but the difference in empathy felt for the in-group versus the out-group, or "parochial empathy." Specifically, we predicted that out-group empathy would inhibit intergroup harm and promote intergroup helping, whereas in-group empathy would have the opposite effect. In three intergroup contexts-Americans regarding Arabs, Hungarians regarding refugees, Greeks regarding Germans-we found support for this hypothesis. In all samples, in-group and out-group empathy had independent, significant, and opposite effects on intergroup outcomes, controlling for trait empathic concern.
在敌对的群体间情境中，共情失败很常见；因此，修复共情是建设和平努力的主要重点。然而，尚不清楚共情的哪个方面与群体间冲突最为相关。尽管特质性共情关注能预测人际环境中的亲社会行为，但我们假设，有意义的态度和行为的最佳预测因素可能不是共情的一般能力（即特质性共情），而是对 ingroup 与 outgroup 所感受到的共情差异，即“狭隘共情”。具体而言，我们预测，对 outgroup 的共情会抑制群体间的伤害并促进群体间的帮助，而对 ingroup 的共情则会产生相反的效果。在三种群体间情境中——美国人对阿拉伯人、匈牙利人对难民、希腊人对德国人——我们发现了对这一假设的支持。在所有样本中，控制特质性共情关注后，对 ingroup 和 outgroup 的共情对群体间结果有独立、显著且相反的影响。
