Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York.
Psychol Sci. 2021 May;32(5):766-779. doi: 10.1177/0956797620979965. Epub 2021 Apr 28.
Empathy has long been considered central to living a moral life. However, mounting evidence has shown that people's empathy is often biased toward (i.e., felt more strongly for) others that they are close or similar to, igniting a debate over whether empathy is inherently morally flawed and should be abandoned in efforts to strive toward greater equity. This debate has focused on whether empathy limits the scope of our morality, but little consideration has been given to whether our moral beliefs may be limiting our empathy. Across two studies conducted on Amazon's Mechanical Turk ( = 604), we investigated moral judgments of biased and equitable feelings of empathy. We observed a moral preference for empathy toward socially close over distant others. However, feeling equal empathy for all people is seen as the most morally and socially valuable approach. These findings provide new theoretical insight into the relationship between empathy and morality, and they have implications for navigating toward a more egalitarian future.
同理心一直被认为是道德生活的核心。然而，越来越多的证据表明，人们的同理心往往偏向于他们亲近或相似的人（即更强烈地感受到），引发了一场关于同理心是否本质上有道德缺陷，是否应该在努力追求更大公平的过程中被抛弃的辩论。这场辩论的焦点是同理心是否限制了我们道德的范围，但很少有人考虑我们的道德信仰是否限制了我们的同理心。在在亚马逊的 Mechanical Turk 上进行的两项研究中（n=604），我们调查了对有偏见和公平的同理心的道德判断。我们观察到，对社会上亲近的人的同理心比对遥远的人的同理心更有道德偏好。然而，对所有人都有平等的同理心被视为最具道德和社会价值的方法。这些发现为同理心和道德之间的关系提供了新的理论见解，并对朝着更加平等的未来发展具有启示意义。
