Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

Or perhaps these neural differences are causes, not consequences, and your early sensitivity to the suffering of others, which is certainly related to empathy, might influence the sort of person you grow up to be.

We do best when we rely on reason.

empathic response to someone else’s experience can involve the same brain tissue that’s active when you yourself have that experience.

A lot of misery in the world—and a lot of bad birthday presents—exists because we understand other people by using ourselves as a model:

It’s only when we escape from empathy and rely instead on the application of rules and principles or a calculation of costs and benefits that we can, to at least some extent, become fair and impartial.

Good parenting involves coping with the short-term suffering of your child—actually, sometimes causing the short-term suffering of your child.

But small donations can actually harm the charities, since the cost of processing a donation can be greater than the donation itself.

Part of the problem is that foreign aid decreases the incentives for long-term economic and social development in the areas that would most benefit from such development.

Despite some skeptical claims to the contrary, people often wish to do the right thing, not merely what feels good.

“the human capacity to injure other people is very great precisely because our capacity to imagine other people is very small”

Rather, make yourself less weighty. Bring everyone to the same level by diminishing yourself. Put yourself, and those you love, on the level of strangers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the two parties which divide the state, the party of conservatism and that of innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made,”

The authors of one study that looked at empathy, gender, and political orientation conclude that if males were as empathic as females, the gender gap in politics would almost entirely disappear.

it turns out that altruistic action is associated with all sorts of good physical and psychological outcomes, including a boost in both short-term mood and long-term happiness—if you want to get happy, helping other people is an excellent way to do so.

Great compassion is more distanced and reserved, and can be sustained indefinitely.