Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs
Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs
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DOI：
10.1037/xge0000595
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发表时间：
2019-06-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Inzlicht, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cameron, C. Daryl;Hutcherson, Cendri A.;Inzlicht, Michael
同理心被认为是一种美德，但它在许多情况下都失败了，这就引出了一个基本问题：当有选择的时候，人们会避免同理心吗？如果是这样，为什么？过去的研究集中在移情的物质和情感成本上，而在这里，我们研究了人们是否会因为移情的认知负担和成本而避免移情，我们开发了移情选择任务，它使用自由选择来评估移情的愿望。参与者做出一系列二元选择，选择导致他们参与同理心或替代行动的情况。在11项研究（N = 1，204）和一项荟萃分析中，我们发现了避免共情的强烈偏好，这与共情更努力、更令人厌恶和更不有效的看法有关。实验性增加共情效能消除共情回避，表明认知成本直接导致共情选择。当人们可以选择分享别人的感受时，他们的行为就好像不值得这样做。
Empathy is considered a virtue, yet it fails in many situations, leading to a basic question: When given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? Whereas past work has focused on material and emotional costs of empathy, here, we examined whether people experience empathy as cognitively taxing and costly, leading them to avoid it. We developed the empathy selection task, which uses free choices to assess the desire to empathize. Participants make a series of binary choices, selecting situations that lead them to engage in empathy or an alternative course of action. In each of 11 studies (N = 1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as more effortful and aversive and less efficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting that cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others' feelings, people act as if it is not worth the effort.