Promoting empathy between groups by increasing empathic effort

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Conservatives and liberals in America often demonize the other side, judging each other's values to be inferior and immoral. Rather than seeking understanding of others, people often shut out, talk over, or even spew hatred at people who do not share their own perspectives. This "empathy gap" reflects a tendency for empathy to break down in situations where people are in conflict or feel different from each other. This research tests ways to reduce this empathy gap by focusing on how people understand their own empathy. Does the belief that empathy can be developed motivate people to empathize with those who have differing perspectives? By examining how people's beliefs about empathy influence their interactions with members of other groups, this project offers insights into promoting more open-minded interactive dialogue and reducing intergroup polarization. This research focuses on the concept of empathic effort, which is the willingness to invest time and cognitive energy into understanding and relating to members of a different thought group. The project uses diverse methods and nationally representative samples to examine how to foster empathic effort. The research tests (a) whether a growth mindset of empathy (the belief that one can develop empathy) and a dynamic norm of empathy (the belief that a growing number of people think interparty empathy is important) combine to promote empathic effort toward outgroup members, (b) whether empathetic effort and feelings of empathy toward an outgroup member produce less hostility toward the broader outgroup, and (c) whether receiving empathic effort from an outgroup member encourages empathic effort from the recipient and reduces the recipient's hostility toward the broader outgroup. Messages that teach a growth mindset of empathy and dynamic norm of empathic effort could be delivered broadly and across multiple intergroup contexts. As a result, the research offers insight into addressing the empathy gap between those with different perspectives and other intergroup contexts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.