Performative ‘empathy’ can be a release valve for the pressures of conscience that might otherwise drive good actions. (And it can just be pure, empty signalling.) That doesn’t mean empathy is playing a negative role, though—the performativity is the problem. I’d be willing to bet that people who are (genuinely) more empathetic also tend to be more helpful and altruistic in practice, and that low-empathy people are massively overrepresented in the set of people who do unusually bad things.
It’s the association you note, of empathy = good, that I object to. And anyway you’re just measuring social sensitivity, no one who wants to be well liked isn’t going to pretend they’re super empathetic.
And that’s the point. It turns int pretend when it becomes its own goal.
Performative ‘empathy’ can be a release valve for the pressures of conscience that might otherwise drive good actions. (And it can just be pure, empty signalling.) That doesn’t mean empathy is playing a negative role, though—the performativity is the problem. I’d be willing to bet that people who are (genuinely) more empathetic also tend to be more helpful and altruistic in practice, and that low-empathy people are massively overrepresented in the set of people who do unusually bad things.
It’s the association you note, of empathy = good, that I object to. And anyway you’re just measuring social sensitivity, no one who wants to be well liked isn’t going to pretend they’re super empathetic.
And that’s the point. It turns int pretend when it becomes its own goal.