Dark Empathy

Even Empathy has a Shadow Side

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

I have written many posts about empathy, this engine of connection baked into our psyche.  I am now haunted by observations of how ‘empathy’ can be abused to manipulate, con and betray others and even to enhance torture.  Dark Empathy.

I know it sounds like the last thing you want to think about in these crazy times, but I offer you this thought. I have found that learning more about this shadow side of empathy has helped me better understand what is happening in America and the ease with which the agents of chaos can sow so much division. For me understanding something helps me cope, it makes it feel less ‘crazy’.

My posts have centered on relating and listening one-to-one,  tuning into the speaker’s experience and feelings “as if they were your own’ and then reflecting your understanding  back.  In this context empathy is a act of care and compassion. Both people experience the connection and the one sharing their feelings feels seen and heard.   Surely this is a good thing, a needed return to connecting with one another  as we share the same time and space in this fragile world. But it also needs to be understood that empathy is a tool that can be used with good or bad intentions.

Psychologist Judith Hall explains, empathy is ‘squishy’:

“Like many broad and complicated concepts, empathy can mean many things. Even the researchers who study it do not always say what they mean, or measure empathy in the same way in their studies—and they definitely do not agree on a definition. In fact, there are stark contradictions: what one researcher calls empathy is not empathy to another.” ¹

Laypeople struggle too.  Asked to explain or define ‘empathy,’ answers cover the map:

• a feeling, a skill of ‘being good at reading someone’s nonverbal language’, a mental exercise of ‘putting yourself in someone else’s shoes;’

• some go deeper, ‘an ability or effort to imagine another’s feelings, or ‘being connected’ or ‘relating’ to someone;

• others describe empathy as ‘a moral stance to be concerned about others and a desire to help them,’ or ‘just a nice person’.

Yes, squishy, but not wrong, and most people think of empathy as a good thing having to do with caring about what other people are going through. ²

It is obvious that not all interactions involving feelings are empathic. Consider an extreme, a ‘Speed Dating’ round robin affair where participants cycle through potential dates at 5 minute intervals ‘to get to know one another.’  I wouldn’t call this an exercise in empathy,  but there has been listening, and personal information, possibly feelings, have been shared.

Some individuals have personalities that invite people to share with them, on landing at their destination, they know everything about the person sitting next to them on an airplane, whether they wanted to or not. Most are ethical about those exchanges, but some use this personality trait to advance themselves, without any ethical guardrails. A classic example is the ‘local gossip’ of a school, a neighborhood, a work place, a celebrity or political circle, basically every group has at least one. Often harmless, they are now better armed with social media; they can quickly ruin, even end, a career or a life.

One of the great myths about empathy is that it makes you soft, and it must be abandoned to be tough. Being empathic doesn’t automatically mean compassion and care are involved. Bullies read people well, they quickly divine how to make someone feel weak and unable to defend themselves. Some people can home in on a vulnerability like a missile, including those who know you most intimately.

A US Senate Report also documents psychologists were paid $81 million dollars between 2006 and 2009 to advise jailers in Guantanamo how read and use the prisoner’s inner life to make their captives feel helpless and out of control during torture sessions, theorizing this would encourage a detainee to cooperate and provide information. ³

Psychologist Paul Bloom, and Adam Smith before him, share a pessimism that empathy leads to enlightened public policies or moral decision making. Bloom notes that empathy is less likely to power altruistic action to a stranger compared to people we are related to or know. ⁴

Extending empathy to abstract or distant strangers can be more difficult for the human mind. There is a reason that charitable organizations for starving children will put a face on the brochure, or arrange funding for a specific child with a thank you note. It is known as the ‘identifiable victim effect’. The Syrian refugee crisis became very real when a photographer captured a photo of the body of 3 year old Syrian Aylan Kurdi after he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. As that photo blasted across the airwaves,  the United States, Canada, Britain and other European countries opened their borders to more refugees. Immigrants were no longer an abstract problem, they had a face. ⁵

In 300 BC Greek Stoics defined their duties of care to other people in concentric circles of relationship (oikeiosis)  with self at the center, followed by family, friends, neighbors, tribe or community and so on. These ‘circles of sympathy’ can be exploited in many ways. The empathy for those closer and more similar to us can be harnessed and manipulated into the political and cultural sins of demonizing immigrants and hateful violence against apparent outsiders.

My father grew up in Los Angeles and served in the Pacific in WWII. We had heated arguments in my teen and college years as I learned more about the decisions to intern Japanese-American citizens and  to use nuclear weapons against Japan. My father continued in his adamant beliefs that the Japanese Americans were interned for their protection, and the decision to use ‘the bomb’ saved the lives of thousands of US soldiers, including his own unit that was making preparations to invade Japan to end the war, and for him, both of these beliefs justified the actions.

Another critique of empathy arises from the vulnerability of having someone use your disclosures or feelings against you. If someone ingratiates themselves into the trust of another with the purpose of mining their inner thoughts and feelings for their own purpose, I wouldn’t call the actions empathic, but certainly the same skills and tools are used. There is clearly no care or compassion involved, except artificially. This ethical issue has a long history. The Art of War, a military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu dates back to 500 BC in China. A seminal statement, often reduced to ‘know your enemy’ reads:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” ⁶

Sun Tzu’s Art of War has also filtered into the ethos of Wall Street boardrooms, office politics and sports. For both admirable and sometimes disingenuous purposes personal information can be used to learn more about someone, make connection to them or take them down.  This is a common practice  in hostage situations, police investigations and sales practices, making an empathic connection to gain cooperation or surrender. Remember the last time you backed away from an inexpert ‘hard sell’ tactic by your new best friend, the salesman.

I will continue to know and welcome the grace of receiving or offering empathic listening with other people. But I also feel wiser about the ways that it can be used against others to cause them harm and to manipulate their beliefs and personal morality. I hope this look at the shadow side of empathy is informative.

There is another aspect of empathy that I’ll write about next week. I call it ‘Blue Empathy’. In situations of high emotion or experiences of trauma, a listener may need to keep an emotional boundary  to avoid absorbing the emotions of the other person.  It is the ‘as if’ part of Carl Rogers definition. There are useful techniques  that can help the listener maintain sufficient distance to not be overwhelmed.

As always, I am grateful for my readers and I welcome your comments and thoughts below. I learn from you and respond to all.

Thank you for listening,

Leslie

1. Hall, Judith, “The U.S. Has an Empathy Deficit”, September 17, 2020, scientificamerican.com.

2. Ibid.

3. Alda, Alan, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?, 2017, p. 126.

4. Alda, Ibid, p. 128; and Fisher, Richard, “The Surprising Downsides of Empathy,” October 1, 2020, BBC.com

5. Alda, Ibid, pp 130-31.

6. Ibid, pp 124-25