Citation

Fowler Z, Law KF, Gaesser B. Psychol. Sci. 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797620979965

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Empathy has long been considered central to living a moral life. However, mounting evidence has shown that people's empathy is often biased toward (i.e., felt more strongly for) others that they are close or similar to, igniting a debate over whether empathy is inherently morally flawed and should be abandoned in efforts to strive toward greater equity. This debate has focused on whether empathy limits the scope of our morality, but little consideration has been given to whether our moral beliefs may be limiting our empathy. Across two studies conducted on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 604), we investigated moral judgments of biased and equitable feelings of empathy. We observed a moral preference for empathy toward socially close over distant others. However, feeling equal empathy for all people is seen as the most morally and socially valuable approach. These findings provide new theoretical insight into the relationship between empathy and morality, and they have implications for navigating toward a more egalitarian future.

Language: en

Keywords

morality; empathy; equality; open data; open materials; parochial bias; preregistered; social judgment