By: John Ulrich Ph.D.
At the 38th ATSA Annual Conference in Atlanta Georgia, November 6-7, Paul Bloom’s keynote address “against empathy” initially seemed unusual for an organization focused on providing therapy. His presentation highlighted points from his book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion [1]. In the everchanging standards of “what works in therapy for people convicted of sexual offenses,” empathy training had been regarded as an important intervention in the past. The modality has not been supported by meta-analytic studies as a treatment target that reduces recidivism and has been long regarded to make offenders with high psychopathy more dangerous because it improves their skillful manipulations of future victims. But the role of empathy training in sex offending specific therapy is not Bloom’s issue. He is against empathy as a foundation for moral reasoning. More on that, but first some definitions.
“Empathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does (p. 16).” Empathy plays an important role in interpersonal and social bonding. It is an emotional experience that helps connects us with others, but Bloom emphasizes, it is not the only interpersonal bonding agent. Social customs, laws, and reasoning also connect us, both at the interpersonal level and societally. To him, more empathy is not the solution to our social ills and may be creating more problems. Bloom’s objective is to demonstrate that the over- if not exclusive – emphasis on empathy is a poor guide for social policy and legislation. The current practices of establishing laws and policies about sexual offending offer an excellent example of the problem with emotional empathy as an ethical foundation for policies that Bloom is concerned about.
“…Empathy is a spotlight focusing on certain people in the here and now. This makes us care more about them, but it leaves us insensitive to the long-term consequences of our acts and blind as well to the suffering of those we do not or cannot empathize with (p. 9).” “Empathy is particularly insensitive to consequence that apply statistically rather than to specific individuals (p. 34).” Imagine a child who gets sick from a vaccine. Empathy for that one child can end a vaccination program that had been saving scores of other children from death. Sound policy requires a different moral reasoning than empathy to evaluate such a program. Closer to our field, Bloom cites the famous case of Willie Horton who was weekend furloughed and committed a rape and other violent crimes. It was used as a political ad by George H.W. Bush to discredit Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. ( Here is the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y) The furlough program was ended. The program had been effective at reducing recidivism for those who had participated in the program. “But we react empathically to the victims of Horton’s actions, while our empathy is silent when it comes to the individuals who were not raped, assaulted, or killed as a result of the program (p.35).” This case exemplifies Bloom’s belief that having more empathy alone is not going to move us to effective and efficient policies in the long run.
Empathy for victims of crimes or disasters is effective at motivating people to action by stimulating a strong subjective experience. It is powerful. It is a good thing. It is perhaps the “best of us” as human beings to care deeply about others suffering. But Bloom offers examples of how stimulating a strong “emotional empathy” can make us less compassionate because it can generate the equally strong emotional vilification of the offending person or group. These strong emotions can lead to harsh responses unchecked by reasoning or facts. This is problematic. The quote, “In war, truth is the first casualty [2]” perhaps exemplifies what can happen when the emotional driven response Bloom identifies is not tempered by facts, research, and more complex moral reasoning. How many times is someone convicted of a sexual offense called a “monster?” An underlying assumption is they can “never change” and will continue to do this the rest of their lives. Where is the evidence of this “truth?” There is certainly anecdotal evidence, but the research does not support it as the norm. In fact, the research identifies the norm to be the opposite. Most do not go onto commit known sexual offenses. In fact, each year 95% of detected sexual offenses are committed by people with no prior convictions for a sexual offense. These popular characterizations of people who commit sexual offenses may be an expedient “casualty” of truth driven by emotional reactivity and highly resistant to feedback or facts. While Bloom did not address the emergence of sex offender registries in either his speech or his book, registries are a good example of policies and laws in response to profoundly heartbreaking individual cases. But consistent with Bloom’s thesis, the public sex offender registries have been developed without regard to their effectiveness or the consequences on the hundreds of thousands of individuals on the registries. These are the people that few in society see. Professionals working with them being an exception. An estimated 860,000 individuals are on those registries. That number dwarfs the true impact when also considering the lives of the parents, siblings, partners and children of those on the registries.
Bloom promotes a rational compassion that is less emotional and better able to incorporate broader data to inform our policies. Certainly, rational compassion entails a willingness to look at facts that likely will not always be pleasant or easy. Rational compassion also means a willingness to examine the consequences of laws and policies and modifying them accordingly. As Patty Wetterling explained at the MI-ATSA annual conference in 2018, she never intended there to be a public registry, but there were forces driving the laws that were beyond her influence. As she learned about the experiences of juveniles who had been placed on sex offender registries, she became a strong advocate for not placing juveniles on registries. In this regard, she embodies rational compassion that has emerged out of her experience, out of who she is, and her continued openness to see the unforeseen consequences of policies motivated by a nation’s empathy for her and her son Jacob. By relying only on emotional empathy for those in the “spotlight” we can blind ourselves to the consequences that a rational compassion can present for informed and difficult discussions. These casualties of truth are why Bloom is “against empathy” for ethical reasoning and advocates for rational compassion as a better ethical and moral foundation for laws and policies.
[1] Bloom, P. (2018). Against empathy: the case for rational compassion. New York, NY: Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
[2] The quote is often attributed to the Greek writer and poet Aeschylus (525BC – 456BC), but also to US senator Hiram Johnson in 1918 and other variations to Samuel Johnson in 1758.
Ineke Way