Empathy and Policy Makers

We tend to believe that empathy is better than compassion. After all, as Pranay Kotasthane writes:

“Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It involves stepping into someone else's shoes and experiencing their emotional state as if it were one's own.”

 

But policy makers would do better to experience compassion, but not go as far as empathy, he says. Here’s why. Empathy, he says, can lead one to care too much about one individual (or one group) only. It creates the risk that the policy maker frames simplistic solutions that address the problem of that one set with whom he experienced empathy. Or as Rutger Bregman once wrote:

“Empathy makes us less forgiving, because the more we identify with victims, the more we generalise about our enemies. The bright spotlight we shine on our chosen few makes us blind to the perspectives of our adversaries, because everybody else falls outside our view.”

I think this is a good point. After all, nobody can empathize diametrically opposite feelings.

 

In addition, too much empathy prevents one from being pragmatic. After all, the real world is complex. A certain kind of policy here creates a demand for similar policies for other groups later. Side-effects need to be considered. The money to implement it needs to be considered. The capability of the system and its institutions to enforce it should be a factor. An example will help:

“For instance, empathising with small farmers who are unable to pay loans might cause a well-meaning analyst to recommend a simple solution such as loan waivers. But the prospect of a future waiver creates a moral hazard—more people end up taking unsustainable loans, and in cases when these loans aren’t waived off, some might even take the extreme step of committing suicide.”

 

So how is compassion better from a policy maker’s perspective? Because of the very reason that makes us feel that empathy is better – compassion is less emotional!

“Compassion represents a more detached and rational concern for the general well-being of all people… Compassion allows policy analysts to maintain a degree of emotional distance while still recognising the inherent dignity and worth of every individual affected by their decisions.”

 

An interesting perspective and many valid points in that.