Recently Fox News covered our study on declining empathy in American college students with this alarming title:
" The End of Empathy ."
Is this true? Are we now living in a society
score high on this "empathy
test" give
freely
of their time and
money and frequently
help others in need. You
can try the test
and see how you score
compared to the
13,737 students in our
sample by
clicking
here . We ran a
statistical analysis to see
whether there were changes
over time in
empathy and found that there
had been
overall declines, especially
since the
year
2000.I never imagined that
we would end
up being able to share good
news about
empathy when we presented
our research
at the Association for
Psychological
Science
Annual Convention in
May.The good
news is
that empathy is not
"destroyed" or "under
siege," as the author
of the Fox News
post
suggests. Instead,
empathy may be sick.
Not "you have 6 months
to live " sick,
more
like " you need to
spend a few days in
bed "
sick. In other words,
although there has
been a decline in empathy,
there are a
few key things to consider
about the data
before declaring a state of
emergency
on the moral health
of the nation.
Why this is not
a total crisis:
1. Empathy is measured
on a 1 to 5
scale, with higher numbers
meaning
that people are high in
empathy. The
good news is that despite
the declines in
empathy, the average empathy
score in
2009 is still just above the
midpoint of
the scale (ie just above
3). So, there is
no need to plan empathy's
funeral quite
yet.
2. On that note, there
are a wide variety
+of empathy scores
represented within
the college student annual
average.
About
half of these scores are
higher than the
average, and about half of
them are
lower
than the average.In order
words, just
because empathy is declining
on
average,
does not mean that each
individual is
low in
empathy. To accuse an
entire generation
of low empathy is not very
kind, nor is it
accurate.
3. American college
students are
not the
most prototypical
Americans. They are
richer, whiter, more female,
and in our
sample at least, about 20
years old
on average. So as long
as you can
avoid college towns, you
should be
fine. And until
future research proves
otherwise, I wouldn't
suggest joining
the empathy militia.
4. Violent criminal
acts such as murder,
rape, robbery, and
aggravated assault
have all shown steady,
marked
decreases
from the early 1990s to the
late 2000s.
This is the opposite of what
we would
expect if empathy was 'under
siege.'
Why I am still concerned:
1. This is not the
first study to find
trends related to declining
empathy
in American college
students. In my
dissertation work we also
found
increases
in the personality
trait narcissism over
time.
The fact that there has been
other
research with similar
trends is notable.
2. It's true that the
average empathy
score
still hovers above the
midpoint of the
scale,
but empathy is still
declining
substantially,
and at a faster rate in more
recent
years.
If recent trends continue,
this could
eventually
translate into broader
societal
problems.
I'm most concerned that
current declines
in
empathy could lead to
negative reciprocal
spirals as people feed off
of each other's
low empathy.
3. Right now our
evidence is limited to
American college students,
but future
work will look at broader
trends in
narcissism and empathy
in American
society at large. We're
also interested
in cross-cultural
changes. Stay tuned...4.
Although violent crime in
general has
declined, certain types of
violent
crimes
ave actually risen over
time: i) acts
of
violence against the
homeless
have shown
dramatic increases,
especially over
the
past ten years, and were
recently
estimated to be at an all
time high;
ii)
hate
crimes against Hispanics and
perceived i
mmigrants, as well as
against
lesbians,
gays , bisexual, and
transgender
ndividuals are all
significantly
increasing;
and i hit-and-run car
accidents
have increased by about 20% since
1998. Each
of these specific types of
crime target stigmatized,
marginalized,
or otherwise defenseless groups.What
do you
think?Is the decline in
empathywe recently found something
to worry
about it? Have
you noticed this
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