This idea has been floating around my mind for a long time: what is the realdifference between Republicans and Democrats? I am not referring to the differences at the national level as in between a Republican Senator and a Democratic Senator. Regrettably, there are more than a few times when the actual difference is hard to distinguish. I am referring to the difference at the constituent level – what makes a Democratic voter different from a Republican voter? The idea of an empathy gap between the two parties has been gelling in my mind for a long time. Below is my explanation of why I think this is the real, fundamental difference between Republican and Democratic voters.
Webster’s online dictionary defines empathy as:
the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for empathy
Several weeks ago, the Fox All-Stars had a discussion about the winter fuel price increase situation. Fred Barnes responded to the question with something to the effect of “I don’t see it.” Notice the use of the first person pronoun, I. Of course Barnes doesn’t see it; he has a lot of money. A 50% increase in heating costs won’t materially impact his income. Notice how there was no statement about the price increase on other people; not one word. Barnes described the scenario entirely from the first person perspective.
Last week, the Republican controlled house voted to cut Medicaid and Medicare spending. There was an article on RedState.com about the voting blocks for this proposal. A majority of Republicans voted for it and a majority of Democrats voted against it. The RedState author was chastising the Democrats because although we have been arguing for fiscal sanity for the last 5 years we were against this specific spending cut. There was no discussion in the RedState article about how this cut would affect people. There was no mention that many people depend on these programs as their sole source of healthcare. None. What mattered was the cut not it’s overall effect.
Let’s look at two professions. The right loves to rail against the national teacher’s union. But let’s think about what’s involved with teaching. Teaching is not about money. Teachers are not well paid; they could probably make a whole lot more money if they went into the private sector. There’s another attraction – the attraction of helping somebody learn. According to the American Psychiatric Association, over 90% of therapists are liberal. Why? The answer is therapists are about helping people overcome a problem. Both of these professions require empathy – the ability to see and feel things from someone else’s perspective – to be good at your job. The emotional fulfillment is just as important as the monetary compensation.
I have never heard a Republican talk about another person’s perspective. I have heard a tremendous amount of first person perspective. The debates about gay marriage presents this issue in all its complexity. The right’s argument is “Gay marriage threatens my way of life.” No one on the right has ever thought about what it would be like to be discriminated against because of who you are. No one on the right has ever thought “what would it be like…” No one on the right has ever sat down with a person who was discriminated against and asked them “what’s it like…”
Here is the bottom line: The right can’t see someone anything from someone else’s perspective.
This has been a topic that has been of interest to me for a long time. A few months ago Hunter over a dkos wrote a diary very similar to yours that I’m sorry I didn’t save. But here’s a quote I did save that defines this foundational value of Democrats:
“In short, we are at our best when we support, honor, and protect those who are not us. We are most challenged, morally and ethically, when we defend the rights of those with whom we may share no common bonds.”
I think the ability to have empathy is something that humans obtain through a moral development process. I recently bought a book titled “Making Human Beings Human” by Urie Bronfenbrenner that addresses this topic quite well.
So I wonder what child development processes lead to the fact that so many in our culture grow up without the ability to have empathy. And I would take it further to say that empathy has been replaced by an attachment to greed. Maybe this is farther than most want to go with this topic, but I find it amazingly interesting. There is something deeply wrong with our culture and how we’re raising our kids, and I do worry about that alot.
A poster sized YES! One of the things I’ve noticed in discussions with Republicans is their incapacity to comprehend how others might feel. Some can nod in agreement when it’s pointed out, but then revert in the next comment to “but,..(fill in talking point)” or changing the subject.
I have some personal totally unscientific! observations: (1) Some are uncomfortable thinking. Some find that challenging their own notions is unpleasant. Maybe the idea that they might be wrong is so unpleasant that they’ll hang on to whatever Fox tells them as long as it fits in their preconceived philosophy. (2) Others seem to be operating on fear. It’s hard to empathize with those one fears? Maybe it starts when a white mother holds her child’s hand a little tighter when in a crowd with some Black people? Or, when the kids are reminded to Lock The Car Doors when traveling near a minority neighborhood?
There also seems to be a thread of confusing wants versus needs. They seem to think that what they want is what they need. There’s that ever present “I don’t want to pay taxes to support THEM,” line and the just under the surface belief that somewhere out there in the night there’s a person on welfare with a big screen TV. Maybe the advertising industry’s really got them going? Republicans measure themselves by what they have rather than what they are?
Thanks for the book recommendation, because it sounds like one I’d like to read!
I better give a fair warning on that book. The subtitle is: “Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development.” Be prepared that its pretty academic. But very interesting indeed.
I think the process of human development is fascinating. And I have lots more questions than answers. And sometimes I don’t have language for what I see and feel. But I do believe that it happens primarily in the “I/Thou” relationship as Bonhoeffer so eloquently put it.
On the empathy thing, one of the things I notice, for example, is that my rightwing fundamentalist family thinks of me as being cold and unfeeling while they see themselves (especially the women) as very emotional. What I see is that they are the type who cry at a sentimental Hallmark commercial, but refuse to engage me in conversations about the difficult situations I work with on a daily basis with children in an urban area who are abused and forgotten. They just can’t handle it. I see them as being weak (excuse me if that sounds judgemental, its just the way I feel) and unable to handle the real struggles of life. So they wall themselves off in their own comfort zones and don’t want to hear about anything difficult.
Sorry for all the rambling, but as I said before, this is a topic that fascinates me. I really crave dialogue about it so that I can develop my thinking and language.
I think you’ve nailed it with the comfort zone comment! We live very close to a Native American Reservation. There’s an interesting phenomena here. The older people (town and Rez)get along quite well; sharing lunches at the Senior Center along with heavy doses of gossip and local news. It’s the younger ones who are the least empathetic from both sides, and the most likely to indulge in stereotyping.
Part of this I’m putting down to the sharing of life experiences in their dwindling numbers. Another part comes from my own years and finding out that stuff I thought was really important 20 years ago is really kind of silly. The rabid Republicans around here generally tend to come in some loose categories like (1) What’s Mine is Mine–they seem to be big on collecting Things and status goods. Why should the government get my money?–like all the money is going to welfare payments? And, then (2) people who are absolutely Masters of Projection–they cheat and steal (get caught) and then think everyone else operates the way they do.
We get outrage overload, because empathy hurts when pain is inflicted on the empathized with. But they feed on ‘outrage’, because when outrage is selfish, it is self-reinforcing. The adrenaline rush they get from hatred is addictive to them. I suggest you explore the concept of “hostile dependency” in relationships to shed some more light on this. Basically, as I understand it, they feel empty when they do not have active outrage, so they will manufacture outrage in order to feel something. Since real empathy hurts, they choose not to feel it, and this leaves an emptiness that needs filling with something, so the creation of hatred feeds the emptiness with adrenaline.
This is also related to why they love to cry at the imaginary movie, but can’t cry about reality. The movie is an escape, and a safe excuse to feel things they otherwise are uncomfortable with. And it fills their void and ‘proves’ to them that they can indeed cry about something. The cathartic release from crying about the unreal substitutes for real (and much more difficult) interactions.
This is, of course, an over-simplification, and one would have to write a book to explore and analyze the typical unempathetic, judgmental, hate-filled personality type. But take this for what it’s worth…. I am not a psychologist, but I play one at home.
OK, you all are on my turf now: this is my area of research. Empathy depends a lot on 1) temperament (that’s kind of the seeds of adult personality that you see in a child, and 2) parenting, and 3) what kids get exposed to in terms of other people’s emotions. And how those things get mixed together when we are small.
When a kid sees another child (or an adult) get hurt, or be in distress, the kid almost always feels the same emotion – (unless they have a very insensitive, unemotional temperament). But the key is how threatened the child feels by this vicarious emotion. If the child feels moved to help, the empathy can be talked about, action can be taken to help the person in pain, etc.
However, if the emotion is so strong that the kid is overwhelmed, feels threatened by the strong emotion that they feel, they avoid, and try to run away. A supportive parent can help a kid keep going and helping in those circumstances, by showing that it is ok to be a little afraid to help, but keep on helping anyway. If parents themselves run away or avoid or pretend that the problem isnt’ there, then the child has a powerful model to do likewise.
So I think some people grow up not exactly comfortable with helping in cases of strong pain seen in other people. But many people grow up having been over-protected against such situations, or taught to avoid or run from them. Sometimes parents even teach children that the situation isn’t that bad, that the person in pain deserves their pain.
Now, I do have to disagree with you. I do not think this issue divides Democrats from Republicans. I do think it divides poorer folks from wealthier ones (poorer folks simply see more pain and have to deal with it; they can’t take the avoidance route very successfully). Among the richer folk (and here I include the middle class), a lot depends on whether avoidance is modeled among our parents, our leaders, etc. After 9/11, for example, we were not asked to sacrifice. We were expected to be mostly passive (if horrified) observers after Katrina, and that’s what most of us did, myself included. (My mother, who actually did something, was not entirely pleased by this!).
It is, of course, easier to avoid and deny the existence of the pain. And more personally beneficial in the short term in terms of wealth, etc. Not, of course, in terms of our world.
I also think that the general trend of child-raising is to be rather indulgent as parents, which tends to shelter children from having to deal with others’ intractable problems.
We do need to model more, and do more ourselves to be courageous .. .
I’d like our party to be a party of empathizers, but then, I’d like that to be a characteristic of our country, too.
Wonderful insights Kidspeak. And now I have just a couple of questions (or I’ll limit myself to a couple for now):
Sorry I did not answer sooner – sleep intruded! Your first question depends somewhat on the age of the child or adult. Our ability to empathize is most likely present before we have a good sense of ourselves. Emotion is pretty much hard-wired in a very basic sense, because it helps us survive. For example, we look to our parents when we are tiny to tell us if this funny looking person with the beard making odd sounds is a safe person to be with or something we should run away from. We don’t rely on speech to do that, we read our caretakers facial expressions.
Although some emotion theorists will disagree about this, in childhood, at least, (I think as adults, too), we have to deal with our emotions first, before we can take action in the face of strong emotion. The emotion can push us quickly into action, one way or another. If we do lack confidence in ourselves, that may be because we tend to be very anxious and fearful. So yes, if we are constantly vigilant for our own safety, that can just make empathic feelings opportunities for more pain, which we want to flee or avoid. Long answer, sorry!
As to the children in Iraq – who knows? Kids are amazingly resilient in the face of ordinary life challenges, which certainly does not include war. Much does depend on the individual child, and the support systems that they have, and readiness to be resilient in the face of disaster. Some will fall apart, some will simply be OK, others will shine and rise above their terrible experiences, others will develop hatred or avoidance of feelings for a long time, possibly throughout life. It won’t be easy for many of them.
Look at South African after apartheid. You see all sorts of things, but much that is hopeful, e.g. the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions instead of wholesale bloodshed, which might well be expected given the history of oppression there. It is far from a perfect place, but it is very far from where it might have gone.
I agree with you that it has to do nothing with political parties, and more to do with personality and personal comfort, all what you said. 🙂
What I wonder is how much of that intractable pain would be found to be tractable, though.
It reminds me of a psychologist I knew who on her retirement declared that she was about burned out anyway, she had spent her career in what passes for public mental health system in the US, and reflected that 99% of the problems with which her patients presented could be solved with money.
Her best friend, also a psychologist, in private practice, sighed that money would do nothing for the problems of her patients. 😉
I don’t know that I can find a link now, but there was a study published in the last year or so that showed a dramatic drop in children’s mental health problems in a Native American Tribe after families began receiving payments from a casino enterprise that lifted them out of poverty. They specifically found a drop in aggression and conduct disorders. It was a small study where they happened on this result by accident, but really amazing stuff!
To you and to Ductape, poverty is indeed one of the great risk factors for difficulties for children. It isn’t a simple thing: I’ve seen the study you refer to, and I have some doubts about that, in the absence of more information. Money that raises a standard of living won’t improve life unless basic security is also felt, and order develops out of chaos, and a sense of community out of disconnection.
Poverty in the context of great wealth, such as we see it in this country, delaminates society, in particular families. If you live in multi-generational poverty among great wealth, I think it is hard not to live for instant gratification when you have extra resources. (This is one reason why very poor people – especially minorities – are among the most generous groups in our country. If you are poor and something extra comes along, you don’t expect it to last, and you share it with your friends and family, if there is enough of it, because it will not last!). Families are stressed, they fall apart, the sense of what a family is declines with passing generations, and is lost over time.
Money buys housing, utilities, clothing, better schools, safer neighborhoods, better health care, reliable transportation, etc. much of which makes adults able to given more time to their children, and helps the children feel connected to their larger community. There is a lot less anxiety when poverty vanishes. When I go to the school where my husband teaches, and see the faces of the children, I see tremendous amounts of fear and anger, not a lot of happiness and interest. It is quite distressing, certainly not something that one hour a week, traditional “mental health services” are going to fix!
Too much money, however, often results in a re-segregated society, walling off people who are different, avoiding people who are needy except for carefully managed contacts. And it can also delaminate society, in that it can remove a sense of how normal, ordinary life is conducted. It can produce self-absorption, which is possible on a level unimaginable by poor folk, simply because you have vast resources.
Another terrible thing, is that this slipping into acquisitiveness, into greed, if you will, is being pushed down into more modestly funded families. So now every child has his or her own TV, and children spend less time with their parents that ever. I still recall in horror from that ad showing the van/SUV riding through Monument Valley, and the kids are watching TV on the screen in the vehicle! I can quite understand both clinicians that Ductape refers to: the folly of offering traditional treatments to persons whose primary “dis-ease” is poverty and its terrible minions, or offering similar treatments to those who want to change nothing about their lives except to magically feel better.
I’ll paraphrase a minister in Highland Park, TX “Here we raise children to value things and use people; we should be raising them to value people and use things”.
Oh, very good. I do hope you will elaborate on this as I have been wondering too.
Is there any research on the brain that indicates there is an “empathy” area?
Does reading play a role in empathy formation or do those who have more empathetic natures apply their empathy to characters as well as real people? (Nafarsi(?), the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” discussed books as a means of understanding and empathizing with a variety of people, such as, Humboldt in “Lolita” because the author takes the reader inside the head of the character.)
Is there a difference for those who empathize with animals and those who empathize with humans?
Can empathy be learned after the formative developmental years? If so, how?
In a way, I agree with you that this issue might not divide people along Dem or Repub lines. There are Repubs I know who are very empathetic and involved with people on a personal level, they just don’t believe it is the “government’s role to be involved.” I should note these are “old school” Repubs, not the new breed.
Oh, lots of questions. I can’t answer all of them!
Yes, there are regions of the brain which deal with emotion. But they are intricately connected to other parts of the brain, too. You might want to read Damasio’s book Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain for a bit more on this subject (as well as a very interesting read.
I do think that reading helps people see the world from other perspectives. But only some people care for books that are written as if “inside the head” of a character, and some prefer little or nothing of emotion and characterization at all. I”m not sure this has much to do with empathy, however – I just don’t know.
Being empathic with animals as a kid is a good sign for being empathic with people. Having a pet shows children a very empathic model (assuming the pet isn’t a goldfish or a lizard or some other pet that doesn’t show much emotion). Emotional animals, especially dogs and cats that are strongly attached to humans will sense a person’s emotions and react to them. Kids see this – the cat that crawls up into your lap, the dog that lays it’s head on your knee when you are feeling bad, etc. And the animals bug you for love and attention and give it in return, sometimes more than adults in a child’s life do.
So. . . when you see an adult with affection for animals, that’s a good sign. Absence of that may simply mean that they had no opportunity as a kid to develop such preferences. But when you see cruelty to animals, it is a very bad sign. Yes, there are some people who never empathize much with people but do so a lot with animals (like the jokes about the Queen of England and her Corgis) – I think it says more about the adults in that person’s life when they were small than anything else.
It is very hard to become empathic after early childhood. I have seen some children adopted as older preschool kids, e.g. age 3, 4, or 5, from extremely harsh orphanages where they were “warehoused”, that is, given just perfunctory physical care: kept clean, fed, housed, but having no human contact with a stable caregiver who loved them. Little or no interaction with adults. No conversation, no play. These children have long-term problems with emotional attachment to other people, among many difficulties. They do not respond as most children do to emotion expressions. With time and a lot of affection and attention, some do better than others, but it is not easy, and some thus far are not doing well at all in terms of normal human relationships.
The older the child was adopted, the longer they stayed in the orphanage before adoption, the more difficult it is to establish ordinary emotional attachments and functioning, including empathy. Now, I am not speaking of most orphanages here (of which there are very few in this country). These children I have seen have come from overseas as a result of social upheavals in their native countries. There are, of course, children here who do not get anything more than perfunctory, uncaring minimal provision of food, shelter, and clothing. And they, too, may have great difficulty.
In any case, I am completely pessimisitic about people learning to be empathic as adults, having not shown any signs of it in childhood.
Children are not meant to grow up in the absence of true caring.