Parochial empathy predicts reduced altruism and the endorsement of passive harm Emile G. Bruneau1,2, Mina Cikara3 and Rebecca Saxe2 1 Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 2 Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139 3 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02142 Word Count: 4,965 Acknowledgments EB completed some of this work under a fellowship from Beyond Conflict. This work was supported by grants from DARPA (RS, EB) and the Open Society Foundation (EB). Corresponding Author: Emile G. Bruneau Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Phone/FAX: 857-203-2080 E-mail: [email protected] Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 2 Empathic failures are common in hostile intergroup contexts; repairing empathy is therefore a major focus of peacebuilding efforts. However, it is unclear which aspect of empathy is most relevant to intergroup conflict. Although trait empathic concern predicts pro-sociality in interpersonal settings, we hypothesized that the best predictor of meaningful intergroup attitudes and behaviors might not be the general capacity for empathy (i.e., trait empathy), but the difference in empathy felt for the in-group versus the out-group, or ‘parochial empathy’. Specifically, we predicted that out-group empathy would inhibit intergroup harm and promote intergroup helping, whereas in-group empathy would have the opposite effect. In three intergroup contexts – Americans regarding Arabs, Hungarians regarding refugees, Greeks regarding Germans – we found support for this hypothesis. In all samples, in-group and out- group empathy had independent, significant and opposite effects on intergroup outcomes, controlling for trait empathic concern. Keywords: emotion, empathy, parochial empathy, intergroup conflict, intergroup empathy Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 3 In our everyday lives, we count on empathic people to do altruistic things. In interpersonal interactions, this assumption is supported by studies showing that empathic concern is associated with pro-social behaviors (Batson, 2014; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). For example, observers who experience more empathic concern for a needy individual are more likely to engage in costly helping, including volunteering more time, donating more money, and taking on boring or painful tasks (Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002; Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley, & Birch, 1981; Fultz, Batson, Fortenbach, McCarthy, & Varney, 1986). A large literature has also demonstrated that dispositional empathic concern is associated with prosocial behavior and intentions (Eisenberg, Eggum, & Di Giunta, 2010), and also with a decrease in anti-social behaviors, such as bullying (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Raskauskas, Gregory, Harvey, Rifshana, & Evans, 2010). Since empathy is involved in providing help and withholding harm towards others, it has been suggested that empathy may play a vital role in preventing intergroup conflict and facilitating reconciliation (Batson & Ahmad, 2009). Many conflict resolution programs have therefore adopted fostering empathy as a primary program goal. However, there is reason to believe that boosting overall empathic concern may not provide a universal palliative in intergroup settings. In fact, interviews with those who engage in (or attempt) extreme intergroup violence indicate that these individuals are characterized not by a lack of empathy, but rather by high levels of empathy and communal concern for their in-group (Argo, 2009). Similarly, among Israelis and Palestinians the willingness to endorse out-group harm is associated with empathic concern towards their own communities (Ginges & Atran, 2009; see also Lickel, Miller, Stenstrom, Denson, & Schmader, 2006). Therefore, in some cases inducing empathy may not only fail to heal intergroup wounds, but it may motivate out-group hostility. Understanding how Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 4 different facets of empathy influence intergroup conflicts is critical to practical conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts. It is also of great theoretical significance, given the prominent role that empathy plays in many models of intergroup relations (e.g., (Batson & Ahmad, 2009; Lickel, Miller, Stenstrom, Denson, & Schmader, 2006; Stephan & Stephan, 2001). The opposing predictions about the effect of empathy on intergroup conflict can be resolved if we think of empathy not only as an interpersonal process, but also as a group-based emotion – an emotional response that arises because of, or is shaped by, social identities (Smith & Mackie, 2016). Group-based emotions can motivate us to act on behalf of our in-group, and/or against hostile out-groups. For example, people experience anger after an in-group insult, but only to the extent that they identify with that group (Rydell et al., 2008). Similarly, shame and guilt may be felt more strongly by those who identify with or feel attached to their group: Americans feel more shame when considering the poor treatment of Arabs in the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 (Johns, Schmader, & Lickel, 2005), and among Americans and Israelis, identification or attachment to the group, respectively, facilitates group-based guilt about the poor treatment of minorities in their society (Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 2006; Roccas, Klar, & Liviatan, 2006). In the current work, we take an Intergroup Emotions Theory (Mackie, Maitner, & Smith, 2009) perspective of empathy, and suggest that intergroup empathy has two simultaneous effects: If we feel empathy for individual out-group members, it may motivate action on behalf of that out-group, whereas if we feel empathy for individual in-group members, it may motivate action against the out-group. What types of behavior might intergroup empathy most likely motivate? Whereas moral emotions like shame and guilt have been associated with conciliatory gestures (e.g., support of negotiations or reparations), and negative emotions like anger have Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 5 been shown to precipitate active harm, empathy has been most strongly associated with altruism. Therefore, we predicted that low out-group empathy and high in-group empathy would be most strongly associated with withholding altruistic behavior towards the out-group, or preventing others from easing out-group suffering (i.e., ‘passive harm’). From this perspective, the people most likely to withhold out-group altruism or engage in passive harm, would not be those low in trait levels of empathy, such as psychopaths (Baron-Cohen, 2012), but rather those who simultaneously display low out-group empathy and high in-group empathy. Thus, by contrast to interpersonal interactions, intergroup interactions may be best predicted by the parochial distribution of empathy towards in-group versus out-group members, which we term here “parochial empathy” (Bruneau, Cikara, & Saxe, 2015; or “intergroup empathy bias” Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011). The intergroup emotions perspective on empathy leads to three predictions: First, the amount of empathy felt for out-group members will correlate with social identification with the out-group, and the amount of empathy felt for in-group members will correlate with social identification with the in-group. Second, intergroup emotions will predict out-group attitudes and behavior – that is, greater empathy for individual out-group members will predict greater altruism (and less hostility) towards the out-group, and vice versa. Because ‘in-group love’ can be distinct from ‘out-group hate’ (Brewer, 1999), in-group and out-group empathy should predict behavior independently of each other. Finally, parochial empathy may be independent of interpersonal empathy, predicting altruism and antagonism across salient group boundaries, above and beyond trait levels of empathy. Current research Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 6 The goal of the present work is to demonstrate the consequences of intergroup empathy in a range of real intergroup contexts. Since we predict that in-group empathy and out-group empathy will have opposite effects on out-group attitudes and behavior, a parsimonious way to operationalize intergroup empathy is by calculating the difference in empathy felt towards in- group versus out-group members, within-subjects. We take this approach in the current work. However, since a single difference score fails to reveal the individual effects of each component of empathy, and therefore obscures their independent contributions, we also examine in-group and out-group empathy as independent factors. In Experiment 1, we tested whether parochial empathy (1) predicted out-group attitudes and costly altruism over time, and (2) mediated the effect of social identification on these outcomes. In Studies 2 and 3, we examined another key question: (3) whether parochial empathy predicted out-group attitudes and costly helping above and beyond trait empathic concern. Experiment 1: Parochial empathy in Americans regarding Arabs To examine parochial empathy, we presented American participants with fortunes and misfortunes experienced by Americans (in-group) and Arabs (out-group) by adapting a paradigm used previously with novel groups (Cikara et al., 2014; Bruneau et al., 2015).1 Given that the U.S. has been involved in continual warfare with at least one Arab-majority country since 2001, these groups are characterized by a hostile relationship. We hypothesized that (1) both in-group empathy and out-group empathy would independently predict diminished altruistic (i.e., costly helping) behavior toward the out-group, and given that intergroup emotions are fundamentally 1 In the current paradigm, empathy was measured according to a common operationalization: an affective state that is congruent with another’s (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987) – i.e., feeling good in response to someone’s fortunes, and bad in response to their misfortunes. These state measures were chosen to approximate our trait measure of empathic concern, a conceptualization of empathy that has been associated with altruism and intergroup outcomes across scores of studies (e.g., Batson et al., 2002; Batson et al., 1981; Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade, 1987; Batson et al., 1997; FeldmanHall et al., 2015). Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 7 shaped by social identities, that (2) the difference in empathy expressed towards in-group versus out-group members (parochial empathy) would mediate the effect of social identity on out-group behavior. Method Participants We recruited a sample of American participants (N=100) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website. Previous studies using a similar paradigm recruited 50-100 participants (Cikara et al., 2014); because the current study focused on individual differences, rather than mean effects, we planned a priori to recruit at the top end of this scale (N=100). Data collection was terminated automatically after 100 individuals completed the study. Of the participants, 16 missed one of two attention check questions embedded in the survey, leaving 84 participants (M =37.0, age SD=12.0; 51.2% male). Experimental design Procedure. The procedure was adapted from a paradigm developed by Cikara, Bruneau, Van Bavel, & Saxe (2014). Briefly, after being provided with a cover story for the research (i.e., to examine ‘directional problem solving’ in people who learned languages that are written in different directions), English-speaking American participants were told that they would be playing as a member of an English-speaking team, against a team of people who speak Arabic in a problem-solving challenge. Participants were told that individual scores would be tallied and added to the total team score for both teams, and that the first team to 100 points would win the challenge. Prior to the challenge, participants reported where they grew up, their background, and an event that happened to them in the past week. After being assigned to a team (English speakers) Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 8 and told that they were (apparently randomly) assigned to compete against Arabic speakers, participants were told that they would read the events that people from their team and the other team had reported, and respond to them. Participants then read the events of 8 English-speaking people on their team (in-group) and the 8 Arabic-speaking people on the other team (out-group). The 16 specific events were adapted from previous work (Cikara et al., 2014), and adjusted to be culturally neutral (e.g. “[target] came down with a serious illness”). Each event description included the target’s group membership (e.g., “Beth is from NORTH DAKOTA” or “Salma is from EGYPT”) and the target’s language (“English” or “ﺔﯿﻴﺑﺮﻌﻟاﺍ”). Events were randomly assigned to either an in-group or an out-group target, such that each participant viewed 8 in-group events (4 positive and 4 negative) and 8 out-group events (4 positive and 4 negative). For each of the 16 events, participants reported how good and how bad it made them feel that the event happened to the target. Not all measures are reported here; for full survey, see Supplemental Materials. Parochial empathy was measured as the degree to which people felt good about in-group versus out-group fortunes and bad about in-group versus out-group misfortunes. For the purposes of the mediation analysis, parochial empathy was calculated as in-group empathy minus out- group empathy. Intergroup Identification was assessed using the Inclusion of In-group and Out-group in the Self (IIOS) measure (Schubert & Otten, 2002). The degree of overlap with the in-group using this measure has been demonstrated previously to reflect in-group identification (Tropp & Wright, 2001). Participants used their mouse to drag the ‘self’ circle closer or further away from the ‘group’ circle on screen, providing a continuous measure of self/in-group and self/out-group identification. Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 9 Following the measures above, participants were presented with 8 progressive Raven’s Matrices (which involve ‘directional problem solving’, supporting the cover story). Out-group altruism. After finishing the Raven’s Matrices, participants were given the opportunity to complete additional problems (up to 20), with each correct problem providing a $.10 donation to the “Arab Red Crescent Society”. At the bottom of each problem were buttons to ‘opt out’ and skip to the end of the study, or ‘continue’ to the next charity problem. The number of problems completed for charity provided a measure of costly altruism. Follow up survey One week later, participants were provided with a link to a follow-up survey, which 68 (81%) completed (and passed the check question). Those who did and did not complete the follow-up survey did not differ on age, gender, in-group ID, out-group ID, in-group empathy, out-group empathy or the number of tasks completed for charity (all ps>.25). The follow-up survey included exploratory measures that paralleled unrelated concurrent cross-cultural research: emotions towards Arabs associated with Stereotype Content (envy, pride, disgust and pity), prejudice and dehumanization towards Arabs, and emotional responses to injustices committed against Arabs. These items are not examined here. Also included in the follow-up survey were outcome measures associated with out-group helping designed for the current study (support for Arab immigration, donation to out-group members; see Supplementary Materials for full survey). Support Arab Immigration assessed the percentage of U.S. VISAS participants thought should be awarded to each of the following groups: Arabs, East Asians, Hispanics, Africans, and Eastern Europeans (Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, & Cotterill, 2015). We used as our measure the percent of VISAS granted to Arabs. Parochial Empathy and Intergroup Conflict 10 Out-group Donation assessed participants’ altruistic behavior by providing them with a monetary bonus to distribute between an in-group cause (relief fund for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings) versus an out-group cause (relief fund for civilian victims of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Yemen) (Kteily et al., 2015). The amount of money participants donated to the out-group cause provided our measure of out-group pro-social behavior. Mediation test To test for mediation, we constructed three separate models using PROCESS (Hayes, 2013). Each model had the difference between in-group and out-group identification as the predictor, the difference between in-group and out-group empathy (i.e., parochial empathy) as the mediator and one of the outcome measures as the dependent variable. To test the specificity of mediation, we examined both the predicted mediation relationship (intergroup identification as independent variable, parochial empathy as mediator) and the reverse (parochial empathy as independent variable, intergroup identification as mediator), as suggested by Hayes (2013). Results As predicted, American participants reported stronger identification with the in-group (M=87.6, SD=18.1) than the out-group (M=44.3, SD=23.4; t(83)=12.20, p<.001, d=1.33). We took as our measure of ‘intergroup identification’ the difference between these social identity measures – this measure correlated significantly with all outcome measures (rs>.23, ps<.04). American participants also had stronger empathic responses to Americans (M=80.7, SD=12.2) than Arabs (M=78.3, SD=15.2; t(83)=2.10, p=.039, d=.23). We calculated parochial empathy as the difference between the empathy measures. Parochial empathy correlated significantly with all outcome measures (rs>.24, ps<.03), and intergroup identification and parochial empathy were significantly correlated with each other (ρ(84)=.350, p=.001).