Summary: The cognitive effort required to feel empathy leads many people to avoid empathic engagement, even when there is no emotional or financial cost.
Source: American Psychological Association (APA)
People Often Avoid Empathy Because It Feels Mentally Demanding
New research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General finds that people frequently avoid empathizing with others not because it is costly in money or overwhelming emotionally, but because they perceive it as mentally taxing. Empathy—understanding and sharing another person’s feelings—is widely regarded as a social good that motivates helping behavior. Yet, when given a choice, many people choose not to engage in it.
Lead author C. Daryl Cameron, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State University, and collaborators from the University of Toronto conducted a series of experiments showing that participants tend to prefer tasks that require less cognitive effort rather than those that require actively adopting another person’s perspective. “There is a common assumption that people avoid empathy because it could be depressing or lead to material costs such as donations,” Cameron said. “Our results show that the main deterrent is the perceived mental effort involved in empathizing, even when the emotional content is positive.”
Study Design: The Empathy Selection Task
The research team developed the Empathy Selection Task to test whether cognitive costs drive empathy avoidance. Across 11 experiments and more than 1,200 participants, subjects repeatedly chose between two decks of cards. Each card displayed a photo of a person—initially images of child refugees—and the two decks cued different responses. For one deck, participants were instructed to describe physical characteristics of the person in the photo. For the other deck, they were instructed to actively try to feel what the person was feeling, to adopt that person’s emotional perspective.
Participants could pick freely from either deck on each trial. In additional experiments the researchers varied emotional content, using images of sad or smiling people. Across conditions, participants preferred the non-empathic option far more often than the empathic one—even when the photos depicted joy.
“We saw a strong preference to avoid empathy even when someone else was expressing joy,” Cameron said.
Key Findings
- Overall, participants selected the empathy deck only about 35% of the time, demonstrating a substantial tendency to avoid tasks that required active empathic engagement.
- There were no material costs in the experiments—participants were not asked to donate money or time—so avoidance could not be explained by financial or direct emotional costs.
- After each experiment, survey responses revealed that participants judged the empathy task to be more mentally demanding, less comfortable, and less familiar than describing physical features. Those who reported that empathy felt effortful or made them feel insecure, irritated, or distressed were likelier to avoid it in the selection task.
Can Perceived Ability Change Choices?
The researchers also tested whether changing participants’ beliefs about their empathy ability would influence their choices. In two experiments, half the participants were told they performed better than 95% of others on the empathy task and average on the physical-description task, while the other half received the opposite feedback. Participants who were led to believe they were good at empathizing selected the empathy deck more often and reported that empathy felt less mentally taxing.
These results suggest that perceived efficacy reduces the cognitive cost associated with empathy and can encourage people to engage in it. In other words, convincing people that they can empathize effectively might lower the psychological barrier that causes avoidance.
Implications
Cameron and colleagues argue that understanding the cognitive barriers to empathy has important social implications. If educators, organizations, or public campaigns can shift people’s motivations and confidence about their empathic abilities, they may increase willingness to reach out to vulnerable groups—such as immigrants, refugees, and victims of natural disasters—who benefit from others’ compassionate engagement.
Source: American Psychological Association (APA)
Original Research: “Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs,” C. Daryl Cameron, PhD; Julian A. Scheffer, MA; Eliana Hadjiandreou, BA; Cendri A. Hutcherson, PhD; Amanda M. Ferguson, MA; Michael Inzlicht, PhD. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Published online 18 April 2019. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000595. (Closed access.)
Abstract (summary): The researchers developed the Empathy Selection Task to measure voluntary choices to engage in empathy. Over 11 studies (N = 1,204) and a meta-analysis, they observed a robust preference to avoid empathy. This avoidance was associated with perceptions of empathy as effortful, aversive, and less effective. Experimentally increasing perceived empathy efficacy eliminated avoidance, indicating that cognitive costs contribute directly to empathy choices. When given the option to share others’ feelings, people often decide the mental effort outweighs the benefits.