We tend to associate empathy with positive characteristics. An empathetic person is someone who knows how to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and feels what they feel. They understand us not only rationally but also emotionally. However, empathy also has a dark side. Contrary to what many people think, empathy not only generates compassion but can also lead to cruel aggression.
Person in trouble + Empathy = Aggression
Researchers at the University of Buffalo wondered if empathy could have a darker side. They were quick to come up with a very interesting experiment to test their hypothesis.
They recruited 231 volunteers and asked them to read an article that featured a person with financial problems. In some cases, the article featured a person stressed out by financial difficulties, in other cases a different scenario was depicted, implying that the person was having financial problems but was not particularly worried about them.
Next, participants were told that the financially challenged person would be entering a math contest to win $20. They were then asked if they would like to give that person’s opponent an appetizer containing a “special sauce,” which was defined as “a substance that causes pain and impairs cognitive performance.”
In this way, the researchers ensured that the participants understood that by making this decision they would give an advantage to the person with financial problems but, at the same time, cause harm to his opponent. What did they do?
The results showed that when participants believed that the financially distressed person was feeling stressed, they not only chose to administer the “special sauce” but also chose larger amounts of it. In other words, empathy for the financially distressed person not only led them to act immorally (tilting the scales in one person’s favor and making the competition unfair) but also led them to cause pain.
Everything seems to indicate that empathy makes us assume that “the end justifies the means.”
Why are people capable of feeling empathy also capable of causing pain?
Empathy is feeling the pain of others as if it were our own; it is experiencing stress and worry in our own flesh. Therefore, it is not strange that our emotions are activated and reason is silenced. As a result, we act more impulsively, without thinking too much about the consequences of our actions. This lack of reflection can lead us to adopt aggressive and violent behavior.
Just think that throughout different cultures and times there have been hundreds of cases in which, under the pretext of defending a helpless person, disproportionate harm has been caused to the “aggressor.”
This tells us that empathy also has its dark side, that it is not a panacea and that we must remain alert when this feeling is awakened because it could lead us to adopt behaviors that are far from being fair or noble.
When we see a person suffering, we should ease their pain, not cause more pain and suffering in their name.
