The Connection between Ideology and Empathic and Counter-Empathic Emotions

• In Event: The Interplay between Emotions and Politics

Abstract

Empathy—the cognitive capacity to understand, as well as the affective resonance with, the emotional experiences of others—and schadenfreude —feeling positively at another group’s misfortune —are emotions that often lead to moral prosocial or spiteful harmful behaviors respectively. An outstanding question is what motivates feelings of empathy and schadenfreude towards people from different groups. Here we example three ideological antecedents: social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and left-wing authoritarianism (LWA). SDO measures the extent to which individuals engage in group hierarchical thinking while RWA measures the extent to which individuals engage in authoritative thinking. RWA measures radicalized support of existing authority. However, authoritarianism can manifest in radicalized opposition to existing authority, which is measured by LWA. There is some work connecting SDO and RWA to emotion expression overall but there is comparatively little work on empathy and schadenfreude.

In the research presented here, we examine the relationships between ideology and emotions, hypothesizing that SDO, RWA, and LWA will have overlapping but distinct impacts on intergroup outcomes in line with the ideology. Thus, while SDO might be negatively related to empathy overall, we would expect that SDO would be positively related to empathy for groups in line with the ideology, or groups with higher status (e.g., drug dealers and medical specialists). Similarly, while RWA is likely not related to schadenfreude overall, we would expect RWA to be positively related to schadenfreude for groups that are dangerous to the existing status quo (e.g., undocumented immigrants and homeless people). We further extend past work by including left-wing authoritarianism.

In two studies (Study 1 n = 492; Study 2 n = 786), we recruited convenience samples to complete a series of questionnaires in a fixed order. Participants completed the ideology questions, filling out the SDO, RWA, and LWA scales in a randomized order. Next, participants completed the trait and state empathy/schadenfreude questionnaires in a randomized order. We used SEM to calculate the standardized path coefficients between ideology and emotions for each target group separately. We included trait empathy/schadenfreude in each model to compare trait and target-specific pathways.

Starting with empathy, we find broad support for our hypotheses regarding SDO and LWA. SDO was negatively related to trait empathy, as well as for empathy towards homeless people and undocumented immigrants, the two competitive groups for whom we hypothesized SDO would have a particular strong relationship towards. SDO was also negatively related to empathy towards medical specialists. SDO was unrelated to empathy toward drug dealers. LWA was positively related to empathy towards all groups but not trait empathy. Finally, RWA showed less consistent patterns, as it was positively related to trait empathy and empathy towards medical specialists, which went against hypotheses. RWA was negatively related to empathy towards undocumented immigrants (as hypothesized), but we didn’t find the negative relationship between RWA and empathy for drug dealers.

Regarding schadenfreude, SDO was positively associated with schadenfreude for all forms. Exploratory r.tests comparisons on the zero-order correlations reveal that SDO’s relationships with empathy and schadenfreude towards competitive groups were significantly stronger than SDO’s relationships towards non-competitive groups. RWA was unrelated to trait schadenfreude but was positively related with schadenfreude towards all groups. Doing similar exploratory analyses, we find that RWA’s relationships with empathy and schadenfreude towards undocumented immigrants were significantly stronger than those same relationships with non-dangerous groups (i.e., homeless people and medical specialists). In contrast, RWA’s relationships regarding empathy and schadenfreude towards drug dealers were not consistently stronger. Finally, LWA was positively related to trait schadenfreude, and schadenfreude towards all groups but drug dealers.

We discuss the implications of the research as well as present preliminary work that shows empathic and counter-empathic emotions are unique moderators between SDO and supporting group-based harm.

Author

• Sa-kiera Tiarra Jolynn Hudson, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business