Empathy is not a hard-wired reflexive response to others’ emotions

Evidence

The capacity for vicarious arousal to the plight of others plays a vital role in the development of compassion. Empathy is the emotional reaction to the experiences of others. Compassion is the desire and effort to alleviate the perceived suffering of others. Some theorists have argued that organisms have evolved to respond automatically to the emotional states of others (Preston & de Waal, 2002). However, empirical evidence across species calls into question hard-wired reflexive empathy. If people’s emotional lives were automatically triggered by others’ emotional experiences, they would be emotionally exhausted and functionally debilitated by the expressions of pain, grief, fear, anger, sad-ness, frustration, disgust, and suffering by anyone and everyone in sight. Even informal observation reveals that people are hardly consumed by empathy. All too often they respond indifferently or even callously to the suffering of others. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 637

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes empathy (emotional mirroring) from compassion (desire to alleviate suffering) — a useful conceptual clarification.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 637
• XREF: connects to: Observing another’s pain response changes observers’ own physiology — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 904