Redrawing communal boundaries can convert counter-empathy into genuine empathy.

Evidence

If a sense of social connectedness is created, so that the joys and distresses of an outsider foretell similar experiences for oneself, counter empathy is transformed into empathy. Together these findings underscore the power of beliefs about others and whether they are included or excluded from one’s communal category in regulating empathy to the plight of others. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 648

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a cognitive reframe — altering who counts as ‘us’ — can flip an automatic emotional response (empathy to counter-empathy) is a dense point about the social construction of moral feeling.