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The empathy deficit

Sad piece in the Boston Globe over the weekend about findings in a recent study that college students of today care far less about the feelings and predicaments of others than college students did 30 years ago. Key grafs:


Initially, they found little shift. "It's looking sort of flat, or no real pattern, up until 2000," Konrath said. "And then there's this sudden, sharp drop."


Perhaps more than any other characteristic, one's capacity for empathic concern dictates how much one cares about others. Those who score high in empathic concern, according to past research, are more likely to return incorrect change to a cashier, let someone else ahead of them in line, carry a stranger's belongings, give money to a homeless person, volunteer, donate to a charity, look after a friend's pet or plant, or even live on a vegetarian diet. And what's alarming, Konrath said, is that empathic concern has fallen more than any other aspect of empathy. Between 1979 and 2009, according to the new research, empathic concern dropped 48 percent.

The article goes on to speculate on some possible reasons, which include technology and nonstop cable news. Oddly, the article steers entirely clear of questions of our political culture.

The college students of the 2000s were the first crop raised entirely in the modern era of conservative dominance: they were born from the Reagan ascendancy onward. So they've grown up hearing lots of authority figures say that poor people made their own problems, etc etc etc.

You want to tell me that's a mere coincidence, the sharp drop-off in empathic concern among exactly the cohort that grew up wholly in conservative America? I can't wait to see the excuses on this comment thread, eh? Bogus study, thin, no proof, yada yada yada. To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle, said Orwell. To which Tomasky adds, especially if you're ideologically committed to not seeing it.

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