Motivated empathy and affective polarization: current findings and ethical implications

Political polarization has been on the rise in the United States, and the controversy surrounding vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic has renewed interest in the crucial role that empathy can play when it comes to engaging with parties who disagree. The authors have two aims in this chapter. With respect to the first aim, they provide an in-depth analysis of the state of the literature on empathy and polarization (as well as discussion of Schadenfreude), and in particular of the motives that drive the decision to empathize. With respect to the second aim, they discuss the normative criteria that govern the moral appropriateness of empathizing with individuals who disagree. They argue that future directions should focus on examining how the cognitively effortful nature of empathy can impact decisions to empathize with political out-groups, particularly when doing so places a significant normative demand on the empathizers.