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Humans prefer to put more effort into empathizing with groups than with individuals 

Study participants asked to choose whether to empathize with or describe people preferred to empathize with groups, despite finding it difficult and distressing

[SUMMARY] Scientists studying empathy tested whether people would prefer to empathize with groups or with individuals using a pair of card decks, asking people to choose between describing or empathizing and then showing them a picture of an individual or a group to describe or empathize with. People were more likely to choose to empathize with a group rather than an individual, even though they reported that empathizing was difficult and unpleasant.

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What makes us care about others? Scientists studying empathy have found that people are more likely to choose to empathize with groups rather than individuals, even though they find empathizing equally difficult and uncomfortable in both cases. The scientists suggest that the sight of groups of people could offer more context information which helps people decide whether to empathize, and therefore increases the chances that they choose to do so.

“People’s willingness to empathize is different depending on who the target is: a single individual or a group of people,” said Dr Hajdi Moche of Linköping University, Sweden, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology. “Specifically, people were more willing to empathize with a group than an individual, although empathizing was rated as more effortful and distressing compared to staying objective – for both the individual and the group.”

What is empathy? 

The researchers defined empathy as understanding, feeling, and sharing in another’s world, while maintaining the understanding that it’s not the same as your world. Empathy can come at a price, whether it’s paid in time, money, or emotion: feeling others’ pain tends to be painful. They wanted to learn whether people were more likely to choose to pay this price when they were dealing with individuals or with groups. Although an experiment in the lab doesn’t equate directly to the choices someone might make in real life, understanding how people empathize differently with groups and individuals could help us understand the part that empathy plays in natural disasters or wars.

To investigate this, the researchers recruited 296 participants to take part in an experiment called the Empathy Selection Task, which invites participants to choose between two decks of cards, one of which will ask them to empathize and one of which will ask them to remain objective. Their willingness to empathize is gauged by how often they choose the empathy deck.

Pick a card 

Each participant underwent a two-block test – one block of pictures of individuals and one of groups. Each block had 20 different stock photos depicting a diverse range of people, with (as far as possible) neutral expressions and plain backgrounds. Participants were given the two decks and asked to choose a card from one of them. Then they were given a picture to react to, writing down three keywords that described either the feelings of the people in the images or their external appearance. After each block, participants were asked questions which aimed to understand their experience of performing the tasks.

The scientists found that participants chose to avoid empathizing more often during the block of individual pictures, choosing to empathize 34% of the time on average. However, during the block of group pictures, they chose to empathize 53% of the time. Even though they found empathizing harder and more distressing than staying objective, participants chose to pay that price more often during the test of group images.

“The task of trying to share the internal experiences of the other requires more effort, imagination, and understanding of what the person might feel compared to describing external features like hair color,” said Moche. “To share in the internal experiences might be especially hard when the information at hand is only a neutral facial expression without any body language or background context.”