2021/04/28 by Zoë Fowler, Kyle Fiore Law, Brendan Gaesser · 1 voice · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Ethics in Business and Education #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · doi:10.1177/0956797620979965
openalex publication_date 2021/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Empathy has long been considered central to living a moral life. However, mounting evidence has shown that people’s empathy is often biased toward (i.e., felt more strongly for) others that they are close or similar to, igniting a debate over whether empathy is inherently morally flawed and should be abandoned in efforts to strive toward greater equity. This debate has focused on whether empathy limits the scope of our morality, but little consideration has been given to whether our moral beliefs may be limiting our empathy. Across two studies conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( N = 604), we investigated moral judgments of biased and equitable feelings of empathy. We observed a moral preference for empathy toward socially close over distant others. However, feeling equal empathy for all people is seen as the most morally and socially valuable approach. These findings provide new theoretical insight into the relationship between empathy and morality, and they have implications for navigating toward a more egalitarian future.