Empathy means you empathize with one side and not the other.
In a new book, Bloom argues that empathy leads us astray when we rely on it to make moral decisions
By Lea Winerman
May 2017,
" Another problem is that empathy is innumerate. It's a spotlight—you zoom in on one person, as opposed to many. Some people think that this is one of its advantages. But real-world moral decisions involve coping with numbers. They often involve a recognition, for instance, that helping just one person can make lives worse for hundreds or thousands of others. The innumeracy of empathy often leads to paradoxical situations where we're desperate to help a single person—or even a cute puppy—while ignoring crises like climate change, because although millions of people will be affected by it, there's no identifiable victim to zoom in on."
Paul Bloom
"What role does the experience of feeling what you think others are feeling – often known as ‘empathy’ – have in moral deliberation and moral action? Empathy has many fans and there is abundant evidence that it can motivate prosocial behavior. However, empathy is narrow in its focus, rendering it innumerate and subject to bias. It can motivate cruelty and aggression and lead to burnout and exhaustion. Compassion is distinct from empathy in its neural instantiation and its behavioral consequences and is a better prod to moral action, particularly in the modern world we live in."