Empathy Wars

In my view, two factors contributed to the popularization of the word and concept of “empathy” in recent years—psychologist Brene Brown’s groundbreaking 2010 50-million-times viewed TED Talk on “The Power of Vulnerability” and Barak Obama’s 2008 “The Audacity of Hope” campaign. The public was convinced—empathy good, non-empathy bad.

Then things got complicated.

In 2024 conservative Christian influencer Allie Beth Stuckey released her book Toxic Empathy. In it, she made a case for empathy being manipulated for political ends. This was seen by some, including Hillary Clinton who recently published a hit piece on Stuckey, as part of a “war on empathy.”

It’s interesting to watch this all go down. Even before the backlash, I noted that empathy, which is, by definition, “understanding and sharing the feelings of others,” could be exploited for wicked ends. I believed, and still do, that empathy can be manipulated, particularly by abusive people. For example, an abusive spouse whose marriage I tried to help didn’t like my honestly. “Empathy! I need empathy!” he cried. “But what about empathy for your partner?” I asked.

So often the problem with empathy isn’t its existence, but its misplacement. This is why we need, along with more empathy, good discernment to direct its distribution.

Just to highlight how wrong empathy can go, let me share a common scenario from my work with ProjectSafeChurch.org. I have seen firsthand how people will leap into action to defend the one accused of abuse before they even consider the alleged victim. Why? “How will he support his family? How will he cope with the shame? He’ll lose friends! This is terrible.” In such a response, the victim doesn’t get a passing thought. I have seen people express preferential empathy for the perpetrator even when they know he’s guilty! This creates an empathy vacuum where it should flow to the victim.

Just to further refine our discussion, I’ve excerpted the following from my book 13 Weeks to Joy on the limits of empathy. You can obtain the entire book here.

Log in to let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Definitions

In-group bias - Because we more easily relate to people like us, we will naturally tend to limit our circle of concern to our own kind of person—racial, religious, ideological, ethnic, and so on. For example, one study showed that when shown a needle penetrating a hand, both black and white participants experienced more empathy for their own color. Intriguingly, this appeared to occur more as a function of culturally acquired racial prejudice rather than the target simply being different—the researchers targeted a violet hand and got an empathic response similar to same-race response.

Racial bias at its worst can literally turn off the faucet of emotional empathy, leading us to see certain groups as subhuman! Only 162 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the black slave Dred Scott when he appealed to the court for his freedom. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney said that blacks could never become citizens, that “all men are created equal” didn’t apply to blacks because they weren’t men, and that black people could be “bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made.”

Self-referencing - Empathy is an emotional resonance with others mediated by mirror neurons that have the unique ability to “connect” one nervous system with another. Because of our natural bent toward self-centeredness, even empathy can become self-referenced. I may feel awkward in response to observing a socially awkward person, but then become more concerned with alleviating my own feelings of vicarious embarrassment than with alleviating their feelings of awkwardness. This can lead to avoidance of needy people.

Compassion fatigue - This well-known phenomena affects people in the helping professions and can lead to extreme burnout. Among other important preventatives, emotional boundary setting becomes essential to helpers. Empathy appears to come in a limited, exhaustible supply that we must respect, constantly “recharging” at the feet of Jesus.

Manipulation of empathy - While many believe sociopaths and psychopaths lack empathy, they may actually possess just as strong empathy as normal people, but be more adroit in turning it off. In a study led by author of The Empathic Brain, Christian Keysers Ph.D., the testers showed a group of 21 criminal psychopaths movies of people inflicting harm on one another. Predictably, scans revealed the activation of the empathy regions of the brains of the participants as below average. Keysers remembers later chatting with one of the most severe psychopaths and finding him very pleasant. He remarked at now normal the man seemed. The testers then decided to have the participants watch the movies again, this time instructing them to feel empathy. Their empathy activation came up to normal levels.

Some believe the kind of empathy sociopaths and psychopaths possess is only the cognitive variety. Whether this is true or not, they know how to manipulate others’ emotional empathy to the max. The fatal attraction between an empath and a narcissist is the stuff of legend, with the empath believing, forgiving, trusting, and the narcissist manipulating to the full. Pathologically selfish people see other people in very instrumental terms, as “an obstacle in the way of his own advancement, or a stepping-stone on which he himself may climb to a higher place.”

Empathy is a beautiful gift from God. We teach empathy-based active listening at Abide Network! If our hearts are tender with the love of Christ, we will feel the pain of others, and this will provide an unsurpassed avenue of connection. “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19). What a great treasure God has given us in empathy! This is why the enemy tries so hard to subvert it, and why we need to carefully guard it from misuse. Hopefully this blog has helped!

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