Minding the Gap: Narrative Descriptions about Mental States Attenuate Parochial Empathy

In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-10, Vol.10 (10), p.e0140838-e0140838
Main Authors: Bruneau, Emile G, Cikara, Mina, Saxe, Rebecca
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attitudes
Descriptions
Emotions
Empathy
Experiments
Female
Humans
Male
Narratives
Neurosciences
Personality
Prejudice
Science
Social Behavior
Social identity
Social psychology
Stereotypes
Studies
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Summary:In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently report more empathy for members of their own assigned group than a competitive out-group. However, individualized descriptions of in-group and out-group targets significantly reduce parochial empathy by interfering with encoding of targets' group membership. Finally, the descriptions that most effectively decrease parochial empathy are those that describe targets' mental states. These results support the role of individuating information in ameliorating parochial empathy, suggest a mechanism for their action, and show that descriptions emphasizing targets' mental states are particularly effective.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0140838