Liberals in the United States and Germany felt more empathy than conservatives toward protesters injured during an overcrowded demonstration in the United States and Germany, according to survey results of 1,046 participants who read a fake newspaper article the non-real incident. The protesters were either described as liberals, conservatives, or non-partisan local residents.
Liberals were more likely to want to help the protesters by donating money for the medical treatment and both conservatives and liberals felt more empathy for their political allies.
Like all such studies, this was self-reported results so no one but political activists will infer causal influence of political ideology on motivated empathy.
“The takeaway message is that political ideology is associated with the motivation to feel empathy in two parallel ways – one that emphasizes the differences between liberals and conservatives, and another that emphasizes the similarities between the two political groups,” study author Yossi Hasson of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem told PsyPost.
“On the one hand, liberals, compared to conservatives, want to feel more empathy toward others regardless of the targets’ political identity (either liberals, conservatives or non-political groups). On the other hand, both liberals and conservatives wanted to feel less empathy toward outgoup members compared to members of their ingroup or an ideologically-neutral group.”
