44. Is Empathy in Fact Immoral?

How much do you look down on me, Angela? Just how much? I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Steven Dubner, and you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, is empathy in fact immoral?

We should all immediately learn to be as unempathetic as possible, correct? Also, what are the benefits of going where the wind may take you? I resolve to have no resolution right now. My goal is to not have a goal right now. Stephen, I have an email here from a gentleman named Matt Wall.

Matt writes, is there a downside to empathy for most of my life? I operated on the assumption that empathy was the most important thing for making the world better. If only people could understand other perspectives, everything would be fixed. But lately I've read some pretty damning research that suggests that empathy actually can make people less fair, more irrational, more biased. A study by Paul Bloom involving fictional wait lists for medical treatment found that participants would move people up whose stories they knew at the expense of the strangers on the list.

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