Could empathy be more effective?

Effective altruism asks how best to use finite resources for good. This approach could be applied to empathy as finite resource.

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Empathy has been lauded by presidents, educators, and activists as a moral cure, a way to bridge political divides and motivate altruistic action. Former President Obama once said, “The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit.” But some scholars argue otherwise. Psychologist Paul Bloom, in his book Against Empathy, contends that empathy is a poor moral guide: biased, spotlighted, and prone to misfire.

What if both camps are partly right?

In recent years, the effective altruism movement has urged us to think more clearly about how to do good. Rather than relying on our moral intuitions or feelings alone, effective altruists argue that we should use reason and empirical evidence to guide our charitable decisions—especially when resources are limited. Why donate to a local arts foundation, for example, if that same money could prevent malaria and save a life?

This principle—doing the most good with finite resources—need not apply only to dollars or volunteer hours. It can also apply to our moral emotions. Empathy, like money, is limited. It can be powerful and motivating, but it can also be misdirected, fatigued, or wasted. We propose a refinement: not the rejection of empathy, but its optimization. Call it effective empathy.

Empathy as a Finite Moral Resource

Empathy comes in (at least) two flavors. Affective empathy is the emotional response we feel when we witness others’ pain or joy—it includes compassion, distress, even anxiety. Cognitive empathy, by contrast, involves understanding another’s perspective, mentally simulating their experience.

Together, these forms of empathy can motivate altruism, deepen relationships, and enhance cooperation. But they come with costs. Empathy is emotionally taxing. Healthcare professionals, caregivers, teachers, and others in empathy-heavy roles often suffer from what psychologists call “compassion fatigue” or “empathy burnout” (Chikovani et al., 2015). In an illuminating study, participants frequently chose to avoid situations requiring empathy—even when helping wasn’t expected—because of its cognitive and emotional toll (Cameron et al., 2019).

If empathy is a scarce and depletable moral resource, then how we allocate it matters. And if we want our empathy to do the most good, we must use it effectively.

Lessons from Effective Altruism

Effective altruism, as philosopher William MacAskill describes it, is the project of using reason and evidence to improve the lives of others as much as possible. That involves evaluating cost-effectiveness, resisting emotional bias, and focusing on outcomes—not just intentions. As MacAskill puts it:

Effective altruism is not just about making a difference, or doing some amount of good. It’s about trying to make the most difference you can (Doing Good Better, 2015: 9).

But most charitable giving doesn’t follow this principle. According to one survey, although 85% of Americans say they care about effectiveness when donating, only 3% compare charities before giving (Hope Consulting, 2010). People often give to causes that are popular, emotionally salient, or endorsed by celebrities—not necessarily to those that do the most good (Simler & Hanson, 2018).

What if empathy operates similarly?

The Trouble with Ordinary Empathy

Empathy skeptics argue that it is unreliable as a moral compass because it’s susceptible to two major flaws: bias and spotlighting.

Empathy is biased because we feel it more easily for people like us: those who look like us, speak our language, share our culture or group identity. In one striking study, European soccer fans showed stronger neural empathy responses when they saw fellow fans in pain than when they saw rival fans in the same situation (Bloom, 2017). This bias extends to race, age, and attractiveness. We empathize more readily with the familiar and the photogenic.

Empathy also tends to spotlight individuals, not groups. When we hear the name and story of a single suffering child, we open our wallets. When we hear that millions are starving, we look away. In one experiment, people were less willing to help a group of children in need than they were to help a single child with a name and photo (Bloom, 2016). Empathy zooms in—it doesn't scale.

These flaws lead some critics to advocate for “empathetic blinders” (Prinz, 2011) or to replace empathy with compassion or reason. But that’s like giving up on charity because most giving is inefficient. The better approach is not to discard empathy, but to refine it—by learning from effective altruism.

Toward Effective Empathy

If altruism can be made more effective by guiding it with evidence and reasoning, then so can empathy. Effective empathy would involve being aware of empathy’s limits, avoiding its biases, and directing it where it can do the most good.

There is empirical support for this idea. Studies show that empathy can be taught and focused. One study found that children ages 8 to 13 could be guided to empathize equally with in-group and out-group peers when prompted to imagine how those others feel (Sierksma et al., 2015). Empathy, in short, is malleable. We can teach ourselves to use it better.

Empathy also enhances cooperation. As researchers Rumble et al. (2010) note, empathy helps people overcome the small frictions and misunderstandings that otherwise undermine teamwork. By understanding others’ mental and emotional states, we reduce the “noise” that damages social interactions.

Empathy, like the profit motive in economics, can have unintended positive spillovers. Just as Adam Smith’s baker doesn't intend to feed society but does so nonetheless by pursuing her own gain, empathizing with one individual can sometimes expand into concern for many. As Decety and Cowell put it, “empathy is a flexible phenomenon, malleable by a number of motivational, situational, and dispositional factors” (2015: 530). What begins as concern for Louisa, who suffers from malaria, may broaden into donations to combat malaria more broadly.

When Ignorance Is Useful

One of the more controversial ideas emerging from the project of effective empathy is this: sometimes, not knowing is better.

This isn’t a license for willful ignorance or emotional coldness. But when empathy is a finite resource, and when some suffering cannot be alleviated, it may be rational to avoid triggering empathy we can’t act on. For example, flipping past a late-night commercial for an ineffective charity may preserve your emotional bandwidth for causes where you can have real impact.

Moral philosopher Peter Singer has argued that if you can save a child’s life by giving up small luxuries, you ought to do so—and keep giving until any further sacrifice would cause you comparable harm (The Life You Can Save, 2010). But empathy isn’t an unlimited fuel source. If our empathy is spread too thin or triggered too often where it’s causally impotent, we risk burning out and failing to help where we could have made a difference.

Some recent work suggests that repeated empathetic exposure can eventually build empathetic resilience for some people (Hansen et al., 2018). That’s a hopeful finding. But even so, we must still weigh the opportunity costs: feeling deeply for someone we cannot help may prevent us from helping someone we can.

Conclusion

Empathy, like money, should be spent wisely. It is neither a moral savior nor a vice. It is a tool—a powerful one—that can inspire altruism, enhance cooperation, and change lives. But like all tools, it requires skill and discernment.

The project of effective altruism has taught us to think critically about how we do good with our time and resources. Effective empathy applies that lesson to our emotional lives. If we care not just about feeling good, but doing good, we should aim to empathize smarter, not harder.

Sometimes that means resisting the spotlight. Sometimes it means trying to mitigate our biases. And sometimes it means choosing not to know so that when we do act, we act where it counts.

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References

Bloom, Paul. (2014). Against Empathy. Boston Review. URL: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/paul-bloom-against-empathy/

Bloom, Paul. (2017). Empathy and Its Discontents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(1), 24–31.

Cameron, C. Daryl, Hutcherson, Cendri A., Ferguson, Amanda M., Scheffer, Julian, Hadjiandreou, Eliana, & Inzlicht, Michael. (2019). Empathy is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(6), 962–976.

Chikovani, George, Babuadze, Lasha, Iashvili, Nino, Gvalia, Tamar, & Surguladze, Simon. (2015). Empathy Costs: Negative Emotional Bias in High Empathisers. Psychiatry Research, 229(1–2), 340–346.

Decety, Jean, and Jason M. Cowell (2015). Empathy, Justice, and Moral Behavior. AJOB Neuroscience 6 (3): 3–14.

Hansen, Eric M., Jakob Håkansson Eklund, Anna Hallen, Carman Stockman Bjurhager, Emil Norrstrom, Adam Viman, and Eric L. Stocks (2018). Does Feeling Empathy Lead to Compassion Fatigue or Compassion Satisfaction? The Role of Time Perspective. The Journal of Psychology. 10.1080/00223980.2018.1495170

Hope Consulting. (2010). Money for Good: The U.S. Market for Impact Investments and Charitable Gifts from Individuals—Summary Findings. Aspen Institute. URL: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/docs/ande/ANDE_MFGSummaryNote_15AUG10.pdf

MacAskill, William. (2015). Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference. Avery.

Prinz, Jesse. (2011). Against Empathy. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(S1), 214–233.

Rumble, Ann C., Van Lange, Paul A. M., & Parks, Craig D. (2010). The Benefits of Empathy: When Empathy May Sustain Cooperation in Social Dilemmas. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(5), 856–866.

Sierksma, Jellie, Thijs, Jochem, & Verkuyten, Maykel. (2015). The Influence of Empathy on Children’s Helping Intentions Towards Refugee Outgroup Peers. Social Development, 24 (4): 815–830.

Simler, Kevin & Hanson, Robin. (2018). The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life. Oxford University Press.

Singer, Peter. (2010). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. Random House.