The unintended consequence of becoming empathetic

Date:
September 16, 2020
Source:
Michigan State University
Summary:
Many people want to become more empathetic. But, these changes in
personality may also lead to changes in political ideologies.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
When people say that they want to change things about their personalities,
they might not know about the inadvertent consequences these changes
could bring. In fact, changes in personality may also lead to changes
in political ideologies, say researchers from Michigan State University
and the University of Granada, who led the study.


==========================================================================
"We found this interesting effect where people wanted to improve on
things like being more emotionally connected to others -- or, becoming
more empathetic," said William Chopik, assistant professor of psychology
at MSU. "But we found that this leads to changes in their political
souls as well, which maybe they weren't intending. We saw that in these personality changes toward greater empathy, people placed a lot more
importance upon more liberal ideologies - - like how you should treat
other people and take others' perspectives." The study, published in
the most recent edition of Journal of Research in Personality, is the
first to look at shifts in personalities and morals due to volitional
change -- or, changes one brings upon oneself.

Chopik and co-authors from Southern Methodist University and the
University of Illinois asked 414 volunteer participants to take a weekly questionnaire. Such questions included how they would react in certain situations, if they wanted to improve or change themselves, how they felt
about helping others and other personality-related queries. Additionally,
the researchers measured participants' "empathic concern" -- or, feelings
that would arise when they saw someone in need or doing poorly. The
researchers continued the weekly questionnaire for four months.

"Among the questions, we asked participants how they felt about five broad moral foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity. We
tracked sentiments week-to-week," Chopik said. "While these are common
for personality- related assessments, individual moral foundations can
also help explain attitudes toward various ideologies, ethical issues
and policy debates." Generally, liberal and progressive people tend
to prioritize two of the five moral foundations: care and fairness;
whereas, conservatives draw from all five -- including the more binding foundations: loyalty to the ingroup, respect for authority, and observance
of purity and sanctity standards, Chopik said.

"Our study shows that when people are motivated to change, they
can successfully do so," he said. "What we were surprised to find
was that an upward trajectory for something like perspective-taking
aligned with the person's shift towards the more liberal foundations."
The researchers did not intend for their study to generalize personality
traits of one political party or another, but rather to see if -- and
how -- a person could change themselves and what might be a result
of their "moral transformation." "Being a better perspective-taker
exposes you to all sorts of new ideas, so it makes sense that it would
change someone because they would be exposed to more diverse arguments,"
Chopik said. "When you become more empathic, it opens up a lot of doors
to change humans in other ways, including how they think about morality
and ideology -- which may or may not have been intended."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Michigan_State_University. Original
written by Caroline Brooks. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ivar R. Hannikainen, Nathan W. Hudson, William J. Chopik, Daniel A.

Briley, Jaime Derringer. Moral migration: Desires to become more
empathic predict changes in moral foundations. Journal of Research
in Personality, 2020; 88: 104011 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2020.104011 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200916131030.htm

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