Empathy and self control

This is an interesting article about a study that suggests that the ability to empathize might actually decrease one's ability to exercise self control:

More and more research sug­gests that our brains have dif­fi­culty dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between observ­ing an action and actu­ally par­tic­i­pat­ing in it. Empa­thy, for exam­ple, seems to hinge in part on our abil­ity to “take on” another’s emo­tions through vic­ar­i­ous expe­ri­ence. I always think of this when watch­ing a come­dian fall flat. I can feel the embar­rass­ment as if I’m stand­ing there on stage look­ing at a room full of blank stares.

A study in the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence inves­ti­gated this dynamic, but from a dif­fer­ent angle: researchers wanted to know if observ­ing some­one else exert self-control boosts or reduces one’s own self-control. Par­tic­i­pants were asked to either take on the per­spec­tive of some­one exert­ing self-control, or merely read about some­one exert­ing self-control. They were also asked to take on the per­spec­tive or read about some­one not exert­ing self-control.

The results: par­tic­i­pants who took on the per­spec­tive of some­one exert­ing self-control were unable to exer­cise as much self-control them­selves; those who merely read about some­one exert­ing self-control didn’t expe­ri­ence the energy drain. In other words, get­ting into the shoes of some­one mak­ing the effort wore par­tic­i­pants out as if they were doing it themselves.

On the flip side, par­tic­i­pants who read about some­one exert­ing self-control expe­ri­enced a boost in their own self-control, com­pared to those who read about some­one not exert­ing self-control. Read­ing resulted in a con­ta­gious effect rather than a vic­ar­i­ous one.

The dif­fer­ence between these results boils down to degrees of psy­cho­log­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion. Tak­ing on per­spec­tive reduces psy­cho­log­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion, and the more that gap closes the greater the vic­ar­i­ous effect. Read­ing about some­thing pro­vides more of an oppor­tu­nity to increase psy­cho­log­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion, which reduces the chances of vic­ar­i­ous effect.