Findings Friday: increased experience as a racial minority increases empathy for majority race

[belenen]

icon: "analytical (a close-up photo of my eye in bright sunlight, showing the green and grey and roots-looking patterns)"Zuo and Han (2013) measured relative empathy responses for Chinese people who had lived in the US most of their lives using a series of 48 video clips of white and Chinese people (gender and race numerically balanced) being poked

Comments

[raidingparty]

Great reading!

Starts leaning towards one of those cases of unintentional classism - if a group is so small that one can't experience a group of them (or any, for that matter), there's no good way to expose oneself. Although there might be a mitigation of generalized "empathy with not-like-me" to un-explored groups.

[belenen]

Oh, there are good ways! Reading autobiographies, blogs, and other source materials is one, watching media by and about other groups also works. Going to meetups about differences is another. It gets more difficult as the group gets smaller, but it's possible. And it does in fact generalize: so, learning about even one group that is different from you increases empathy with all other groups (I read a study on that one too).

Of course, when you have little time and no money, these things become more difficult across the board. But usually people with little time and no money have many other ways they learn empathy.

[raidingparty]

Oh, all kinds of possibilities. Thank you!