While empathy is a force of good, it is far from perfect. For example, why are we posting more support for Paris than we are for Beirut? Where are the social media tributes for the hundreds of other people who have been affected by horrible violence this year? The short answer: There’s a cognitive bias toward what’s familiar.
“Human beings seem particularly able to feel empathy when they perceive those who are suffering as similar to them,†said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.
“Horrible things happen every day — indeed there was a terrorist attack in Beirut on the same day as the Paris attack — but many Americans see that as farther away from their experience and harder to empathize with,†he added.Â
As Maura Judkis points out in The Washington Post, our social media posts may also be a little more self-absorbed than selfless. We have a tendency toward being narcissistic online, posting images of ourselves in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre and waxing poetic about loving the city of love because we’ve been there. We relate. We empathize. Aligning ourselves with a tragedy that otherwise has nothing to do with us personally is a psychological construct we can’t help but play into. But if it promotes a stance of unity, is that really such a bad thing?Â
Ultimately, no.
“Because social media brings us closer than ever to the victims of faraway attacks, it is possible that we feel more deeply than we would have in a pre-Facebook era,†Judkis wrote. “Not to mention, it is easy to put oneself in the shoes of the victims.â€