Minding the Gap: Narrative Descriptions about Mental States Attenuate Parochial Empathy

Abstract

In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently report more empathy for members of their own assigned group than a competitive out-group. However, individualized descriptions of in-group and out-group targets significantly reduce parochial empathy by interfering with encoding of targets' group membership. Finally, the descriptions that most effectively decrease parochial empathy are those that describe targets' mental states. These results support the role of individuating information in ameliorating parochial empathy, suggest a mechanism for their action, and show that descriptions emphasizing targets' mental states are particularly effective.

Fig 1. Narrative descriptions mitigate parochial empathy.

(A) Empathic responses towards in-group targets (dark bars) and out-group targets (light bars) across each condition. Within-condition pairwise t-tests are reported. Error bars show standard error of the mean. (B) Parochial empathy (in-group empathy—out-group empathy) for each of the conditions presented in (a).

Fig 2. Narrative descriptions impair memory for group membership while improving memory for target-specific events.

(A) Empathic responses to in-group targets (dark bars) and out-group targets (light bars) in response to mild fortunes/misfortunes presented by themselves (event-only) or after a narrative about the target (event+narrative). (B) At the end of the study, participants performed a 2-alternative forced-choice task to recall the group membership of each of the 16 targets (group memory), or the event that happened to each target (event memory). Error bars show standard error of the mean.

Fig 3. Memory for group membership mediates the relationship between condition (event-only versus event+narrative) and parochial empathy.

Fig 4. Descriptions of mental states have the greatest impact on parochial empathy (Experiment 3).

(A) Empathy reported towards in-group and out-group targets when participants were provided only with the events that befell each target (event-only condition, data from Experiment 1), when they were provided with descriptions of physical characteristics of the target prior to the event (event + physical), or when they were provided with emotional and mental state content of the target (personality characteristics, hopes, aspirations) prior to the event (event + mental). (B) Parochial empathy from the data in (A). Note that these data include the full set of stimuli; see text for results by stimuli matched for valence and engagement.