>For example, one vignette described “Terry,” a 28-year-old woman who felt deeply sad for the past four weeks and lost interest in activities she usually enjoys. In the “biological” version presented to the study participants, Terry’s father also suffered from symptoms of depression, a doctor told her as a teenager that she might have an imbalance of neurotransmitters, and an MRI scan revealed that she had an unusually small hippocampus, which could affect her reaction to stress. In the “psychosocial” version, Terry’s father died when she was five, her mother has always been highly critical and not very nurturing, and Terry suffered from a recent breakup and problems at work.
>...respondents felt less empathy for the fictional patients when they read the biological explanation.
Am I missing something here? Of course people would empathize more with a person who has relatable experiences. Nobody is going to relate to "an MRI scan revealed that she had an unusually small hippocampus" but almost everyone has experienced relationship troubles and problems at work.
My read is that, if you think about it, yes, it's somewhat obvious that would happen—but the question is, since that's clearly not fair behavior/right, what do we do about it?
It seems clear to me that it's not right since in both cases the causes are outside the control of the afflicted person—even more so in the case of a brain structure anomaly; and a common ethical heuristic is to not blame someone in such a situation—but practically speaking, because people can't relate to the brain structure issue, they won't empathize as much.
Another ambiguity here is what's meant by 'empathy'. If you take it to mean 'relate to' (which is one meaning of course), then it's vacuous to say people have more empathy for those they can relate too. But there's another usage referring essentially to a cognitive mode wherein the empathetic person acts with understanding toward someone they're engaging with. It's surely easier to enter that mode when it's something you can personally relate to—but that isn't necessary: we can become empathetic in this way just through an abstract understanding of someone's situation.
>but the question is, since that's clearly not fair behavior/right
Is it?
In the second scenario, I empathize with the painful experience, not just with the outcome (depression). Even if both fictional characters are described as having the same state now, how they got there matters to us. We feel empathy for what they went through.
I don't think there's anything wrong to have different emotions towards a person who has just been robbed, compared to someone who hasn't been (but doesn't have more money in the bank account).
We have codified this in our laws. We give different punishments for the same crime depending on the criminal's path and emotional state. We literally judge people based on what they went through. Why is it wrong or unfair to feel differently towards the two fictional characters in this case?
I do have to agree with you insofar as the studies' particular results go: in both scenarios, the patient suffered: in the first scenario because of a lifetime of depression, in the second because of the same + the trauma of the early life experiences. So, if we follow your dictum:
> We feel empathy for what they went through.
(which I mostly agree with) —then yes, the relatively higher portion of empathy should go for the character in the latter scenario (which matches the results of the study).
That said, if we generalize the study and apply it to the setting it's concerned with (medical practitioners empathizing with patients)—it's not a matter of relative measures between multiple patients; it's a question of whether the empathy a patient may (or may not) inspire is sufficient to cross some threshold for a medical practitioner.
If the fact that the cause is of biological origin is sufficient to drop the empathy response beneath that threshold —then it's problematic (the paper points out supporting research for just how problematic it is). After all, the person who has suffered a lifetime of depression does deserve empathy from a doctor/therapist, even if not as much (I guess) for somebody who suffers additional afflictions on top.
Actually that makes me wonder how much dealing with many patients who are very badly off (and deserving much empathy) moves the threshold for the doctor, so that maybe they can't empathize so much for patients with situations which are legitimately bad—but not as bad as what they've seen a lot of...
OK, I think I see your point. Maybe we can train the professionals to act out of reasons other than empathy? Or be more attuned to the current state and not the history. (Don't know if that is possible, or what specifically needs to be done).
The real issues at hand with this research are 1) prescribing medicine too often and 2) interacting with patients too little.
If you take a look at the original research (linked to from the posted article), then you can skip to the discussion section to see the authors wording of what you are taking about. They are saying the same thing as you, essentially, in a more specific and sophisticated way (page 4 of 5)
That's a good suggestion I hadn't thought of. Really not sure aside from that—I've got some vague ideas about certain 'empathy trainings' that could be done, but I'd be concerned about throwing a random factor into how the rest of their work is done...
The authors of the original research discuss the evidence in the context of medical practice generally relying upon biological evidence and that such a reliance is linked to a lack of empathy and a corresponding lack of belief that psychotherapy would be a helpful treatment. That dissuasion from psychotherapy, they argue, could lead to worse outcomes for patients that would have benefited from psychotherapy.
>since that's clearly not fair behavior/right, what do we do about it?
Is there something that can be "done about it"? Well someone will probably build an app for it because that's just how people in tech like to solve problems but these kinds of bias just seem to be a naturally built in part of the operating system as I see it.
The authors of the original research conclude with the hope and recommendation that doctors take on a worldview that doesn’t solely use biological cause as a way to differentiate between normal and abnormal.
The part of the “operating system” that they are talking about is a part that isn’t firmware, but rather software (or FPGA, more accurately metaphorically speaking) - meaning thought process, not instinct or gut feeling.
The way it works is this: You need to have a construction of someone (or something) to have empathy for it. The way you generate that construction is by shared experience. The experiences that you have are what you use, the building blocks, to construct that abstract person.
Biological Terry has no building blocks by which the empathizer generates empathy; only super diffuse academic terms. Psychosocial Terry, on the other hand, is an abstraction filled with facts which the empathizer (in almost all cases) shares. The extent to which the empathizer has loss of a close family member, a critical parent, a breakup, and issues at work will be the extent to which they can generate abstract Terry and thus the extent to which they can empathize.
That's the mechanism they are running into in this study, I think.
That’s the beautiful complexity of social science research - always trying to hit a moving target: one person believes that a biological explanation is necessary for empathy and another believes that an emotional reasoning is necessary for empathy.
Either could just be sufficient though and likelihood of sufficiency for empathy is the thing, subject to the whim and winds of society, being studied.
Almost everyone suffered from accidents and physical conditions preventing them to live a normal life temporarilyor permanently. Child with a broken leg, no running and jumping for a month. Adult with kidney problems, a life of dialysis.
So "of course" I expected those clinicians to emphathize more with patients with biological problems.
OTOH, my reaction was to feel more empathy for the biological explanation, which I can imagine corresponding to an unexplained cause of pain in her life, which is potentially unfixable. Psychosocial explanations are important but to me they feel like a normal thing to address in society already (though probably not enough).
This threw me off, too. I initially thought the article was trying to say that there is less empathy for those diagnosed with a biological predisposition because it is easier to legitimize than someone's feelings.
>...respondents felt less empathy for the fictional patients when they read the biological explanation.
Am I missing something here? Of course people would empathize more with a person who has relatable experiences. Nobody is going to relate to "an MRI scan revealed that she had an unusually small hippocampus" but almost everyone has experienced relationship troubles and problems at work.