Dr. Decety's talk on Empathy was very stimulating, and I thoroughly enjoyed his enthusiasm and expertise. Dr. Decety covered many interesting topic related to empathy, but one that caught my interest in particular was the social stigma of empathy. He explained that empathy is a flexible phenomena because people can choose when or to who they feel empathetic towards. Dr. Decety explained a study that consisted of a participants playing a simulated game of catch with two partners over the computer. There would be a fair partner and an unfair one. When the participant is told that something negative happens to the unfair partner, the reward circuit of the brain becomes activated instead of the empathy circuit. Its almost scary to realize how much our perception of a person can change our reaction towards him/her. The next study that Dr. Decety explained consisted of videos of people experiencing pain, but they were labeled as either healthy, infected with AIDS due to blood transfusion, or infected with AIDS due to drug use. Participants had the greatest empathetic response towards the videos labeled with AIDS due to transfusion and the least for those labeled with AIDS due to drug use. These studies seem to support that empathy is not an automatic response. Even when two people are experiencing the same type of pain, we can respond differently to them based on how we label them. It seems a bit unfair that we can discriminate against some people because if they do not receive our empathy then they will not receive the response that empathy would evoke. If we see two people in pain, but we label one as helpless and one as responsible most people will feel empathetic towards the helpless person and would then reach out to help them and not the other. However, is that fair for to the person that is labeled as responsible? After all, they are experiencing the same type of pain, nor are they any less human the helpless person. Empathy is a very powerful emotion, yet it can curbed by the stigma that society applies to its members.
I would argue that it is fair for us to discriminate to whom we devote our empathy. For the person "responsible for their pain," why should we try to empathize with them, after all it is their own fault (though I realize that there is likely a huge spectrum of cases where it would be difficult to know whether the pain is truly someone fault). However, why would we have evolved as to be able to control our empathy if not to be able to wisely guide our emotions? If we were to apply our empathy toward everyone in pain, it is likely that we would far too often be caught up in the affairs of others. Therefore, I agree that empathy can be curbed by the stigma that society applies, but I believe that this stigma arises out of our innate judgement of the deserving of empathy, and that this judgement is fair.
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