Political Behaviour/Sociology

F19(c) - Narratives, Empathy and (In)Differences

Date: Jun 14 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location: 680 Sherbrooke St. West 1047

Chair/Président/Présidente : Daniel Stockemer (Université d'Ottawa)

Choosing to Feel: The Political Costs of Empathy: Thomas Bergeron (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Social and political divisions have increased steadily in the last decades, affecting individuals' engagement with politics and governmental (in)action on important issues. Empathy is often discussed as a possible solution to reduce polarization. Research shows that empathy can indeed increase prosocial behaviour and reduce prejudice. Yet, scholars have also argued that it is biased toward the in-group. To date, the scarce literature observes that empathy can fuel polarization because individuals will feel less empathic for members of the out-party. What remains unclear are the drivers of this gap. This research examines whether empathy avoidance might be the source of this trend. This research thus intends to address three questions using evidence from a survey experiment in Canada (N = 1,199) and in the United States (N = 750). First, do people avoid empathy? Replicating the findings of previous studies, we show that, on average, respondents avoid empathy. Second, are people more likely to avoid empathy when the target is from a political out-group? Contrary to the expectations, I find that partisans are not more likely to avoid empathy when the target is from the political outgroup. Third, does empathy avoidance have incidences of political polarization? The results show that empathy avoidance influences polarization, but not in the expected way. Replicating recent findings (Simas et al. 2021), I show that people that are motivated to feel empathy are more affectively polarized and hold more polarized attitudes. These results demonstrate that motivational empathy can increase polarized attitudes.

Accepting them hurts our bargaining power: Diplomatic relations and attitudes towards immigration: Go Murakami (Ritsumeikan University), Nicholas Fraser (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Abstract: Studies on public attitudes toward immigration find that immigrants’ origin significantly influences the level of support (opposition). We examine why by exploring Japanese attitudes. First, we argue that the differentiated threat model well explains how differently people oppose immigrants of different origins. Second, we use this theory to explain Japanese people’s attitudes toward immigration, but we face several challenges in this application. Most notably, it makes no logical sense to suppose that the Japanese public associates immigrants from China, South Korea and Taiwan with either one of economic, cultural or law and order threat, and that such an association determines the level of their opposition. Thus, we introduce a new concept of diplomatic threat that accepting the immigrants is perceived to hurt their state’s capacity to negotiate with the immigrant-sending state. We theorize that the diplomatic threat explains how differently the public support accepting immigrants of different origins. To test our theory, we used a rating-based conjoint survey experiment, in which we randomly assigned immigrants’ origin and a threat type in our vignette. We expect that the respondents who perceived a diplomatic threat from immigrants of any origins, particularly China and South Korea, opposed immigrant admission the most. Our results refute the differentiated threat model, and clearly denied that the Japanese public perceive diplomatic threats the most from the immigrants from China and South Korea. Nonetheless, the results also validated the concept of a diplomatic threat and its influence, when it stirred up the strongest opposition to immigration.