Is Empathy Necessary for Morality

By J. Prinz. 2011

234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

The Dark Side of Empathy: Mimesis, Deception, and the Magic of Alterity (2015, background): “De Waal’s Russian doll model of empathy (2009b: 211) seems to us a useful template for thinking about those cases of empathy that are deeply social and involve complex forms of “emotional mimicry” (Prinz 2011: 212), yet do not entail a moral concern for the wellbeing of the other.”
Positive Empathy and Prosocial Behavior: A Neglected Link (2016, background): “In addition, it has been proposed that an empathically induced affect is not likely to be as intense as a genuine affective state originating in the self (J. J. Prinz, 2011).”
Minds without spines: Evolutionarily inclusive animal ethics (2020, background): “They tend to have less empathy for — and hence to pass more severe moral judgment upon or assign lower moral weight to — individuals who are less similar, less subjectively attractive, or belong to an out-group such as a disfavored race, ethnicity, or nationality (Prinz 2011; Hewstone 1990).”
Empathy: a motivated account. (2014, background): “…a faulty source of moral judgments and prosocial behavior (Bloom, 2013; Loewenstein & Small, 2007; Pizarro, Detweiler-Bedell, & Bloom, 2006; J. Prinz, 2011a, 2011b).4 These writers pointed out that emotional responses to targets often produce indefensible decisions, such as helping…”