CHAPTER FOUR

Are Power and Politics Barriers to Empathy?

POWER CAN BE found in a lot of places and in many relationships. It is always found in politics. I learned that firsthand when I spent a year working as a fellow in Washington, DC. My doctoral research was on public policy, specifically the Social Security Act. I always had an interest in actually contributing my research to the making of public policy. I had entertained the idea of doing a city government internship as a way to bring my studies into real-world policy making, but my advisor wisely warned me against doing that while working on my degree. She was worried that I would get side-tracked and never finish my studies. So I finished my degree and, in line with my training, I started teaching at the university level. While I was very happy teaching, the itch to actually “do” policy rather than study it got stronger. After two years of teaching, I was lucky enough to be chosen to serve as a Congressional Science Fellow.

My year in Washington was split between working in the office of a U.S. senator and serving as a legislative analyst in an office sponsored by Statehouse members back home in Illinois. It was fascinating to see and be part of the numerous power rankings. The most obvious power was in the making of public laws. Congress and the president, supported by a massive staff across federal agencies and political offices, were the crafters of the rules and regulations that governed all of our lives. What an incredible seat I had to watch the making of U.S. law! But that was only the official power. What struck me was all the other power that rested in people’s hands at so many different levels.

Power in Politics

When I worked in the Senate office, just mentioning my place of employment (even though I was a temporary fellow) meant my phone calls were answered, people were happy to meet with me, and I would receive any reports or data I needed. I was in research heaven. However, in that Senate office, I was constantly reminded of my outside status. I was told that things were different in Washington and not like the life of a university professor. The first memo I was asked to write was an internal memo, only to be read in the senator’s office. It was returned to me by the legislative director (to whom I reported) with corrections seven times (and the memo was only five sentences long). He frequently made fun of me for being an “ivory-towered” academic, an outsider. To be sure that I was aware of my position, he moved my desk on three different occasions over six months, all without telling me beforehand. I might have taken it personally (okay, I did a little), but it was simply the way things were done. I watched as staff more senior than I was complained about being treated like lackeys one day (having to carry the senator’s coat and briefcase without being conspicuous or saying a word) to providing a briefing on legislative issues of importance the next day. It was a wild ride of being important at one moment and being the lowest outsider in another.

When I worked in the state office, my phone calls stopped getting answered and I never got the reports that were supposed to be sent. I was now in a lower-ranked office in the pecking order of Washington. Senate offices were not only physically higher, sitting on Capitol Hill, but also higher in power and rank. Now I was in a state office, not far away, but off of the prime real estate a stone’s throw away from the Capitol. When a member of our Illinois state house came to visit, we were all on call to serve any need the elected official might have. On several occasions I overheard those folks complaining that they were not being treated with respect by the Washington elected officials. My boss in that office was very open with us that our job was to make each state elected official feel important because in the pecking order of Washington, he or she was not as important as was the case back home.

It’s not that such power rankings did not exist in every place I had been employed. University politics is not free of power maneuvering; it’s definitely there. But what struck me about Washington was that power is at every level, front and center. It really was not personal as much as it was practical. Who you are in terms of what you can get done or who you can influence defines you. And that is very much the basis of power.

Power is having influence and control over outcomes in other people’s lives.1 Power is a process in which the few have the means to enforce their choices or will over the many.² The nature of power in most systems is in the shape of a pyramid; there are more people at the bottom and fewer people with power as you go up within the system. Most businesses have managers who report to supervisors who in turn ultimately report to company owners or chief executive officers. Schools have teachers who report to principals who report to superintendents. Some systems, like schools, have outside boards to hold the leaders accountable. But the day-to-day power rests in fewer hands as you go up the chain of command. Many of our larger systems are made up of a collection of pyramids that also narrow as we go up the ladder of influence and control. For example, local governments report to state governments that report to the federal government. Because power affects life outcomes, it matters to our daily lives. That is especially true in the very public arena of politics, in which those in power are watched and analyzed by millions.

At the National Achievers Conference in 2012, Donald J. Trump stated: “One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even.”3 Those are powerful words, spoken by a powerful man. At the time he was simply a multimillionaire. He had the power of riches, fame, and position, and four years later he added to that by being elected to the highest political position in this country, president of the United States. With that kind of power, a person can influence every arena of public life. Getting even means you can exert more power over the other. There does not seem to be much need or room for empathy. You set a goal, you go after it, and all seems to be within your personal control. Is power over others contrary to the empathy we have been talking about? Can we be powerful and still consider the positions and needs of others?

Many in government do not think empathy belongs with power. The president of the State of Arizona Senate in 2014, State Senator Andy Biggs, gave his answer to that question while he was speaking on the floor of the state Senate explaining why the state budget had cut funds for education and social services: “Government is raw power. Government has no compassion or empathy.”⁴ Two years after saying that, Mr. Biggs was elected to the U.S. Congress and is now serving as a member of the House of Representatives. Clearly he has succeeded in using his power because the voters gave him a promotion. Equally as clear is that he views government as no place for empathy. He is not alone. When President Obama invoked the value of empathy in choosing Supreme Court judges, saying, “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes,” he was met with stiff resistance.⁵ In a 2013 article in the National Review, James Christophersen, the executive director of the Judicial Action Group, wrote that “the value of ‘empathy’ as the primary criterion for selecting judges must be eradicated, as should the practical application of that value, which usually means emphasizing race, sexual preference, gender, and political affiliation over basic qualifications and standards” over concern that Obama would again use empathy as a criterion for choosing a Supreme Court justice.⁶ He went on to call it a “subversive trend.” To Christophersen, empathy means giving things to people who do not deserve them simply because they are a member of a specific group.

Resistance to empathy by those in power tends to break between conservative and liberal lines. Why? Is empathy a soft, liberal-hearted way of thinking that ignores qualifications and standards? Given Biggs’s and Christophersen’s assessments, it would seem so. In fact, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center asked about people’s political ideology and their beliefs about what is important to teach children.7 Over three thousand adults were given a list of twelve traits and asked to choose the three that they thought were the most important qualities to teach children. They were also asked to describe where they fell in their political ideology. Table 4.1 shows the distribution of the responses.

TABLE 4.1

Three Top Qualities Most Important to Teach Children

Consistently Liberal	Mostly Liberal	Mixed	Mostly Conservative	Consistently Conservative
Being responsible: 47%	Being responsible: 55%	Being responsible: 56%	Being responsible: 57%	Being responsible: 61%
Empathy for others: 34%	Hard work: 42%	Hard work: 46%	Religious faith: 44%	Religious faith: 59%
Helping others: 28%	Helping others: 26%	Religious faith: 29%	Hard work: 43%	Hard work: 44%
Hard work: 26%	Being well mannered: 24%	Being well mannered: 26%	Being well mannered: 21%	Being well mannered: 17%
Curiosity: 23%	Religious faith: 23%	Helping others: 24%	Independence: 16%	Obedience: 15%

On the one hand, there was a good deal of agreement. All the groups agreed that among the top three qualities to teach children, “being responsible” was important. All five categories cited “hard work” as among their top choices, although to varying degrees. However, only one group identified “empathy” as among the most important qualities to teach children—the group who identified themselves as consistently liberal. The trait of “helping others” only showed up as a top quality for the consistently and mostly liberal. “Religious faith” was very important to the mostly conservative and consistently conservative groups, less important for mixed and mostly liberal, and not in the top for consistently liberal (chapter 6 covers religion and empathy, so we will return to this item). “Obedience” was only cited as important by those who identified as consistently conservative. Much of what is in this chart is not surprising given what we know about the political spectrum ranging from liberal to conservative. But what does it say about our ideological divide that teaching children empathy is considered important only by those with the most liberal ideology? Is empathy a liberal perspective? It might be.

Neurological brain activity actually differs between those who identify as liberal and those who identify as conservative. Those who identify as liberal have a greater tendency to take in social cues and context, while those who identify as conservative are more focused on the individual.⁸ Other neurological research found that people who identified as liberal dedicated more neurological activity to processing complex and conflicting information, while the neurological activity in people who identified as conservative was connected to maintaining habitual patterns.⁹ Genetics may even play a role. Using behavioral genetics analyses of data from twins, researchers found that more than life experience or environment, genetics influenced political attitudes.¹⁰ This genetic influence may explain how we develop our political orientation from a young age. A study that was able to track preschool children over twenty years found that there was a set of characteristics shared by preschoolers who twenty years later identified as politically conservative and a different set of characteristics shared by those preschoolers who later identified as politically liberal.¹¹ Among the traits in preschoolers who later identified as conservative were uncomfortableness with uncertainty, rigidity under duress, and compliance with following directions, while the traits in those preschoolers who later identified as liberal were autonomy, expressiveness, and inclination toward under control, that is, unconstrained by others. A comprehensive review of over eighty studies done across multiple countries supported these other studies: the psychological underpinnings of political conservatism ideology are based in concerns about handling uncertainty and fear, with conservatives having an overall response of resistance to change.¹²

In a very recent study, the power of fear as a precursor to conservative positions on social issues and resistance to social change was confirmed.¹³ When half the participants were first asked to imagine having the superpower to be able to fly, their responses to a social attitude survey were as expected: the Republican-identified participants were more conservative and the Democrat-identified participants were more liberal. But when the other half of participants were told to imagine having the superpower to be able to make themselves completely safe and invulnerable to any harm, the Republican-identified participants’ positions on social attitudes were more liberal and similar to the Democrat-identified participants. The researchers had addressed the underlying concerns for safety and survival, moving them to take more liberal social views. This is particularly interesting because we know that fear and concern about safety and survival can block empathy.

These studies suggest that the components of empathy may come more naturally to those who hold liberal ideologies—they are already attuned to context and their brain activity reflects processing of complex and conflicting information, which is similar to the cognitive activity needed to maintain self-other awareness and emotion regulation while walking in the shoes of others. On the other hand, as we know from the previous chapters, concern about uncertainty, fear, and resistance to change can all act as barriers to engaging in empathy. I am not saying that liberals are empathic and conservatives are not, rather that the characteristics that commonly follow those identities can be encouraging or inhibiting to engaging in empathy.

Empathy and Social Hierarchy

Political identity is not the only ideology that might have an impact on empathy. People’s beliefs and values in how societies are best structured, that is, how the social hierarchy or status of groups is ordered, can play a role. There are varying terms, but the two most basic competing structures are between one that stresses social dominance, in which people prefer their own group to dominate others, and the other view that stresses collectivity and egalitarianism, in which people prefer practices and policies that flatten the hierarchy and promote equality. These two views often relate to conservative political ideologies and liberal political ideologies. Conservative political thinking tends to see society as hierarchical and view groups as not all equal, and liberal political ideology tends to want society to be more egalitarian with more equality between groups and less hierarchy.

Researchers measuring brain activity found that for those who prefer social dominance hierarchy over egalitarianism, there is less neural activity in the region of the brain that is key to the ability to share emotions and feel concern or another person’s.14 This lower activity in sharing emotions has been found to impact how well people can read others. Furthermore, those who believe that social hierarchies are good and that social inequality is normal demonstrate lower empathic accuracy.¹⁵ These same researchers found that even when people themselves lacked power, holding the belief that social inequality is part of our natural order was still related to lower empathic abilities.

This raises a key question. Does believing that social inequality is a normal part of our society make one less empathic and thus strive for power over others, or does having lower empathic abilities facilitate the attainment of power, which includes seeing social hierarchy as a key view? For example, lower empathy might make it easier to make tough decisions about subordinates, such as disciplining or firing someone. Thus, those with lower empathy are able to take on the difficult side of being in charge and feel comfortable with the hierarchical relationship they have with their subordinates. While this likely plays a role in the lower empathy of people with a social dominance orientation, it seems that having that perspective may dampen empathy more than empathy tamping down the social dominance preference.16 Other research seems to back this up. Students with a communal orientation were compared to students with a self-interest orientation (a form of social dominance in which the individual is more important than others). When given power, those with a communal orientation completed tasks in a socially responsible way by choosing to take more of their time and consider others, while those with a self-interest orientation completed tasks faster with their own interest at the forefront.¹⁷ All the students were given power and choice on how to complete the tasks. The difference in how they did it reflected their social orientation. Those who tended toward beliefs that reflect social responsibility used their power for others, while those who tended toward beliefs that reflect focusing on their own needs and interests used their power for themselves.

Power Does Affect Empathy

The research on power and beliefs suggests that the way we think society should be structured, either in a vertical hierarchical order or in a horizontal egalitarian fashion, affects our levels of empathy. There may be several reasons for this difference. Power and being at the top of a social hierarchy may not require attention to others or awareness of the social context. Unlike the powerless, who live with the decisions of the powerful that impact their lives, those who are powerful do not need to pay much attention to those who are powerless. The powerless have no impact on the life outcomes of the powerful. Also, the powerful have more demands for their attention because of their roles in the hierarchy. They have something to offer subordinates. Because of the demands on their attention, they are more likely to use stereotypes. Stereotyping is a quick way to judge people. It serves as a shortcut to understanding others. Psychologist Susan Fiske states it best: “The powerless are stereotyped because no one needs to, can, or wants to be detailed and accurate about them. The powerful are not so likely to be stereotyped because subordinates need to, can, and want to form detailed impressions of them. The powerless need to try and predict and possibly alter their own fates.”¹⁸ There seems to be a one-way direction of interest: those with less power are more interested in those with more power.¹⁹

In addition to less interest in understanding the uniqueness of others, high-powered individuals have a lower capacity for compassion and empathy.20 This may not be because they are hard-hearted, but instead may be due to a selective use of their attention. High-powered individuals attend less to the social environment, to context. This keeps them from being distracted and makes them more capable of staying on task. There is more to gain for the powerless in understanding peripheral information, while high-powered individuals can focus on the task at hand. This may be in relation to the way high-power individuals approach processing information—high-powered individuals are able to ignore nonrelevant information and focus more deeply on the task, which improves their pursuit of goals because they pay less attention to context or “peripheral information.”²¹ The powerless, on the other hand, take in all sorts of information and form more complex pictures of people and situations. They actually have higher executive functioning, that is, the mental cognitive processes that help us plan, organize, and make sense out of our surroundings.²²

In addition to the lack of attention to social context by those in power, another key skill of empathy often gets missed: perspective-taking. Research shows that power actually impedes perspective-taking.²³ There may be two reasons for the lack of perspective-taking for those with power.²⁴ The first may be the result of a “disinhibiting” effect of power. People with power feel freer to take actions that satisfy their needs or desires. It can be anywhere from being more likely than those with less power to turn off an annoying fan that is blowing in their face²⁵ to a greater likelihood of committing adultery.²⁶ In fact, those of higher social class are more likely to behave unethically, including cheating, stealing, and lying, than those of lower social class.²⁷ These behaviors typically have social norms that place them as misbehaving. But having a sense of power frees people to act more on their impulses with less worry about what others think.

The second reason those with power are less likely to engage in perspective-taking is their self-focus. When participants in a study looking at power and inspiration were asked to talk about and write about an event they found inspirational, those who scored higher on power ratings were more likely to feature themselves in the inspirational event than those who rated lower in power. The researchers came to the conclusion that “the powerful prefer to entertain their own rather than other people’s experiences and ideas, because they are more inspired by their own internal states than by those of others.”²⁸

The behavioral differences between the powerful and the powerless are more than just feelings or desires. We can actually see differences between individuals with power and those without power in their brain patterns. The areas of brain activation of those who feel powerful differ from those who feel powerless.29 EEG brain scanning (electroencephalography) used to assess the neural activity of participants writing about a situation in which they had power over another person, when compared to participants writing about a situation in which someone had power over them, revealed different brain activity. Those who were in the power group used the system in the brain that stimulates approach (a form of disinhibition) and goal achievement, while those in the powerless group used the part of the brain that is reactive to external events. The researchers concluded that these reactions make sense: those with power are less constrained by the environment or other people and act on their goals and desires, while those with less power pay attention to the environment, likely monitoring any unexpected changes because of their more precarious situation of lacking power. It may be that the powerless, because they are more dependent on others by nature of having fewer resources or control, tend to have a more communal focus.³⁰

Thus, we see that having power minimizes perspective-taking, places the self as most important (ignoring self-other awareness), and distances us from our social context. Given these tendencies, power does not move us toward interpersonal or social empathy. While we may feel distressed at the prospect that people in power are unlikely to have empathy, it is not all bad.

The Plus Side of Power

The focus of those in power can result in positive outcomes. Power decreases procrastination, promotes focus and prioritization, and increases persistence, flexibility, and readiness to respond. Together these abilities/behaviors promote goal-directed behavior.³¹ These skills can be invaluable when major projects are taken on and deadlines need to be met. However, although power can improve outcomes, it can come at the cost of processing the feelings of those with less power. As I was studying this aspect of empathy and power, I finally got some clarity on an event that occurred in my professional life fifteen years ago.

Years ago we had a major change in leadership at our university. With new people at the top come new directions, which can be both exciting and terrifying. One such change was that our department was one of several that was to be moved off the main campus, our home since the inception of the program thirty years before. We were going to be located twenty miles west on a to-be-built campus downtown. At the time, there was virtually nothing there, an area needing revitalization, and very few of us, especially the support staff, lived in the area. In fact, most of us had bought homes to be close to our jobs, and now our jobs were being moved. That was a very disruptive and anxiety-provoking experience.

The new president of our university held an open forum to answer questions. Over a hundred people showed up, many of whom were frontline staff like secretaries and clerks, some of whom barely made wages above the poverty line. After the president presented the plan, one of the first questions asked was about parking: Would there be affordable and safe parking close to our new workplace? That question set off the president, and he proceeded to berate us that we were small minded by worrying about such an unimportant detail when the big picture was about progress, serving more students and developing a new kind of campus. While that was true, he completely missed the anxiety of those he had tasked with making this move. Most of our students, staff, and faculty were women who were concerned about working in an underdeveloped urban area (at night it was deserted) without knowing if they would have safe parking that they could afford. We had built our lives around our jobs, and now we were being mandated to uproot. On top of that, we were being reprimanded for focusing on the details of the move and not appreciating the bigger, grander picture of what could be.

I learned a lot about empathy and power that day, although I still did not have the deep research-based knowledge that I have today to help me understand what happened. Here was an example of someone in power who was a visionary, completely committed to his vision, but not tuned in to those less powerful than he who were not looking for change and were very content in the current structure. In fact, many of us had lots of friends and working connections forged over many years that were part of where we worked. Moving would change all that. There was no ownership or sense of belonging to this greater vision because it came from the top and was mandated. There was fear of the change, and there were genuine, important life concerns. Those at the top were not picking up any of those emotions. At the same time, knowing what I know now about empathy and power, had the president attended to our needs, he would not have been able to swiftly and efficiently bring to life this new endeavor.

To bring about rapid and dramatic change, people’s feelings have to be minimized. Empathy actually can be a barrier to sweeping change, because if you are in charge of those changes, tuning in to all the concerns of those affected by the changes would be overwhelming. But not tuning into those changes has a cost. The cost is that people feel unheard and alienated, and although they may do what you want, they will not feel connected to the mission, the vision, or to you as leader. So it becomes a choice about how much we want to care about others and what we want to accomplish. I do not think that both are impossible to do at the same time, but I am certain that both cannot be done quickly. Processing people’s feelings takes time. Attending to empathic insights takes time. It means figuring out what feelings are behind someone worrying about a parking space. That can slow down the big process. It is a question of your priorities. Do you want to engage with people to build a caring and connected community, or do you want to create buildings, programs, and outcomes that are tangible in an efficient and timely manner? Some of us leave a place behind hoping that people remember that we made them feel important and cared about, and others leave a place behind hoping that people remember what we created and what we built. Sometimes you get to both touch people’s lives in a personal way and build tangible outcomes. If being empathic is important to you, then doing both looks different than what we are used to.

When empathy is part of group living and working, outcomes can be significant but are more unexpected and unplanned. What do I mean by that? Let me share another example. In my first year as a university professor, I was asked to teach a class about working in communities. As is true for a lot of new professors, you often get asked to teach courses that are not covered, and therefore you may not actually have the expertise to teach that class. That was the case for me. I did my due diligence and prepared a list of readings and included the assignment from the previous instructor that required a community project. I did not have a specific project in mind; I was new to the community and the truth was that, although I had some community work experience, it had occurred years earlier and was not a major part of my professional training. Rather than try to be the expert I was not, I invited the students to choose a community topic about which the class could do research and plan some action to take related to the topic.

It was a small class, and the group began a discussion of what they might want to study. They began to focus on the issue of homelessness. Well, I had just moved from Chicago, a city with a lot of problems around homelessness, to teach in this small, rural community that was primarily a college town. My first thought, and I remember even saying it out loud, was that homelessness was not something that was a real problem in a college town like it was in Chicago. The students got quiet. Although they were polite and did not argue with me, I sensed that they were deflated because I had made a judgment about their perceptions. Luckily being a new teacher made me more tuned in to my students because I really wanted them to like my class, so I wanted to know what they were feeling. They thought they had a good idea, and I thought it was a dumb idea. I decided to shut my mouth and let them go off and begin their community research to come back in another week and report what they found. I actually was so sure of myself that I thought they would return and we would have to come up with a different topic. I was concerned that we would lose a week and that everything I had planned would have to be rearranged. I was wrong. I was very wrong. Over the course of a semester, those students created the most amazing research project, documenting for the first time the extensive hidden homelessness in a rural, small town. The project got lots of local press coverage, and the students even got asked to meet with the state representative from the community to share their research with her. It was astounding, and I was totally wrong to discourage them from pursuing their interest. Had I not sensed their feelings, a great opportunity would have been lost. How many great ideas get lost because those in charge have an agenda and are not willing or comfortable with letting the emotional flow take place?

Finding the Middle Ground: Making Power and Empathy Work Together

The motivations and actions that accompany power make powerful people less likely to engage the components of interpersonal and social empathy. The skills most at risk of not being used are perspective-taking, self-other awareness, and attention to social context. This seems to portend badly if people with power are the ones developing laws and rules to guide social living. I have already recounted numerous policies and actions that demonstrate that problem (recall the example in chapter 1 about welfare reform and the Twitter story of the Speaker of the House not realizing how little an extra $78 a year is): those in power simply don’t get what it’s like to live a less powerful life. Are we doomed to have those in power only think of themselves and act without restraint? The good news is that not everyone in power behaves that way, and there are clues as to why having power is not a fait accompli to lacking empathy. Thankfully there are good examples of when people in power do get it, make decisions that take others into account, and are not self-focused.

Earlier I quoted former president Barack Obama and his call for using empathy when choosing judges. Before he became president of the United States, he expressed his belief that empathy was important for making sound decisions when he wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope that he considered a sense of empathy to be “at the heart of my moral code.” He wrote that empathy was more than sympathy or doing charity; he described it as “a call to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes.”³² Politicians before him walked that walk and used their understanding of others to create lasting and meaning social policies. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which empathically conveyed the pain and tragedy of living life as a slave. It sold millions of copies, and as expert on the psychological development of morality psychologist Martin L. Hoffman wrote, “it probably did as much as any book could” to convince people of the moral choice to abolish slavery. In fact, President Abraham Lincoln is famously said to have acknowledged the impact of the book’s message of antislavery when he met Stowe with the greeting, “So this is the little lady who started this big war.”³³

The Great Depression of the 1930s impacted millions of people in distressing and painful ways. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped numerous people with empathy to help move his New Deal agenda to respond to the catastrophic economic upheaval. He appointed as his Secretary of Labor the first woman to hold a cabinet position, Frances Perkins.34 Perkins grew up in a privileged New England family, which afforded her the opportunity to attend Mount Holyoke College. Her intention, like many women at that time, was to become a teacher. In her last year, she took an economics course that, unlike her other studies, required her to visit local factories. She saw firsthand the working conditions of women and children in the factories. This experience was her first empathic view of labor. After teaching and then working in a position helping immigrant and African American girls find work, she decided to become a social worker and study political science. Following her advanced studies, while working in New York City, she personally witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, the worst factory fire in New York’s history. Because the stairwells were locked to prevent breaks and the factory was overcrowded in order to get the most work done in the cheapest way possible, the women and children working there were trapped. Witnesses, like Frances Perkins, watched in horror as women jumped out of windows to escape the flames, only to fall to their deaths. The images left an indelible mark on Frances Perkins. She went on to work in state and federal government for passage of regulations to improve labor conditions. First as a member of Roosevelt’s governor’s cabinet and then as a member of his presidential cabinet, Frances Perkins shepherded numerous labor reforms. Foremost among her work was chairing the committee that crafted the Social Security Act of 1935 and gained passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which included the prohibition of child labor.

Perkins was not alone at that time in using empathy to guide policy making. The two men who worked with her and sponsored the Social Security legislation in Congress, one in the Senate and the other in the House of Representatives, knew poverty firsthand. The well-regarded historian of the New Deal era Frank Leuchtenburg wrote, “The administration’s bill was introduced in both houses of Congress by men who had felt keenly the meaning of social insecurity. Robert Wagner, who steered the social security measure through the Senate, was the son of a janitor; as an immigrant boy he sold papers on the streets of New York. David Lewis, who guided the bill through the House, had gone to work at nine in a coal mine. Illiterate at sixteen, he had taught himself to read not only English but French and German.”³⁵ These men, along with Frances Perkins, used their personal insight into what financial insecurity and lack of employment feels like to advocate for legislation to address the problem. Today, Social Security is the most powerful piece of social welfare policy in the United States, keeping millions of retired seniors out of poverty. The legislation includes programs that cover health care (Medicare and Medicaid), disability, and unemployment insurance.

Although not an elected official, Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps the most moving example of a person who called on his life experiences to inform his efforts at social change. The moving account of his life describes a man who knew firsthand the limitations caused by prejudice and discrimination as well as the opportunities that can come with gaining power and recognition.36 He never lost sight of his experiences or those of his friends, family, and the many people he met through his ministries and travels. Those experiences shaped and informed his advocacy. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on the mall in Washington in August 1963, his personal connection was vivid in his remarks when he acknowledged people’s lived experiences and connected them to his own family:

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulation. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering…. I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream…. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.³⁷

These powerful words were spoken from personal experience and reflected his ability to understand the perspective of others and the social context in which they lived.

As in the case of Frances Perkins, not all powerful political actors with empathy personally grew up with disadvantage. Even with a young life of privilege, some with power have gone on to gain empathic insights that moved them to advocate for public policies that reflected those insights. Robert Kennedy came from one of the most powerful and privileged families to move within political circles. In 1967, in response to the growing public awareness about hunger and economic deprivation that gave rise to the War on Poverty, Robert Kennedy visited some of the poorest communities in the South. Those with him reported that following one visit to families living in a very poor community in Mississippi, he was moved to tears. This man of great wealth and privilege returned to Washington and pushed Congress to expand the Food Stamp Program to better provide for those in need. Kennedy cited those experiences of seeing poverty in person as the motivation behind his advocacy to create programs to feed the neediest.38

These examples are but a few showing that empathy can inform power and move the powerful to take action that is beneficial to the many, not just to themselves. While there are likely more examples, unfortunately they are not typical. In fact, many politicians have great skills in reading people, but that does not necessarily translate to having empathy.

Can You Have Perspective-Taking Without Empathy?

We often marvel at the ability of some people to read others but see them do it in a way that is manipulative and anything but empathic. That is because reading people and being responsive to what you think they want is not the same as being empathic.

In experiments with supervisors and those who reported to them from a variety of companies and organizations, each person was tested on how well he or she could assess the emotions of others. The results were that the supervisors scored higher on accurately recognizing the emotions of others.³⁹ This is not surprising. In a positon of leadership, it is very helpful to be able to read the emotions of those who work for you, as well as on a broader level, which may include customers, business partners, suppliers, or voters, all the others with whom a leader is likely to interact. So we know that those in power positions can read other people’s emotions, but what those readings mean to them and what they do with that knowledge can be anything but empathic. Reading people is not the same as walking in their shoes. It is not taking the time to learn about and understand the context of their lives and imagining what it would truly be like to be in their place.

What does it look like when you have someone with incredible ability to know what others are thinking and feeling, but who does not show interpersonal or social empathy? The obvious examples on a one-to-one basis are con artists (people who appeal to what you want or feel but do so without any concern for your well-being) and, in a worst-case scenario, sociopaths (people who read others well enough to mistreat them in ways that exploit their vulnerabilities). These are the extreme examples. Others in power can use these skills as well, although not for such nefarious purposes. Politicians use these skills all the time. Some might call it “playing to the crowd” or telling people what they want to hear, making them feel like you are connected to them, one of them. This skill can help one get elected to office.

The tactic of telling people what they want to hear in order to get elected has been used by many politicians, none more so recently than Donald Trump. While running for president, he famously promised things like “drain the swamp,” suggesting that he would get rid of insiders in government, and that he would stay away from big donors, as he was going to fund his own campaign. He criticized his opponent for being close to Wall Street, particularly the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Well, neither promise was actually delivered, nor were several others.40 Key roles in the Trump administration were filled by insiders, such as the former head of the Republican National Committee, and Goldman Sachs executives, including the firm’s president, who was appointed to lead the White House National Economic Council. Almost one-third of his cabinet positions were given to top donors, people who gave millions to his campaign. He also complained that Hillary Clinton would not do news conferences, blaming it on her dishonesty and her desire to not answer questions about it from the press. Then he stopped holding press conferences in July 2016 and did not give another one for six months. Telling people what they want to hear to get elected is not new at all. And it can be done with the highest of abilities in reading other people. But that is not empathy. It is not walking in another’s shoes and seeing the world through their eyes. It is not perspective-taking as used in empathy. In fact, as discussed in chapter 3, it is more tapping into people’s fears and telling them what they want to hear to make them feel better and, as a result, want to vote for you.

Power at Its Worst Can Lead to Dehumanization

As if I have not depressed you enough about power lacking empathy, there is more bad news. Power and dehumanization, degrading people by taking away their humanity, are essentially linked. Dehumanization is “the act of denying humans their human nature and treating them like objects.”41 At its worst, dehumanization allows people to suppress their emotions so they do not connect as human beings, allowing behaviors that include abuse, torture, and even genocide, as discussed in chapter 3. But there are other reasons to dehumanize, such as distancing oneself from behaviors of one’s ingroup for past injustices to other groups or making tough decisions such as sending soldiers to war. Dehumanization can be a tool for powerful people to make difficult decisions by minimizing the suffering of others to justify their own behaviors or decisions. As previously discussed, power is associated with a) lower perspective-taking skills, b) social distance between those in power and those who are powerless, and c) a tendency to stereotype, group people, or deindividuate others by those in power. All these characteristics support dehumanization. Across three different experiments, participants were placed in powerful positions and asked to make difficult decisions. One decision involved residents of a very poor country with severe unemployment in which most people lived in slums having to be forcefully moved to an uninhabited new area for their own good. The other decision was to choose between two medical treatments for a patient, one that was painless but less effective and the other that was very painful but more effective. Across the several groups participating, those with higher power were able to make tough decisions and in doing so were more likely to dehumanize those for whom the decisions were being made. This research suggests that the powerful use dehumanization to remove any emotionality raised by their choices. They can live with causing short-term suffering for what may be a long-term benefit.⁴²

But is dehumanization a tool used to make tough decisions, or is it built into being powerful? Other studies suggest that it is power itself that leads to dehumanization. By virtue of being in power, one tends to see less humanity in the less powerful. This view may in part be due to the nature of powerlessness: those who lack power typically exhibit fewer attributes assigned to being human such as ambition, imagination, passion, and being analytical.⁴³ There is a superiority attached to power that leads the powerful to see those without power as lacking abilities, which can include their humanity. In some cases, this is problematic, as when those in power make decisions about others with disregard for their feelings or needs. In other situations, it is beneficial, as in making tough medical decisions that focus on the treatment and not the patient’s feelings or making employment decisions that adversely affect some while helping others.

Back to Power and Politics

The political skew of this chapter might be disturbing to some of you or make you feel like I am taking sides, being biased. Because of this concern, I and members of my empathy research team engaged in some studies to look at political ideology, political party affiliation, and empathic abilities.44 We surveyed students anonymously, asking about their political party affiliation, their view of social responsibility (being more liberal) on key policy issues (such as protection of the environment, immigration, health care, and government assistance), and compared their policy views to their levels of interpersonal and social empathy. We suspected, consistent with research cited previously in this chapter, that empathy would be stronger for those who held a more collective view, and wondered if that would also split across political party affiliations: more empathy and a stronger social responsibility view would lean toward Democrat, while less would lean toward Republican. What we found was somewhat different. There was no significant relationship between identifying as Democrat or Republican and being interpersonally or socially empathic. Yes, those who viewed policy issues as more of a social responsibility had significantly higher levels of social empathy, but it was not tied to their party affiliation. From our research we concluded that empathy, particularly the macro view of social empathy, is not bound to a political party but rather bound to a political ideology (and we saw this in the Pew Research Center report that those with liberal viewpoints prioritized empathy as an important trait to teach children). So while empathy may be more common among those who hold liberal social views, it is not necessarily more common among those who identify as Democrats.

Political Correctness

What does political correctness have to do with power and empathy? There is a lot of angst these days from all sides of the political spectrum over the idea of political correctness. The history of the term and its use varies. The term may have originally referred to being on the right political side of an issue or group, but it transformed in the 1970s, primarily on college campuses, to become the term used to refer to the practice of curbing language that might be offensive. The definition that I think captures this concept best is “the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people,” which comes from one Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries.45

What may have started out as a way to be sensitive and understanding moved to feel like control of language and censorship—people were no longer free to say what they felt. Political correctness was seen as a form of power and control. This reaction to the original intent of political correctness was front and center in the 2016 election. This quote from candidate Trump during the Republican debate summed up the prevailing sentiment in opposition to political correctness: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”⁴⁶ His election as president seems to have sealed the deal: many people feel they no longer have to deal with this policing of our language.⁴⁷

I am actually sympathetic to both sides of the argument—we need to be careful to not use words that are offensive, and we also need to be free to speak our minds. The problem is that what is free speech to you may be offensive to me, and vice versa. Language is fluid and what was once acceptable may no longer be. Those changes in language may happen in places in which not everyone lives, like universities.

Early in my social work training, I was taught a very simple technique for how to refer to people: ask them. Of course we cannot always ask people; we may not know anyone to ask who is from a certain group. But the principle strikes me as taking a step toward empathy. Particularly, using social empathy as a guide may be the answer to political correctness. Understanding historical context and macro perspective-taking can help us to assess what may or may not be offensive to a particular group of people. And this goes both ways, for those who support certain language and those who resent it as a control and barrier to their freedom.

Decades ago, I was invited to give a guest lecture in the class of a colleague. He and I were hired at the same time, had finished our degrees at the same time, and were of the same rank. We had become good friends, and I felt very supported by him and supportive of him. I was happy to speak in his class, and I thought it went very well. Later that day he came into my office and was noticeably upset and concerned. Two of his female students came to him after class and were upset with him. They felt he had not treated me with due respect. Why? Because when I was introduced, my colleague used my first name. The previous guest speaker, a man, had been introduced by his title and referred to as doctor so-and-so. My colleague was so apologetic and hoped I wasn’t insulted. He was genuinely concerned and wanted me to know that he had great respect for me. To tell you the truth, I had not noticed. He and I were friends, and the class was an informal graduate seminar. But the students had a point—as a woman among male colleagues, referring to me by my first name made it seem as if I did not have the rank and credentials of the men. It was my first overt moment of political correctness from a faculty position in academia, and I was torn. I knew my colleague respected me and that he did not think I was less than he was, but his way of speaking suggested that to his students. The lesson he learned was that if he was going to use ranks and titles to introduce guest speakers, he should be consistent and use them for all of his guest speakers. In part it came down to fairness, and his students had called him on that. I know his intention was not to be unfair, but it came out that way.

Since that time, I have tried to make it a practice to ask people how they want me to introduce them or how they want to be addressed in one-on-one discussions. At least that way I have their guidance to use words that are not offensive to them. It is my awareness of self-other differences (not everyone wants to be addressed in the way I might want to be addressed) and starts the process of perspective-taking. Of course, this is not expedient. It requires the time and opportunity to ask. That is why empathy is not as efficient as power.

Part of the struggle around political correctness is that those in power do not take the time or effort to find out about how those who are powerless want to be addressed. It takes time and takes attention away from getting to the task at hand, getting things done. This is why political correctness usually feels constraining for those in dominant cultures. They feel that their freedom of expression is curtailed when they have to learn new ways of addressing people in different, nondominant groups. They are being pushed to spend time in ways that may not seem particularly useful to them in getting their own things done. Those who are powerless feel unheard and offended when those in power are not interested in learning about them enough to use terms that are not offensive. The person who feels put out because there is no way to know what is and is not offensive and thinks he or she has no one to ask (there is always the internet) should try this: test out what you are saying. At a minimum, take the same term or phrase you are thinking of using for another group or member of that group and use it to refer to your best friend, mother, pastor, or boss, and then use it to refer to yourself. Say it out loud. Say it face to face. If it is ugly, abrasive, or offensive, it will likely show, and in the process, you will have taken a new perspective, which is a step toward empathy.

How Do We Promote Empathy While in Power?

Even though there are positive sides to power without empathy, such as the ability to make tough decisions without emotions getting in the way and the focus of being goal directed and getting things done, a lack of empathy seems a very high price to pay for those benefits. Who is to say that being empathic and being in power cannot help someone to make difficult decisions and stay goal directed? We have the examples of Abraham Lincoln, Frances Perkins, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy.

We know that the full scope of interpersonal empathy includes skills in emotion regulation, which is an ability that can help keep one’s emotions in check so one can make those tough decisions and stay focused on the task at hand. Thus, that may be one interpersonal empathy skill that comes more easily to people in power. Power seems to amplify those tendencies that are characteristic of the individual. It gives us the resources, control, and position to be who we want to be. That means that whoever we are before going into positions of power will frame how we behave when we have power.

For those who are already motivated to care about social conditions and the situations of other people, power seems to enhance or improve empathy.48 We know that power is disinhibiting; it moves people to be freer to act as they want. If their underlying personality and beliefs reflect a prosocial orientation, they will maintain those values and behaviors when in power. Because power gives people more resources and control, if they are prosocially oriented, they will use their power to tune in to others. And the opposite is true. Research on power and unethical behavior suggests that those with an orientation that sees people in power as corrupt and unethical, will behave more unethically when they have power themselves.⁴⁹

There is another dimension to being in power: staying there. To hold power requires maintaining the respect of those whom you lead. Guess what skills come into play while leading? The ability to correctly assess the emotions, thoughts, or intentions of others, which are key attributes of being empathic.⁵⁰ This is especially true in leaders who consider power to be a socially positive role.

These research studies tell us several things. Teaching people that those in power should act ethically can actually influence behavior. When they have power, people will use that ethical social standard for their own behavior. Furthermore, if staying in power is desirable, it helps to read people so you can be responsive to those who you lead. The opposite is also true. Teaching people that everyone in power is corrupt and in it for themselves encourages people to behave unethically if they get a chance at being in power.

The Upside of Being Powerless

You probably didn’t see this one coming. It can be good to be powerless? Sort of. Those less powerful can infuse empathy into power relationships by controlling their respect for those in power. Social status is typically assessed by others through prestige, respect, and esteem bestowed on one. Knowing one has high status is a form of power, but it is given and taken by others through their perceptions and assessments. This differs from high power that is defined as influence and control over others, which tends to be more concrete (you are the CEO, boss, etc.). While research demonstrates that high power reduces perspective-taking, status relies on the esteem held by others. To maintain that status, it is important to “read” others. “Status, in general, heightens attention to social relations and related emotions.”⁵¹ Maybe we need to remind people in power that we hold the reigns of their respect, esteem, and prestige.

Nobody likes to be reduced to a stereotype, but maybe there is a way that being seen as a stereotype works to help the powerless. There might be a hidden power in being a stereotype because those in power do not know or understand their subordinates. These unknown subordinates can try and organize in ways that are surprising. It is a humorous and rather silly example, but think of the movie 9 to 5, in which the lower-level women in the office outsmarted their sexist boss who could not fathom that women could be smart in business. They secretly took over, controlled him, and improved the business. They tricked him by letting him believe his stereotypes of them, while behind his back they were using their abilities to create their own new power.

Another strength of powerlessness is accountability. Watching and observing as the outsider is a skill of the powerless. They can use those skills to keep track of those in power. Accountability can hold those in power in check, reminding them that we hold their public reputation in our hands.

Using our powerlessness creatively can change the dynamics. Once we tap into the upside of being powerless, we can actually feel empowered. Understanding people and their motivations and context better than the powerful gives those on the outside a different kind of power.

We also need to change the dialogue around power. It should not be acceptable to say that we expect people in power to behave badly. We have a right to expect that those in power should be responsible and ethical and care about the welfare of others. As one of the most privileged and powerful men in modern history John F. Kennedy stated, “For of those to whom much is given, much is required.”52 I would suggest that empathy is part of that requirement, and we have a right to expect those in power to include empathy in the ways they wield their power.