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The spring of 2020 has seen sustained, worldwide, democratic protests, led by Black Lives Matter and demanding social justice and police reform in the U.S. After this spring, American support for Black Lives Matter and police reform are suddenly higher than it has ever been. Psychologist Jamil Zaki asks in this opinion piece, Why now? Why did Americans react more strongly in 2020, after police killed George Floyd, compared to other highly publicized instances when police killed other unarmed Black people, including Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Michael Brown, and Stephon Clark?
Dr. Zaki points to empathy as the answer. He writes,
In the past few weeks, many people have opened their eyes to suffering they had previously ignored. Much credit for this should go to the activists and organizers who have made it harder to look away.
Dr. Zaki supports his argument with evidence from psychological research on empathy, power, and structural change. For example, teams of psychological researchers have investigated how being in powerful positions is associated with being less able to understand others' suffering:
In one series of studies, the psychologist Michael Kraus and his colleagues measured people’s socio-economic status, as well as their ability to decipher emotions in pictures and in-person interactions. People higher in status were less accurate about other people’s feelings. More recent work has replicated these results and also found that high-status individuals make more errors when trying to take other people’s perspective.
a) What are the variables in Dr. Kraus's research? Were these variables measured or manipulated? (Hint: There are two studies--take one at a time.)
b) Given your answer to question a), were these studies correlational or experimental?
Here are two more brief research descriptions (the links go to the original empirical studies):
Higher-status individuals display less interest when talking with strangers, and report less concern for the suffering of others. These gaps play out in racial contexts as well. In another study, Kraus found that high-income white Americans overestimate racial economic equality more than black Americans or low-income white Americans.
c) What about the studies above--what are the variables? Are the studies correlational or experimental? (Hint: There are two studies--decide the variables in each study separately.)
Zaki argues that one reason higher status people have less empathy is because the powerful are less motivated to think about others. In contrast, less-powerful people need to pay attention to others in order to function well in society. He writes, "This is one way privilege works its way into our minds. Not only are privileged people exempt from material struggles, they can comfortably ignore everyone else’s."
Here are two more brief study descriptions that Zaki uses in support of his argument:
[Power] expands the change a person could make while narrowing the aperture of who they truly see. But this is not inevitable. When powerful people choose to empathize, they become more cooperative and more invested in justice. In one particularly relevant series of studies, Emile Bruneau and his colleagues asked members of low-power groups to “perspective give,” sharing their stories, and high-power individuals to perspective take, paraphrasing what they’d heard. These dialogues increased connection and positive regard between groups — not by ignoring existing power structures, but by reversing them.
d) In the study by Bruneau and colleagues, what were the variables? Can you tell if the variables were manipulated or measured?
e) What do you think--was Bruneau's study an experiment or a correlational study? Can it support the causal claim that "these dialogues increased connection and positive regard between groups?"
f) Dr. Zaki's descriptions of the studies are short on detail, likely the result of working under a word-limit and writing for a popular audience. Try following the links to one of the studies linked in Dr. Zaki's article. Are you able to access the full text of the study easily? If not, can you access the journal using your university's library? When you read the full text of the original study, were you correct about its correlational or experimental nature?
