Empathy trumps prejudice: The longitudinal relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence

Abstract: Although research has shown the effects of empathy manipulations on prejudice, little is known about the long-term relation between empathy and prejudice development, the direction of effects, and the relative effects of cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. Moreover, research has not examined within-person processes; hence, its practical implications are unclear. In addition, longitudinal research on development of prejudice and empathy in adolescence is still scarce. 

This 3-wave study of adolescents (N = 574) examined a longitudinal, within-person relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes. The "standard" cross-lagged model showed bidirectional effects between empathic concern, perspective taking, and anti-immigrant attitudes. In contrast, the Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model showed that only perspective taking directly predicted within-person changes in anti-immigrant attitudes. Empathic concern predicted within-person changes in anti-immigrant attitudes indirectly, via its effects on perspective taking. No effects of anti-immigrant attitudes on within-person changes in empathy were found. The relations between empathic concern, perspective taking, and anti-immigrant attitudes were significant at the between-person level. In addition, the results showed changes in anti-immigrant attitudes and perspective taking and a change in empathic concern in mid- but not late adolescence. The results provide strong evidence for the effects of perspective taking on development of anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence. They also suggest that the link between empathic concern and adolescents' anti-immigrant attitudes can be explained by indirect, within-person effects and by between-person differences. The findings suggest that programs aimed at reducing anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence should work more closely with youth perspective taking and empathic concern. (Miklikowska, 2018)

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- Miklikowska, M. (2018). Empathy trumps prejudice: The longitudinal relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 54(4), 703-717.
- photograph by Joseph Szabo via

Empathy Museum: A Mile in My Shoes

In 2015, a series of art installations began aiming to help increase empathy through storytelling and dialogue: the Empathy Museum. The offices are in London while the museum does not have a permanent location; the temporary installations travel internationally (via). One of the projects is "A Mile in My Shoes", a giant shoebox with shoes and audio stories inviting visitors to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and to "expore our shared humanity" (via).

From a Syrian refugee to a sex worker, a war veteran to a neurosurgeon, visitors are invited to walk a mile in the shoes of a stranger while listening to their story. The stories cover different aspects of life, from loss and grief to hope and love and take the visitor on an empathetic as well as a physical journey.

The other projects of the Empathy Museum are "A Thousand and One Books", "Human Library" and "From Where I'm Standing".

"empathy is the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions"
Roman Krznaric, founder of Empathy Museum

"What all stereotyping has in common, whether it is a product of politics, religion, nationalism, or other forces, is an effort to dehumanize, to erase individuality, to prevent us from looking someone in the eye and learning their name. The consequence is to create a culture of indifference that empathy finds difficult to penetrate."
Roman Krznaric, founder of Empathy Museum

"Highly empathic people are engaged in a constant search for what they share with other people, even when those people appear alien to them."
Roman Krznaric, founder of Empathy Museum

"Empathy is a constant awareness of the fact that your concerns are not everyone’s concerns and that your needs are not everyone’s needs, and"
Roman Krznaric, founder of Empathy Museum

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photograph of Ringo and his boots (1971) via

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? By Thomas Nagel (1974)

Philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote the essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" in 1974, an essay that makes one think about empathy by posing this very question.

Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in (Nagel, 1974:14) one's mouth, that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals, and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet, if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task (ibid:16).

(...) The more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the less success one can expect with this enterprise. In our own case we occupy the relevant point of view, but we will have as much difficulty understanding our own experience properly if we approach it from another point of view as we would if we tried to understand the experience of another species without taking up its point of view (ibid:24). (Nagl, 1974)

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- Nagl, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Reclam, 6th edition
- photographs of Adam West (Batman, 1966) via and via