Interpretabilidad de los resultados

In this section, I have evaluated six prominent empirical claims made about empathy and found all of them to be, to different degrees, problematic. These claims are often taken to illustrate the centrality of empathy in producing moral concern for

animals—they offer reasons to think empathy is psychologically essential to showing moral concern for animals. In rejecting these claims, I have also proposed that other, non-empathic, emotions are more capable of producing moral concern for animals. I have focused in particular on moral anger. Moral anger is highly motivating and can be used to respond to transgressions against animals.

However, many animal ethicists may feel as if something has gone wrong.

Empathy is the quintessential moral emotion, so my argument must be mistaken.

Perhaps I have identified the wrong empirical claims, or perhaps I have failed to identify the conception of empathy favored by specific ethical theories, or perhaps I need to account for the possibility that future evidence would contradict the studies I have reviewed here. Rather than address a wide range of potential criticisms, I will return again to cognitive empathy, and our ability to learn to be more attuned to animals’

emotions. This is where I suspect the most significant disagreements will arise. After addressing cognitive empathy, I will conclude with brief suggestions for animal ethicists in turning to non-empathic emotions.

5.3.1 Controlling Empathy

Consider the definition Lori Gruen (2009) provides for what she variously calls

“entangled” or “engaged” empathy:

Engaged empathy is a process whereby individuals who are empathizing with the well-being of others first respond to the other’s condition (most likely, but not exclusively, by way of a pre-cognitive empathetic reaction), and then reflectively imagine themselves in the position of the other, and then make a judgment about how the conditions that the other finds herself in may contribute to her state of mind or impact upon her interests. These judgments will involve assessing the salient features of the situation and require that the empathizer seek to determine what information is pertinent to effectively empathize with the being in question.

(pp. 29-30)

Gruen’s position accommodates emotional contagion but primarily requires a great deal of cognition. Reflective imagination, I suggested above, is used infrequently, and mostly as a failsafe. Consideration of interests, while certainly important for expressing moral concern for animals, is not part of empathy, as I understand it. But someone might object that engaged, or cognitive, empathy is what animal ethicists should focus on. Ethicists cannot rely on our automatic processes to be sufficient.

Two features of empathy that make this proposal particularly problematic are empathy’s ingroup bias and its weak motivational powers (the fifth and sixth hypotheses examined above). These are inherent in empathy and extremely difficult to modify. If we want to produce moral concern for outgroups—like animals—we need a different

emotion.

Suppose for the sake of argument, however, that my rejection of the fifth and sixth hypotheses was mistaken. I will highlight a third feature that makes cognitive empathy ineffective and unhelpful: what is known as Just World Bias or Just World

Theory. Lerner and colleagues’ seminal research (Lerner, 1980; Lerner & Miller, 1978;

Lerner & Simmons, 1966) found that victims who people were otherwise inclined to help were blamed for their situation if their suffering could not be alleviated. The explanation offered by psychologists is that this phenomenon is the result of a bias towards thinking that the world is fundamentally just, commonly expressed in the psychological literature as “people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.”

For instance, when people are asked to imagine how it would feel to be homeless—a group of people who experience persistent suffering—people tend to reduce their expressed concern for the homeless (Kozak, Marsh, & Wegner, 2006). The explanation for this is that people assume that such persistent suffering would not occur in a just world. Since the world is just, they reason, anyone who lives in poor conditions, such as the homeless, deserve their plight.

This is relevant to animals because empathy requires people to look at animals’

external conditions. Gruen’s definition includes this feature, as does Elisa Aaltola’s (2012, chapter 6), among animal ethicists. I do not know of any research directly testing the relationship between just world beliefs and animals, but we can predict that people’s responses will vary according to the plight of the animal in question. For instance, a pig living in wretched conditions might be considered appropriate for the pig. Imagining

pigs’ external conditions is likely to make people content with their plight and think they deserve nothing better.⁶⁸

In short, the just world bias predicts that people will search for a reason to blame someone for their condition, rather than respond to injustice or real harms. Positive empathic responses will thus be limited by the extent to which our just world beliefs lead us to blame animals for their situation. Importantly, it is unlikely that this can be

overcome with cognitive control. The Just World Bias is a general psychological process predicted to be employed even when we attempt to control our initial responses. Thus, we are likely to judge animals to be responsible for their poor conditions, even when we step back to fully imagine what it would be like to be in their situation.⁶⁹

5.3.2 Concluding Thoughts

Given my analysis of the centrality thesis, we must conclude that empathy is not central to producing moral concern for animals. And given what I have just said about just world beliefs, we must also be skeptical of the ability of cognitive processes to make empathy more central. Cognitive perspective taking can indeed function as a failsafe under certain conditions, but this is not sufficient to justify giving empathy a privileged role in our moral theories.

68 Asking someone to empathize with domestic pets, by contrast, is likely to produce greater concern, as pets in the West often live comfortable lives among people who already care for them.

69 There is also some evidence that anger, or “moral outrage,” is absent in cases of “system justification” (Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007). This again illustrates the importance of moral anger, though there is not enough empirical evidence to compellingly argue that anger is capable of overcoming the Just World Bias.

Instead, ethicists should turn to the plethora of other moral emotions we possess towards animals. In doing this, one aspect of empathy that should be retained is the focus on animas’ external conditions. Seeing how animals live evokes emotional responses and drives us to consider whether we are treating them rightly or wrongly. This includes not just moral anger, but all the other emotions we normally feel in response to moral transgressions—guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt, among others. Ethicists have been right to focus on our emotional responses to animal abuses, but it is these other

emotions—not empathy—that have the potential to actually produce moral concern for animals.

6. CONCLUSION: TOWARDS PSYCHOLOGICAL PLAUSIBILITY