ePODstemology

Medicine for intellectual boredom. Host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University brings together an eclectic mix of creative young folk to discuss the most stimulating ideas at the knowledge frontier, from data governance to the metamodern cultural mode, and everything in between. The world's most thoughtful people, having a chat - and you're invited! So turn off your socials, throw away your popular science books, and get ready for some legit galaxy brain takes. Thanks to Keith Spangle for the spaceship cat avatar https://www.deviantart.com/keithspangle

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ePODstemology

What even is empathy?

May 02, 2022 • Mark Fabian • Season 3 • Episode 7

Regular ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian is joined by philosopher of science Dr Riana Betzler from Washington University in St Louis to discuss the nature and study of empathy. In popular culture, empathy is one of these haloed qualities that we generally perceive as good and desirable. Yet in recent years some psychologists, notably Paul Bloom at Yale, have argued that empathy is overrated, indeed, harmful, because it biases our moral judgements towards our in groups. Riana’s research is principally concerned with the scientific practices upon which these debates turn. Are scholars in favour of or against empathy using the same definition of the term? Are meta-analyses of empirical results reliably distilling the true effects of empathy, or are they in fact horribly undermined by differences in the way empathy is operationalised across studies? How do these questions play into broader trends in psychological science like the supposed theory crisis and recent critiques of factor analysis? Tune in to find out.

https://rianabetzler.com/

Paul Bloom’s book Against Empathy: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compassion/dp/0062339338

Jessie Prinz Against Empathy: https://philpapers.org/rec/PRIAE-5

Anna Alexandrova on theory avoidance in psychology: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780199300518.001.0001/oso-9780199300518-chapter-6

Discretionary time and wellbeing: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-pspp0000391.pdf

Chancellor and Lyubomirsky on humility: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.12069

Dan Batson’s view of empathy: http://people.uncw.edu/hakanr/documents/batsononempathy.pdf

fMRI study of compassion: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763419306918

The psychologically-rich life questionnaire: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656619300649

Settler mortality instrumental variables paper: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.91.5.1369

interpersonal reactivity index: https://fetzer.org/sites/default/files/images/stories/pdf/selfmeasures/EMPATHY-InterpersonalReactivityIndex.pdf

Anna Alexandrova and Daniel Haybron (2016). Is Construct Validation Valid? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303753840_Is_Construct_Validation_Valid