Against Empathy

When you see someone suffer, what do you feel? Most people think that the key to goodness lies in empathy—the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and feel what they feel. But Paul Bloom, in Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, poses a provocative question: what if empathy actually makes the world worse? What if the very emotion we’re told will heal division and spur kindness instead fuels bias, unjust punishment, and even cruelty?

Bloom’s central claim is as daring as it is unsettling: empathy—defined as feeling others’ pain or joy—is a poor moral guide. It leads to shortsighted decisions, favoritism toward those we identify with, and irrational actions that harm more people than they help. Instead, Bloom argues for what he calls rational compassion: a blend of reason, detached concern, and deliberate kindness. When we use our heads, not just our hearts, we can do more good in the world.

Why Empathy Isn’t Always Kind

Bloom opens with events like the Sandy Hook school shooting, showing how empathy captured the world’s attention—but in biased ways. Americans sent toys and money to an affluent town overflowing with donations while ignoring equally tragic deaths of inner-city children. Empathy, Bloom explains, operates like a spotlight: it zooms in on individuals we find relatable or attractive and blinds us to the suffering of others. We care about the one drowning child we can see, but not the thousands dying of malaria out of sight.

This narrow focus also makes empathy innumerate. A single tear-jerking story, like Baby Jessica’s rescue, can sway public emotion more than statistics showing millions in need. And because empathy favors those close or similar to us, it often drives racism, nationalism, and short-term moral panic rather than consistent justice. We empathize with our child or neighbor, not with strangers across the world.

Emotion Versus Reason in Morality

Bloom acknowledges that moral behavior has emotional roots—our instinctive feelings of anger, guilt, or affection help us cooperate and protect relationships. But he insists that reason is what allows us to rise above parochial instinct and treat others fairly. We can make rational distinctions between immediate empathy and long-term good. The father who spares his child momentary frustration may hinder her growth. The policymaker who acts on emotional outrage may create harsh laws that hurt innocents. Reason enables us to weigh consequences, consider justice, and plan for the broader good rather than succumbing to emotional bias.

Empathy’s Paradoxical Power

Throughout the book, Bloom’s examples reveal empathy’s paradox: it motivates both kindness and cruelty. Nazi doctors used empathy selectively—for Aryan patients, not Jewish prisoners. Politicians appeal to empathy to justify economic protectionism (asking voters to imagine American families losing jobs), while war propaganda uses empathy for victims of an opposing side to justify violence. Even in everyday life, empathy can lead to unfairness: helping one suffering patient at the expense of others in greater pain or donating to a single visible victim rather than aiding hundreds unseen.

The Alternative: Rational Compassion

Bloom doesn’t propose cold detachment but rational compassion—an approach that integrates kindness with critical thinking. Compassion, unlike empathy, doesn’t require feeling others’ emotions; it involves caring about their well-being and making evidence-based decisions to help. He draws on Buddhist teachings and neuroscience studies by Tania Singer and Matthieu Ricard showing that empathy exhausts people while compassion energizes them. Medical professionals, for instance, perform better when they care about patients without emotionally mirroring their pain.

A Call for Rational Morality

Ultimately, Bloom’s argument isn’t against kindness—it’s against confusion. Empathy feels good, but goodness requires more than feeling. It demands intelligence, self-control, and the courage to do what actually helps, even when emotions pull elsewhere. From child rearing to political activism, Bloom implores us to recognize that morality grounded in reason isn’t cold—it’s clear-eyed. And if humanity can balance heart with head, we might finally build a world guided not by sentiment, but by wisdom.

Bloom shows how empathy, despite its warm reputation, operates like a biased searchlight. It shines brightly on those we find relatable—people who look or think like us—and leaves others in shadow. This bias shapes public compassion, charity, and justice more than we realize.

The Spotlight Problem

Empathy zooms in on specific individuals and stories. We cry for Baby Jessica trapped in a well but forget millions dying quietly of hunger. We empathize with victims of nearby tragedies, like Sandy Hook, yet ignore distant suffering in Darfur. This narrow focus makes empathy inherently unfair—it can’t scale across populations or time. As Bloom puts it, empathy’s spotlight distorts our moral vision, letting us see one person vividly while others vanish into darkness.

Bias Toward the Familiar

Neuroscience backs this bias. Studies reveal people feel stronger empathy for those considered part of their own group—same ethnicity, social class, or even sports team—while empathy diminishes for outsiders. In one experiment, soccer fans showed heightened brain activity when others from their team were in pain, but not when rival fans suffered. Empathy, Bloom concludes, maps more closely to tribal loyalty than universal compassion.

The Moral Consequences

Such bias shapes politics and charity. We empathize with families losing factory jobs but ignore immigrants enduring harsher poverty. We care about visible victims of crime yet dismiss lifetimes of systemic suffering. This spotlight empathy fosters moral inconsistency, guiding policy through emotional favoritism instead of evidence. The challenge isn’t to feel more—it’s to broaden perspective beyond those our hearts naturally prefer.

“Empathy is biased, pushing us in the direction of parochialism and prejudice.” —Paul Bloom

In Bloom’s view, empathy’s selective focus explains why societies are compassionate yet unjust. Real moral progress, he insists, begins when we shift from empathizing with individuals to valuing principles—like fairness, rights, and rational compassion—that apply to everyone, not just the few who capture our tears.

One of Bloom’s most striking insights is that empathy drains us, while compassion sustains us. He draws on Buddhist practices and modern neuroscience (notably the work of Tania Singer and Matthieu Ricard) to show that feeling others’ pain leads to burnout, whereas caring about others’ wellbeing fosters resilience.

Empathy Fatigue

In professions like medicine and therapy, empathizing too deeply is harmful. Doctor Christine Montross describes being incapacitated when imagining her patient’s pain: empathy made her less effective. Bloom calls this “unmitigated communion”—being so attuned to others that you neglect yourself. Research shows that high empathizers, especially in caregiving roles, suffer higher rates of stress and emotional exhaustion.

The Buddhist Alternative

Bloom explores Buddhist teachings where empathy is seen as “sentimental compassion,” something that burns the caregiver out. What Buddhism favors instead is “great compassion”—a steady concern for others’ welfare without emotional contagion. Ricard’s own brain scans demonstrate this difference: empathy activates pain centers in the brain, while compassion stimulates reward and motivation regions. Empathy literally hurts; compassion helps.

From Feeling to Doing

In experiments, subjects trained in compassion responded to suffering with warmth and action, while empathy-trained ones felt distress and withdrew. Compassion makes you act; empathy makes you ache. Singer and Ricard’s studies show that compassion increases “prosocial motivation” and reduces burnout. Mindfulness training encourages this shift—feeling for others instead of feeling like them.

Bloom uses this evidence to argue that rational compassion is the moral sweet spot. You want your doctor or therapist to care, not collapse. You want leaders who act wisely for others’ good, not those paralyzed by empathic pain. When guided by compassion rather than empathy, goodness becomes sustainable—and far more effective.

It sounds counterintuitive—how could empathy fuel cruelty? Yet Bloom shows that empathy not only fails to prevent violence; it can actively cause it. When we empathize narrowly with victims of our own group, we justify hatred and revenge against others.

Empathy as Moral Fuel for War

Empathy, Bloom argues, drives both compassion and vengeance. During conflicts like the Gaza War or 9/11, empathy for one’s own victims—the murdered children, the frightened citizens—stirs outrage and violence. Leaders evoke empathic stories to justify war, making people feel the pain of compatriots rather than the suffering of the enemy. Hitler’s propaganda highlighted German victims of Polish brutality to justify invasion; American leaders invoked Saddam Hussein’s atrocities to build support for Iraq.

Studies of Empathic Aggression

Researchers Anneke Buffone and Michael Poulin found that empathy for wronged friends increases aggression toward offenders—even strangers. Participants who empathized with a distressed person were more likely to harm an unrelated competitor with hot sauce (the experiment’s symbolic punishment). Empathy doesn’t just elicit kindness; it triggers retribution.

Dehumanization and Anger

Empathy’s spotlight also reinforces division. We see our side’s victims as fully human, others as monsters. As Adam Smith observed centuries ago, the empathy we feel for the oppressed often “animates our resentment against the offender.” Bloom likens empathy to anger—useful for understanding injustice but dangerous when uncontrolled. Just as righteous rage can incite cruelty, empathic outrage blinds moral judgment.

In Bloom’s chilling examples—from Nazi soldiers who loved dogs to modern extremists who mourn only their fallen—empathy becomes the ally of cruelty. His remedy is moral restraint: compassion guided by reason rather than emotion, ensuring we care for victims without creating new ones.

In the book’s final chapter, Bloom flips the narrative: humans aren’t irrational creatures at the mercy of emotions; we’re astonishingly good reasoners. While psychologists like Daniel Kahneman emphasize mindless biases (“Thinking, Fast and Slow”), Bloom argues that everyday rationality underpins civilization.

The Defense of Rationality

Bloom challenges popular psychology’s obsession with “biases” and replication crises. He cites common findings—people ignore statistical base rates or judge resumes by weight—but insists these don’t cancel rational thought. We plan vacations, manage budgets, raise children, drive cars—all through conscious reasoning that far surpasses computer intelligence. Failures in social psychology don’t mean reason fails; they mean science needs replication, not surrender.

Smart Minds and Moral Progress

Bloom turns to intelligence and self-control as moral foundations. Data show that IQ correlates with less violence, better cooperation, and even longer life. More intelligent people commit fewer crimes and think beyond impulse. But intelligence alone isn’t enough—reason must join with self-command (Adam Smith’s term for self-control). Walter Mischel’s famous “marshmallow test” proves that children who delay gratification lead better lives as adults. Rational restraint, Bloom argues, is the essence of morality.

Political Rationality

Against claims that politics is irrational, Bloom notes that when outcomes matter—like choosing schools or solving local disputes—people reason carefully. Irrational shouting happens mainly where facts don’t change your life (cheering for a political team). Reason guides action when stakes are real. And moral progress—from abolishing slavery to expanding rights for women and minorities—arose not from empathy but reason: the principled recognition that all lives have equal worth.

For Bloom, rationality isn’t sterile—it’s humane. Rational compassion asks you to care wisely, with foresight and fairness. In an age that glorifies emotional authenticity, Bloom’s closing message is bold: thinking clearly is the truest act of kindness.