Very Bad Wizards

Episode 104: Smelling Salts for Morality: Our Top 3 Movies About Empathy (with Paul Bloom)

Dec 14, 2016
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INSIGHT

Empathy Can Enable Cruelty

  • Cognitive empathy can be incredibly detailed and manipulative without involving compassion.
  • Hannibal Lecter exemplifies how understanding others' minds can be used for evil purposes.
INSIGHT

Knowing Others' Minds Enables Harm

  • Understanding others’ feelings can be weaponized for cruelty rather than kindness.
  • Sadism may entail highly developed cognitive empathy used to cause intentional pain.
ANECDOTE

Empathy Can Cause Burnout

  • Nurses in burn centers sometimes avoid prolonged patient discomfort to escape empathic burnout.
  • Empathy overload can lead to quicker burnout and diminished job performance in caregiving roles.
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