The shadow side of empathy? Eliciting empathy in journalism and its potentially unintended side-effects on polarization

Journalistic reporting has increasingly adopted a more human-centered approach, often aiming to evoke empathy in the audience. This is because empathy is expected to bridge the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ thereby fostering social cohesion. However, previous assessments of empathy-inducing journalism tend to fall short in two ways: first, they often rely on broad definitions of empathy, while current models suggest a dual-process model involving emotional and cognitive empathy. Second, they frequently overlook the motivated nature of empathy, meaning that whether individuals are motivated to empathize with others’ feelings may depend on the perceived norms of their ideological peers. This could potentially exacerbate, rather than reduce, societal divides in the form of polarization. In an online experiment ( N = 933), we examine how an empathy frame (vs a non-empathy frame) on the topic of Afghan refugees influences emotional and cognitive empathy, whether these responses are moderated by social group norms, and how they relate to polarization of affect, human rights attitudes, and policy support. We found no norm-driven polarization of emotional empathy after reading the stimulus. Instead, we observed a small positive direct effect of the empathy-frame on affect toward Afghan refugees, highlighting the benefits of using empathy inducing frames, even when communicating polarized issues.