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From the APA's "Journal of Experimental Psychology":
"Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs" (2019)
(Abstract) or (Full Text PDF)
Further reading on this subject:
"How resource sharing resists scarcity: the role of cognitive empathy and its neurobiological mechanisms" (2022)
"Empathy moderates the relationship between cognitive load and prosocial behaviour" (2023)
"Cognitive load and moral decision-making in moral dilemmas under virtual reality: the role of empathy for pain" (2025)
(Abstract)
"The Influence of Cognitive Load on Empathy and Intention in Response to Infant Crying" (2016)
There's a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that wealth, power, and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
- Have reduced empathy and compassion.
- Have a diminished ability to see from someone else's perspective.
- Have low impulse control.
- Have an extreme sense of entitlement.
- Have a hoarding disorder.
- Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.
When you don't need to cooperate with other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you're in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it's a formalized double standard. When you have status, you're given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.
Humans have a strong need for egalitarianism; without it our brains malfunction and turn us into the worst versions of ourselves.
Some sources:
Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
Hoarding Disorder: It's More Than Just an Obsession - Implications for Financial Therapists and Planners
On the evolution of hoarding, risk-taking, and wealth distribution in nonhuman and human populations
Just a quick reply - haven't read your sources yet. But I also feel like it works both ways, one's lack of empathy helps you succeed in a capitalist culture that only has one metric for success, money. Will now start reading ;).
I was thinking about this recently and noticed something very interesting, as a thought experiment of sorts.
For extremely rich and wealthy people, it is not actually about the money.
I mean, it is about the money in the sense that money is the formal expression of something deeper. But there's a shift, between having to think about money as a tool for survival, and having so much money that it's no longer relevant day to day and it becomes a sort of score for a game of life.
Certainly in mid and high level of management, executives, etc. money is the most important thing, they are hired and their livelihood, as well as their score, depends on them making the line go up and accumulating more and more money for the owner class. But for the owner class, it's all about the status, how the score is going. It's essentially a global level dick measuring contest. Of course they are not going to use the money for anything, they don't care. Their empathy is gone, what they want is to get ahead on the game. It's all about the narrative, the optics, the projection of influence and power.
If it weren't for money, it would be something else. Piety and ranks in theocracies, titles and land in the feudal times, honor and armies in feudal Japan, etc. It's just so happens that modern globalist culture has settled on corporate financial wealth.
There's a sort of mind bug that humans are susceptible to, that pushes people into the pursuit of this affluent status, then eliminates all humanity left from the brain. Just to see who dies with the most points.
I agree with the underlying concept, that having low/no empathy is rewarded under the current capitalist systems that most first world countries endorse.
The conflict I have with that mentality, which drives me, personally, away from it, is that if you go back in the history books, we only survived some eras because of strong communal bonds and collaboration with our tribe. In every circumstance, collaboration has been more beneficial economically, than any other option.
Therefore, I reject the selfish capitalist ideals and embrace empathy for the sake of humanity and my role in it.
I'll note, I am neither rich, nor American.
We are still
thrivingcreating great things because we collaborate on a large level. It might not be that communal anymore (unfortunately), but working together is still the key to success (in a system way).It would be beneficial for all, if we could bring back the communal part - while still holding on to some of the benefits the modern global system has produced. I just always wonder, how do you replace or compete with the ice cold global capitalist systems, that can win most of the time in the short term and just overwhelm any sustainable, communal long term system.
That's the trick, isn't it?
Make a thing that helps collaboration that people buy into for long term survival, sacrificing what "could be" to hopefully achieve a better tomorrow...
Nobody has successfully achieved this yet.
Aren't those signs of sociopathy?
I think we need to forbid people who qualify as sociopaths from holding any office with any degree of power. They can't be trusted with power.
Wealth accumulation as a mental disorder makes so much goddamn sense.