Are there limits to empathy? A survey experiment on empathic concern and perspective-taking as bases for attitudes towards different groups of refugees

Abstract

This article examines how empathic concern and perspective-taking influence different exclusionary attitudes towards refugees. More specifically, we investigate how empathic competence underpins social distance towards refugees and the opposition to granting them civil rights. Furthermore, we explore the potential constraints of this relationship by investigating the moderating role of different refugee characteristics via a survey-experimental approach using single-wave data from the GESIS Panel, a representative survey conducted in Germany. The refugee characteristics relate to having a Muslim versus Christian background and having high versus low qualifications, implying different levels of intergroup threat. The results indicate that higher levels of perspective-taking and empathic concern are associated with lower social distance towards refugees and opposition to granting rights to refugees. Furthermore, while the respondents’ exclusionary attitudes were higher towards certain refugee groups, implying higher levels of intergroup threat, empathic concern and perspective-taking predicted more positive attitudes towards the different groups of refugees equally. This implies that the effect of empathy does not depend on out-group characteristics.