Understanding isn't necessarily Empathy

Equivocation tied to superficial context-specific resemblance

You might observe the rather tautological phenomenon that some people are more understanding of people in particular circumstances, like homelessness, than others. While this in itself is trivial and obvious, one may consider what causes to this divergence. That is, why is this person able to see what is wrong with the advice “You’re poor? Just be rich idk” but not that person? Why is this person better able to recognize the struggles of minorities they are not included in than that person with similar demographics?

A common explanation for this phenomenon is individual differences in empathy, which typically refers to the ability to understand, acknowledge and even feel the emotions of others. It can also mean the ability to share cognitive states in contrast to purely emotional ones, but the essence remains one of understanding and sharing particular subjective states.

However, the expression “person A is more understanding of someone in a particular situation than B” can be interpreted in multiple ways. This, if left unchecked, can lead to fallacies of ambiguity. One interpretion could be that person A is more understanding of the person in said situation, while another could be that they possess a better understanding of the situation in which the said person is in. If the expression means the former, then such understanding would clearly relate to and be indicative of empathy. To understand the person would mean to really consider their mental states and experiences being subjected to the situation, which is empathy as discussed. On the other hand, if it means the latter, then it might relate more directly to qualities such as open-mindedness, intellectual curiosity and prior knowledge/exposure applied to the situation in consideration. To understand a situation for the purposes of this post is to really consider what it entails practically (e.g., the practical limitations it might pose), why such situtions might exist and how they relate to (or are independent of) prevalent societal structures, et cetera; it is not about understanding and sharing the emotional and cognitive experiences the situation induces.

Nonetheless, we tend to associate any understanding or direct acknowledgement of predicaments we are not in with empathy. As such, many of us are prone to the error that an understanding of a predicament is an understanding of the people in it.

Perhaps another reason for this bias is the popular potrayal of rational and intellectually driven individuals as being primarily self-interested, such as the character of Sheldon Cooper in the CBS television program “The Big Bang Theory” and its spinoff “Young Sheldon”. Sheldon is potrayed as a rational, critical-thinking individual with prodigious intellect. He is depicted as being innately intellectually curious, which manifested right from the beginning of his life and continued throughout — someone who went on to become a Nobel laureate in physics sharing the prize with his then to-be wife. Yet, at the same time, his display of self-interest is quite conspicuous: from expecting a typical school to adapt to his advanced academic level without regard for practicality, to many of his relationships being primarily transactional and self-serving.

The character of Sheldon Cooper being potrayed as generally rational and self-interested simultaneously by itself does not prove the existence of the bias, nor does it suggest that self-interest is inherently irrational. Rather, I merely used his character to exemplify the common potrayal of so-called rational characters as self-interested. While self-interest by itself is not inherently irrational, it is also not inherently rational. Should Sheldon Cooper exhibiting these traits in tandem, especially in a way as to imply that they are causally related, have been an isolated incident, it would not have been an issue. However, this in fact is not an isolated incident.

In any case, it stands that rationality (which, simply stated, is simply an agreeableness to reason), if applied holistically, can lead to an understanding of difficult situations we might ourselves not be in, even if we are not necessarily being empathetic. But of course, in the end, we foster a better society by being both rational and empathetic: by applying our rationality to altruistic goals or at least to considering the impacts of our actions.