2. CARE AS A DIFFERENT MORAL VOICE
2.5 The ethic of care and empathy
By contrast, the care orientation rejects impartiality as an essential mark of moral, understands moral judgments as situation-attuned perceptions sensitive to others’ needs and to the dynamics of particular relationships, construes moral reasoning as involving empathy and concern, and emphasizes norms of responsiveness and responsibility in our relationships with others.
(Carse, 1991, p. 6)
As the quotation above indicates, the ethic of care has been equated with empathy, sympathy, and altruism, representing the affective domain of morality (see Rudnick, 2001). The affective domain, in turn, has sometimes been regarded as a motivational base for the cognitive domain, fueling cognitive processes of reasoning about moral problems (see Sichel, 1985; Hoffman,
2000). In Gilligan’s writing, at times concerns of care refer to reasoned justifications for actions, and at others they refer to passions and emotions. Nevertheless, she does not share the view that care merely fuels moral judgment, but rather, sees care as an independent form of moral judgment, with its own standards (Sichel, 1985). In general, emotionalism has been regarded as the trademark of the ethic of care that is based on reasoning from particulars and viewing relationships as a basic unit of moral analysis. This leads to advocating compassionate emotions rather than rule-guided conduct (Carse 1991; see Rudnick, 2001).
Hence, the voice of care is regarded as affective-toned, but the function of affects and emotions within the voice remains unarticulated in Gilligan’s writing (1982). Outside of her book, the ethic of care has nevertheless been viewed as an affective-based alternative for the ethic of justice with the Kantian emphasis on rationality (e.g., Blum, 1988; Tong, 1991). Admittedly, the Kohlbergian approach recognizes affect as an integral part of justice judgment, but always mediated by or structured by cognitive processes, such as role-taking (Kohlberg & al., 1983).
As philosopher Lawrence Blum (1988, p. 475) puts it:
“Understanding the needs, interests, and welfare of another person, and understanding the relationship between oneself and that other requires a stance toward that person informed by care, love, empathy, compassion, and emotional sensitivity.”9 Finally, psychologist Martin Hoffman (2000) argues that affective-based empathy is congruent with actual responding as well as with the moral principle of caring that is activated through empathic distress a moral agent feels towards suffering people.10
9Kant viewed emotions and feelings as transitory, changeable and capricious, and accordingly, emotionally motivated conduct likely to be unreliable, inconsistent, unprincipled, or even irrational (Blum, 1980).
Obviously much of the criticism against Kohlberg’s theory as “cold” and individualistic is due to the fact that it is associated with Kant’s theory, even if he explicitly rejected Kantian view of emotions (see Kohlberg, Levine & Hewer, 1983). Blum (1988) argues that despite this remark, Kohlberg almost always relegates care as involving emotion to a secondary moral status, which does not make his view significantly different from Kant’s, who also acknowledged a secondary place for emotions in some of his writings.
10It is characteristic for this tendency that Scottish moral philosophers in the 1700s, especially David Hume, have been regarded
Working from Chodorow (1978), Gilligan (1982) sees empathic capacities arising from women’s fluid self-other boundaries that make others’ feelings accessible to them. She distinguishes the capacity of empathy necessary for taking the role of “the particular other”, which is evident in girls’ play in the best-friend dyad. In contrast, the capacity of taking the role of the
“generalized other” (Mead, 1934) is an abstraction of human relationship, and fosters sense of justice, as evident in boys’
competitive games. Gilligan makes the statement of affective-based empathy as a critical component of care explicit in her article with Grant Wiggins (1988 p. 188):
A more fluid conception of self in relation to others is tied to growth of the affective imagination, namely, the ability is enter into and understanding through taking on and experiencing the feelings of others (p. 122)... What appears as dispassion within a justice framework appears as detachment from a care perspective: the ability to stand back and look at others as if one’s feelings were disconnected from their feelings and one was not affected by what happens to them.
Another theorist of care, Nel Noddings (1984, p. 30) raises the similar point:
I do not ‘put myself in the other’s shoes’, so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking: ‘How would I feel in this situation?’ On the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and to plan. I do not project; I receive the other into myself, and I see and feel with the other. I become a duality…. The seeing and feeling are mine, but only partly and temporarily mine, as on loan to me.11
as forerunners of the ethic of care (Baier, 1987; Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993). In a way, they can be regarded psychologists of their time, and their discussion of moral sentiments anticipated findings of modern empathy research.
11Noddings contrasts the morality of “principle” vs. caring which she regards as “essentially nonrational” (p. 25). In her model of caring,
“engrossment” is followed by motivational displacement, and caring is finally validated by the reception of the person-cared-for; caring “is complete when it is fulfilled in both” (p. 68). Ethical caring originates
The distinction between perspective or role-taking and emotional responsiveness pointed out by Gilligan and Noddings is congruent with the categories that have been established by the current empathy researchers who regard both as crucial elements in empathic capacities (Davis, 1983; Hoffman, 2000). Albert Mehrabian and Norman Epstein (1972), the constructors of a measure of emotional empathy (QMEE), stated that perspective taking recognizes another’s feelings, but emotional responsiveness also includes the sharing of those feelings, at least at the gross affect (pleasant-unpleasant) level. In turn, Davis (1980, 1983) held that empathy is a set of inter-related but discernible dimensions.
Consequently, his construct of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) measures dispositional perspective taking and empathic concern.12 Finally, Martin Hoffman (2000) has presented the most comprehensive model of empathic arousal, including three affective-based and two cognitive-based modes of arousal, including perspective or role-taking. In contrast with Gilligan and Wiggins’s (1988) outline, he asserts that affective and cognitive modes of arousal do reinforce and complement each other, rather than exclude each other, empathic response being basically multi-determined. To summarize so far, both aspects contribute to empathy that is defined as “an affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own” (Hoffman, 2000, p. 4).
from early experiences of natural caring in the child-mother dyad, and is based on maintaining and nurturing the ethical ideal of self as caring. For the well-grounded criticism of noncognitivism, see Flanagan (1991); of being female rather than feminist theory, see Tong (1998), and being unable to resolve moral conflicts and prevent oppression, see Tronto (1993). Despite the narrowness of Noddings’s approach, I regard her description of the qualities of care illuminating, especially her emphasis on the nonverbal essence of caring: “In a relationship of genuine caring, there is no felt need on either part to specify what sort of transformation has taken place” (p. 20).
12In addition, it also includes the personal distress scale (assessing the tendency to experience distress and discomfort in response to extreme distress in others) and the fantasy scale (measuring the tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations, such as books, movies and plays).
Mimicry has two distinct steps that operate in rapid sequence. (1) The observer automatically imitates and synchronizes changes in her/his facial expression, voice and posture with the slightest changes in another person’s facial, vocal, or posture expressions of feelings. (2) This triggers afferent feedback that produces feelings that match the feelings of another person. Classical conditioning refers to conditioned responses that are acquired when one observes someone in distress at the same time as having one’s own independent source of distress. Later on, the conditioned stimulus e.g. seeing a fearful face can evoke one’s distress alone. In turn, direct association means that cues in another’s situation remind observers of similar experiences in their own past and evoke feelings that fit with another’s situation. These modes form an empathy-arousing package that is automatic, quick-acting and involuntary, and assure a certain degree of match between feelings of empathizers and victims. In mediated association the other’s distressed state is communicated through language. This means that verbal messages informing about the other’s state must be semantically processed and decoded by observers. Decoded messages then enable empathic affect in observers, when they relate them to their own experiences, or alternatively, conjure up visual or auditory images of the other, responding to them through direct association or mimicry. Role-taking means cognitive-mediated processing of imagining how the other feels (other-focused role-taking) or how oneself would feel (self-focused role-taking) in the other’s place or situation (Hoffman, 2000.) According to Batson, Early and Salvarani (1997) it is of critical importance to differentiate between those two modes of role-taking, since they have different motivational consequences. Other-focused role-taking produces empathic response that in turn evokes willingness to help, whereas self-focused role-taking produces empathic response and personal distress that may shift the focus to relieving one’s own negative state, instead of helping. Moreover, self-focused role-taking may lead to erroneously projecting one’s feelings onto the other (ibid.). Compared to the affective modes of empathic arousal, role-taking has a greater voluntary component due to cognitive demands. In a real situation, while coupled with affective modes, its controllability is however questionable (Hoffman, 2000). It is worth noting that in the definitions by other researchers, role-taking also entails understanding of others’ internal states and cognitions, in addition to feelings (see Eisenberg, Zhou &
Zoller, 2001) and there are different measures for perceptual, cognitive and affective role-taking (Davis, 1994).
There has been much confusion about the concepts related to affective-based empathy in research literature. According to Nancy Eisenberg (2000), empathy is an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition and is similar to what the other is feeling or would be expected to feel. With further cognitive processing, purely empathic response may turn into sympathy, which is not the same as what the other person is feeling or expected to feel, but consists of feelings of sorrow or concern for the other. Alternatively, an initial response may turn into personal distress or some combination of distress and sympathy. Personal distress can be defined as “self-focused, aversive, affective reaction to the apprehension of another’s emotion”, such as discomfort or anxiety (see Eisenberg, 2000, pp. 671-672.)
In Eisenberg’s terms, mimicry, classical conditioning and association often aroused automatically in face-to-face contacts, represent empathic response, because they assure a certain degree of match between feelings of the observer and the victim.13 In alignment with Eisenberg’s view, Hoffman (2000) postulates that both aspects, empathy and sympathy, are involved in an empathic reaction; empathic distress is based on the vicarious feelings of other, whereas sympathetic distress is based on the feelings of concern and compassion for other. In the beginning of life, empathic distress dominates, but later it is transformed in part into a feeling of sympathetic distress, when self-and-other-boundaries grow more differentiated. Empathic distress motivates to comfort one’s own distress, whereas sympathetic distress motives to help the other. Empathic distress, however, prevails as a part of advanced modes of emotional response in all ages (Hoffman, 2000.) According to Hoffman’s theory of empathy development, cognitive and emotional aspects are inter-connected; the mode of empathic response depends on one’s cognitive role-taking level.
13This match is due to that (a) all humans have certain distress experiences in common (such as loss, injury, deprivation) (b) they are structurally similar and therefore likely to process distress-relevant information similarly and (c) they are likely to respond to similar events with similar feelings (Ekman, Friesen, O’Sullivan & Chan, 1987, ref.
Hoffman, 2000).
The most rudimentary form of empathic distress is reactive newborn cry based on imitation. The newborn is responding to a cue of distress (cry) by the other newborn by feeling distressed himself/herself, indicating that he/she senses the other as part of the self. During the first year of life, when the child has no reliable sense of the self as physically distinct from others, the empathic response is a general undifferentiated distress that is passive and involuntary, aroused by mimicry and conditioning. This is called egocentric empathic distress, child responding to another child’s distress as though she/he were suffering herself/himself. Early in the second year, when the more advanced self-other differentiation emerges this mode of empathic distress gives way to quasi-egocentric empathic distress. The child is aware that it is someone else who is suffering, but she/he confuses other’s internal state with his/her own state. The child responds to the perceived distress in ways that would be helpful mainly for herself, for example giving one’s own favorite toy to other. At the end of the second year, veridical empathic distress begins to develop along with role-taking capacity.
Children realize that others have inner states independent of their own and come closer to feeling what the other is actually feeling; one must respond to cues about the other’s state rather than to respond to one’s own distress. When acquiring language resources, the child becomes capable of empathizing with a variety of increasingly complex emotions.
Finally the child can be empathetically aroused by information about someone’s distress even in that person’s absence. The most advanced level is empathy for another’s experience beyond the immediate situation, emerging in late childhood. This extends empathy from the other’s immediate situation to the larger context of the distress, such as life situation, including complex things. As one acquires the ability to form social concepts, one’s empathic distress may be combined with a mental representation of an entire group or class of people suffering, for example the homeless and bombing victims (Hoffman 2000.)
Despite the assumed congruity between cognitive and affective aspects of empathy, research literature reveals that they have quite distinct contributions to behavior. Perspective-taking has been found to be associated with better interpersonal functioning, higher self-esteem and relatively little emotionality, whereas affective-based empathy has been found to be related to selfless concern for others (Davis, 1983) as well as to prosocial behavior in general (for review, see Eisenberg, 2000). In detail,
affective empathy is found to be associated with the ability to accurately recognize facial expressions of emotion (Riggio, Tuffer
& Coffaro, 1989), with helping behavior and neuroticism (Chlopan, McCain, Carbonell & Hagen, 1985), as well as with adolescents’ prosocial behavior (Eisenberg, Zhou & Koller, 2001;
Raboteg-Saric, 1997). With regard to relationship skills, affective empathy obviously contributes to warmth and good communication, whereas perspective taking contributes to the avoidance of rude and egoistic acts and constructive conflict management (see Davis, 1994). Recent research further suggests that the affective dimension of empathy is more central to overall empathy as well as to prosocial behavior. Cliffordson (2002) found that within the IRI, empathic concern constitutes a general factor that underlies perspective-taking and fantasy scales. In their study among Brazilian adolescents, Eisenberg, Zhou and Koller (2001) elaborated a model within which both perspective taking and sympathy (= empathic concern, measured by the IRI) predicted prosocial moral reasoning, which in turn predicted prosocial behavior. Interestingly, sympathy predicted directly prosocial behavior as well, whereas the effect of perspective taking was indirect through moral reasoning. In addition, high sympathy or alternatively, high perspective taking predicted high moral reasoning, the latter being significant only for males.
Eisenberg et al. (2001) concluded that perspective taking is like an information-gathering tool, which can obviously be used for good and bad, for example to manipulate others. They added that perspective taking skills may play more important role in the moral reasoning for males than for females.
Gender differences in empathy-related capacities across life span are an issue closely related to Gilligan’s claim of gender-related moralities.
The overall picture of research is mixed. 1-year old girls have been found to react with more empathy and distress than boys do, when experimenters pretend to hurt themselves (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner & Chapman, 1992). At the ages of 6, 9 and 12 months, girls have been found to initiate more social interactions than boys do (Gunnar
& Donahue, 1980). Females have been found to be more skilled encoders and decoders of nonverbal and emotional messages (Hall, 1978;
Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; McClure; 2000; Riggio, Tucker & Coffaro, 1989; Thayter & Johnson, 2000). Recognizing emotional expressions
seems to regulate girls’ behavior (Dunham, Dunham, Tran & Akhtar, 1991; Rosen, Adamson & Bakeman, 1992), and is positively related to their social abilities (Leppänen & Hietanen, 2001). Riggio, Tucker and Coffaro (1989) found that women’s success in an empathy-related task was associated with emotional empathy, whereas men’s success was associated with cognitive empathy. Gibbs, Arnold and Buckhart (1984) found that female adolescents at Stage 3 in Kohlberg’s theory used more empathic role-taking in justifying their moral choices than their male counterparts, and Garmon, Basinger, Gregg and Gibbs (1996) replicated this result among the 9-81 year-old. A consistent gender difference, favoring women has been found in studies of self-reported emotional empathy (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983), but not in self-reported cognitive empathy and perspective taking, nor in most studies of physiological responding (for review see Davis, 1994). To conclude, the greatest differences have been found in self-reports, potentially distorted by women’s willingness to present themselves emotionally empathic, in keeping with the traditional gender role expectations. Supporting this, self-reported femininity and empathy has been found to be associated with each other (Foushee, Davis & Archer, 1979; Karniol, Gabay, Ochion & Harari, 1998; Skoe, Cumberland, Eisenberg, Hansen & Perry, 2002). However, to date actual affective responsiveness has not been studied extensively enough for any final conclusions to be drawn about gender differences (Davis, 1994). Nevertheless, it seems that affective-based empathy plays more important role in social skills for females than males.
Gilligan and Wiggins (1988) argue that the strength of empathy-based caring lies in its compelling emotion that necessitates ending a victim’s suffering instantly, allowing no excuses, while more cognitively sophisticated perspective allows to see both perspectives, a victim’s as well as a victimizer’s, potentially leading to rationalized inaction. According to Hoffman (2000), this compelling motivation is based on the primitive modes of empathic arousal, namely mimicry, classical conditioning and direct association that are largely involuntary and cognitively shallow and therefore can be aroused by the victim’s nonverbal cues alone. However, moral passivity pointed out by Gilligan and Wiggins (1988) can also be caused by empathic over-arousal, rather than by adopting multiple perspectives of victims and victimizers, as they propose. If empathic distress grows too
excessive, an empathizer turns to alleviating one’s own uneasiness rather than alleviating the sufferer’s uneasiness. He/she may leave a situation, employ distancing perceptual strategies, or even derogate and blame a suffering other. For example, highly empathic nursing students had difficulties staying in the same room with their severely ill patients, even though they desired to help them (Stotland, Mathews, Sherman, Hansson & Richardson, 1979). Drawing on some empirical evidence, Hoffman (2000)
excessive, an empathizer turns to alleviating one’s own uneasiness rather than alleviating the sufferer’s uneasiness. He/she may leave a situation, employ distancing perceptual strategies, or even derogate and blame a suffering other. For example, highly empathic nursing students had difficulties staying in the same room with their severely ill patients, even though they desired to help them (Stotland, Mathews, Sherman, Hansson & Richardson, 1979). Drawing on some empirical evidence, Hoffman (2000)