“Empathy” and International Relations

“Empathy” and International Relations  – an impossible combination to put together?

It definitely is in short supply when we are talking about foreign policy, where leaders are supposed to carry their own agendas with little or no attention paid to the needs or preferences of the opposite side.  And perhaps even more importantly, often the “leaders (and sometimes whole nations) often have a fixed view of certain events and find it hard to believe that anyone might legitimately see things differently.”

One reason for this absence of empathy is the human tendency to filter current situations through the prism of the past. One of the more enduring findings in political psychology is that people place more weight on their own experiences than on the experiences of others, even when their own experiences are in fact atypical. According to Robert Jervis’s classic Perception and Misperception in International Politics: “if people do not learn enough from what happens to others, they learn too much from what happens to themselves.” The salience of first-hand experience in shaping subsequent beliefs is increased if the event happens early in one’s life or career, and if it has important consequences for the individual (or the nation). In other words, we overlearn from big and important events, especially when they happen to us early.

Of course more empathy does not mean less or no conflicts, but what it can do is create a situation where spiraling hostilities and exaggerated threats are less likely. Or as Walt put it: “developing a greater capacity for empathy won’t eliminate conflicts of interest between states, and won’t always make it possible to resolve the differences that will inevitably arise. But an inability to understand an adversary’s perspective (or an ally’s, for that matter) is a crippling liability, and there’s less excuse for it in our increasingly interconnected age.”

If you haven’t read Robert Jarvis’ classic you could do worse than grab it next on your reading table. (And perhaps be first one to review it on Amazon – how surprising that there are no reviews from this one?) Or at least start with the Walt’s piece at FP.