Exploring the Relationship between Interpersonal Empathy, Social Empathy, and Racial Attitudes

Abstract

Diversity initiatives have become pervasive within social service agencies, despite evidence of mixed outcomes for marginalized groups. Social empathy is a construct that may have the potential to improve intergroup outcomes. Social empathy is a framework that emphasizes macro-level perspective-taking as well as contextual understanding of systemic barriers for marginalized groups. In general, multiculturally focused initiatives have seen better success for intergroup outcomes than those based on colorblind ideologies. To explore social empathy’s ability to promote positive intergroup outcomes, this study investigated the relationship between the different facets of interpersonal and social empathy and these two contrasting racial attitudes. Cross-sectional surveys were administered to two different study samples: U.S. adults (n = 475) and students enrolled in a large public university (n = 290). As hypothesized, social empathy was key in predicting both racial attitudes across both samples in multiple regression models. The aspect of social empathy known as contextual understanding of systemic barriers showed the largest effects and was negatively associated with colorblind and positively associated with multicultural attitudes. Interpersonal empathy was largely unrelated to either racial attitude. Future research should examine whether interventions aimed at increasing social empathy can improve intergroup outcomes in social service settings.