# Brief empathy interventions online can decrease but not increase empathic tendencies

## TL;DR

Online empathy interventions can reduce but not increase empathy towards outgroup members, suggesting it is easier to motivate people to withhold empathy than to increase it.

## Contribution

Demonstrates that brief empathy interventions fail to increase empathy and may even reduce it in intergroup contexts.

## Key findings

- Interventions failed to increase empathy or prosocial behavior towards outgroup members.
- Beliefs about empathy's limited nature often reduced participants' empathy.
- Motivating people to withhold empathy was more effective than motivating them to increase it.

## Abstract

People often feel less empathy towards outgroup compared to ingroup targets. Overcoming this intergroup empathy bias is important for fostering positive intergroup relations. In five pre-registered and high-powered online studies (n = 4776 (745/745/1056/1236/994)), we attempted to replicate and generalize motivated empathy interventions that previously have made people more empathetic and prosocial towards outgroup targets. Using both between- and within-subject designs, self-reported empathy measures and factual monetary donations, we examined the effects of several brief interventions. The interventions targeted avoidance motivations based on beliefs about the un/limited nature of empathy or approach motivations based on beliefs about empathy’s malleability or normatively desirability. Across studies, we tested the interventions in several in- and intergroup contexts, using both novel and preexisting stimuli. In general, interventions failed to increase empathy or prosocial behaviour. Instead, inducing beliefs about the limited nature of empathy often reduced participants’ empathy. Motivating people to withhold empathy may be easier than motivating them to increase it.

Editorial Summary: Across five online studies, motivated empathy interventions for intergroup contexts failed to increase empathy or prosociality with outgroup members; participants were more easily motivated to decrease empathy than increase it.