As social creatures, we have to express and share our emotions with others with the aim of building connections and bonding. Understanding others’ emotions comes with our own emotional awareness, and with that, we resonate and empathize with others’ different emotions and feelings. Empathy plays a key role in shaping our relationship with others by helping us relate to one another and build connections.
Empathy is defined as the congruent emotional reaction a person feels in response to the assumed emotional state of others (Cikara et al., 2014). Empathy helps us adapt and survive in our environment and build a social bond. Realistically, people can experience mixed feelings towards others while frequently failing to empathize with their emotional experiences.
Read More: Psychologist’s Insights on Empathy and its Psychological Foundations
Human emotional reactions differ according to how individuals interpret reality, their perceptions, and their past interactions with others. People sometimes display emotional responses that oppose others’ feelings, which is defined as counter-empathy. Researchers describe counter-empathy as an emotional response that stands in direct contrast to what people believe others are experiencing (Cikara et al., 2014).
At the same time, it is essential to be aware of how we feel towards other people; it can be to our colleagues, friends, or strangers. Considering that our actions and behaviour are influenced by our emotions and thoughts. Since empathy helps us feel connected and often leads to helping behaviour (Qi, Y et al., 2020), counter-empathy will lead to engaging in behaviour that will harm the relationship with other people (Steinbeis & Singer 2013). As a result, it is crucial to be conscious of our feelings for different people, such as counter-empathy, as this affects our relationships with them and can impact society for all.
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Two Types of Counter-Empathy
Counter-empathy can be felt or manifest in two distinct categories. As explained by Vachon & Lynam (2016) in their study. The first form refers to taking pleasure in others’ pain (TPOP), and the second is feeling annoyed with others’ happiness (FAOH); TPOP occurs when a person feels happy about someone else’s misfortune instead of feeling empathetic towards them.
For example, a person may feel happy or relieved upon learning that his friends or colleagues were involved in an accident. The second form (FAOH) is when the person feels annoyed or resentful when the other person is happy, achieving, or excelling. For example, a person feels sad or discontent after discovering her co-worker was promoted.
Some of the few examples that demonstrated a high degree of counter-empathy
- Wanting to witness others suffer from getting hurt physically or emotionally.
- Feeling content and joyful after witnessing others’ failure
- Feeling irritated or unhappy when others or friends are succeeding in life.
- Believing that others weren’t deserving of happiness and success
- Wishing for the failure of others.
- Lack of their own emotional awareness and other people’s emotions
Read More: Jealousy and Envy: Difference of feelings
Why Do People Experience Counter-Empathy Towards Others
Several questions can arise to understand counter-empathy. When does a person experience counter-empathy towards other people? And who is deserving of our empathy and counter-empathy? These are a few ways people can experience and encounter counter-empathy
1. When you perceive that the person belongs to outgroup members
People feel safe and keep an eye out for people they consider to be members of their own group. However, rather than empathy, people are more prone to feel counter-empathy toward members of the outgroups. According to Hoogland et al. (2015), People routinely feel less empathy and more counter-empathy towards outgroups than in groups.
It can be understood that when people perceive someone to belong to their social groups or identity groups, which can be defined by their criteria, they are more inclined to feel empathy towards them than those they perceive as their outgroups. Furthermore, conflict in any interpersonal relationship can also give rise to Counter-empathy.
Read More: How to deal with conflicts in a relationship?
2. Conflict in interpersonal relationships
In any relationship, interpersonal conflict can occur for a number of reasons. Interpersonal relationships may start with empathy at first, but as it progresses, various conflicts and crises within the relationship can result in experiencing more of counter empathy toward the other person. Additionally, a study conducted by Yu.M. (2023) highlights that in an interpersonal relationship, when an individual experiences conflict, it can often lead to a shift of our empathetic emotional reaction to counter empathy.
This explains that people initially exhibit empathy towards others but can undergo further emotional changes if an interpersonal conflict exists. Empathy, which is usually felt by individuals in most of the early stages of any interpersonal relationship, can be transformed into counter-empathy.
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3. Counter-empathy can be experienced in the hierarchy
Hierarchy can cause counter-empathy. Primarily, among higher positions, they would use counter-empathy to defend their actions, justify their feelings, and enjoy the privileges of the social structure. A study by Nicol & Rounding (2013) explains another reason why certain people experience more counter-empathy than others. Counter-empathy can be experienced by people currently in the social hierarchy, as a lack of empathy and more counter-empathy make the current social dynamics more enjoyable.
In other words, people care about maintaining social hierarchy; they justify their counterparty’s feelings and emotions by feeling less guilty and will be able to reinforce the power structure that benefits them.
Read More: Hierarchy of needs: Human Love and Belongingness explained by Abraham Maslow
4. Counter empathy towards offenders
Counter-empathy is likely to be experienced among people toward their offenders given that. People who have been wronged in some way and have no close bond with the offender will find it difficult to feel empathy towards their offenders. Furthermore, a victim who has been offended by others may also grow counter-empathy. The victim will find it difficult to relate with someone who has misbehaved towards them. This statement was supported by the study by Yu.M. et al. (2023), who mentioned that victims usually develop counter-empathy towards their offenders if a strong prior relationship is not established yet.
5. People feel counter-empathy when it involves competition
When there is a competitive attitude or a social structure that promotes competition, people in society usually try to outperform one another. Therefore, people may want to do better than others and feel that they are the only ones who should succeed, which can lead to a counter-empathetic reaction. People generally want to do better than others when it involves a competitive mindset.
On the other hand, people with this mentality might think that they do not want others to do better than them, and this can lead to a slight feeling of counter-empathy. At the same time, findings from the research study also mention that counter-empathy is also present when competition is involved because it establishes an environment that makes the individuals want to be better than the other, giving rise to a feeling of wanting to defeat the other and this can often lead to counter-empathy.(Cikara et al., 2011; Itagaki & Katayama, 2008; Yamada et al., 2011).
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Recommendation
Being empathetic is one way to coexist peacefully in society; however, as we have already discussed, people don’t always feel that way about other people at all times.
Some of the recommendations that individuals should be mindful of their emotions so as not to develop counter-empathy in any form of relationship with others are as follows:
- Self-acceptance: recognizing that not every relationship with other people will be perfect. It is learning to accept that we will meet different people from various backgrounds having ideas and opinions that are not our own. Learned that not everyone will treat you right in life, but we don’t have to reciprocate the same to others. At the same time, we should accept that there may always be competition in society, but it shouldn’t lead to negative emotions toward others.
- Practice Compassion and Forgiveness: In any relationship, people make mistakes, sometimes challenging the situation. Therefore, having compassion and forgiving others’ mistakes will reframe the person developing negative emotions such as counter-empathy towards others.
- Constructive conflict resolution: conflict can arise in any situation, but finding a solution that will lead to addressing the conflict more constructively instead of deterring with intense emotional reaction to the existing problem will enhance their relationship.
- Emotional Control: Learning to control emotion effectively during conflict or expressing the feeling in a more calm and healthier way can help foster healthy ways of regulating emotion and further prevent developing counter-empathy towards others.
- Developing Perspective-taking: Learning how to take the perspective of others, even during a complex and challenging situation, will help an individual enhance emotional awareness and reduce feelings of counter-empathy.
- Setting healthy boundaries: Maintaining boundaries in every relationship is necessary to build healthy relationships, as it enables us to show respect to others while at the same time protecting our mental health.
- Self-introspection: Learning to self-introspect ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions can help us understand ourselves and our relations with the people around us.
Read More: How to Overcome Your Inner Struggle?
Conclusion
Counter-empathy is an emotional response that has been felt and experienced by some people due to their circumstances and situations, as well as past experiences and the dynamics within the interpersonal relationships we have with others. It can also be influenced by power dynamics or social status hierarchy. Moreover, more thorough research is needed to get to comprehend how someone feels counter-empathy.
It remains unclear whether counter-empathy is something that everyone experiences or if it’s part of how people think and express themselves, which makes better emotional regulation possible. Understanding each of these interrelations in our society requires further study. Post Views, emotions, and feelings influence our behaviours. Therefore, it is imperative to explore and study counter-empathy.
References +
Cikara, M., Botvinick, M. M., & Fiske, S. T. (2011). Us Versus Them. Psychological Science, 22(3), 306-313.
Cikara, M., Bruneau, E., Van Bavel, J. J., & Saxe, R. (2014). Their pain gives us pleasure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses. Journal of experimental social psychology, 55, 110-125.
Hoogland, C. E., Ryan Schurtz, D., Cooper, C. M., Combs, D. J. Y., Brown, E. G., & Smith, R. H. (2015). The joy of pain and the pain of joy: In-group identification predicts schadenfreude and gluckschmerz following rival groups’ fortunes. Motivation and Emotion, 39(2), 260–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9447 9
Itagaki, S., & Katayama, J. (2008). Self-relevant criteria determine the evaluation of outcomes induced by others. Neuroreport, 19(3), 383-387.
Nicol, A. A. M., & Rounding, K. (2013). Alienation and empathy as mediators of the relation between social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism and expressions of racism and sexism. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(3), 294–299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.03.009
Qi, Y., Nan, W., Cai, H., Wu, H., & Liu, X. (2020). Empathy or schadenfreude? Social value orientation and affective responses to gambling results. Personality and Individual Differences, 153, 109619.
Steinbeis, N., & Singer, T. (2013). The effects of social comparison on social emotions and behavior during childhood: The ontogeny of envy and Schadenfreude predicts developmental changes in equity-related decisions. Journal of experimental child psychology, 115(1), 198-209.
Vachon, D. D., & Lynam, D. R. (2016). Fixing the Problem With Empathy. Assessment, 23(2), 135-149.
Yamada, M., Lamm, C., & Decety, J. (2011). Pleasing frowns, disappointing smiles: An ERP investigation of counterempathy. Emotion, 11(6), 1336-1345.
Yu, M., Li, X., Lu, J., Wang, S., Zhang, L., & Ge, Q. (2023). Empathy or Counter-Empathy? The Victims’ Empathic Response Toward Offenders Depends on Their Relationships and Transgression Severity. Psychology research and behavior management, 1355-136
