Do the races differ in levels of empathy? Almost certainly. As we know, there is a low to moderate correlation between intelligence and empathy. Therefore, races with lower average intelligence should display lower levels of empathy. I don’t think many people can disagree that Africa and Mexico exhibit higher rates of cruelty than Europe, violent crime being one aspect.
I want to focus on the differences between Europeans and Asians. Europeans are less intelligent than Asians (100 IQ vs 105 IQ), but arguably show greater levels of empathy.
This breaks the rule, and could also be a reason why China, Korea and Mongolia are lower than they should be on the development index.
Asia is also lower on the human rights index, and certainly does feature more animal cruelty than Europe. Even the Guardian publishes articles like this one:
However, we might be able to use levels of ethnocentrism as a proxy for empathy. By ethnocentrism I mean in-group favouritism. There is plenty of data on race differences in in-group favouritism, and Europeans always come out lowest. Is this a natural phenomenon? Or is woke culture suppressing European ethnocentrism? I think both.
Schulz et al. (2019) suggests that it is “exposure to the Western Church”. However, nobody goes to church anymore, and nothing has changed. I think it is more reflective of an underlying genetic disposition. Western Europeans are inclined to individualism, and to a church that encourages individualism.
Europeans have less bias towards their kin than most others. They move out sooner, don’t see extended family as often, and have smaller family units. Europeans rely on meritocracy as a survival strategy, where anyone is welcome if they can help.
Thus lower levels of ethnocentrism, combined with higher levels of empathy, are beneficial. Both have the effect of being more open to ‘outsiders’, whether they be from another clan, another country or another race.
As Europeans are known to be less collective, it is likely they are higher in empathy based on this alone. Empathy means better teamwork, which may have been more important in the steppe tundra, and less important in the dry forest steppe of China. It may have been more adaptive to be selected for empathy rather than raw intelligence, as the two are not perfectly correlated.
Edward Dutton authored ‘Race Differences in Ethnocentrism’ in 2019. In the book there is a hint of an attempt to propose a model using ethnocentrism, genetic variation, and the rate of geniuses. It can’t really work though, the factors don’t lineup between the races like they should. However, I’m pretty sure that there is a tradeoff between ethnocentrism and empathy, across all the races, constituting a basic model we can work off.
References
Dutton, E. (2016). Race Differences in Ethnocentrism. Arktos Media Ltd.
Dutton, E., Madison, G., & Lynn, R. (2016). Demographic, economic, and genetic factors related to national differences in ethnocentric attitudes. Personality and Individual Differences, 101, 137–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.049
Image data source: American National Election Studies. 2021. ANES 2020 Time Series Study Preliminary Release: Combined Pre-Election and Post-Election Data [dataset and documentation]. March 24, 2021 version. www.electionstudies.org.
Judd, C. M., Park, B., Ryan, C. S., Brauer, M., & Kraus, S. (1995). Stereotypes and ethnocentrism: Diverging interethnic perceptions of African American and White American youth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(3), 460–481. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.3.460
Kirkegaard, E. (2022, September 23). “Who’s attacking Asians in USA? The perennial push to hide crime statistics”. Substack. https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/09/whos-attacking-asians-in-usa-the-perennial-push-to-hide-crime-statistics/
Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., Lewkowicz, K. S., Shoham, R., Dvir, R., & Estes, D. (1985). Security of infant–mother, –father, and –metapelet attachments among kibbutz-reared Israeli children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1-2), 257–275. https://doi.org/10.2307/3333837
Schulz, J.F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J.P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366.
Yousaf, M., Ahmad, M., Ji, D. et al. A cross-cultural comparison of ethnocentrism and the intercultural willingness to communicate between two collectivistic cultures. Sci Rep 12, 17087 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21179-3
More reasons to believe that the systematic oppression theory (to explain racial test score gaps) is ridiculous.
When I suggest to people that white people might actually be more empathetic and less racist than the other groups, they act like I'm crazy.