Empathy and Prejudice

“First of all…if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

--Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

The wisdom of the noble lawyer and father Atticus Finch is sprinkled throughout Harper Lee’s timeless classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. His children learn about life, values, and morals both directly (as evidenced in this quote) and by watching how he lives his life with integrity and dignity. In the scene from which this quote is taken, Atticus was teaching his daughter Scout a lesson in how to feel empathy. Note that he says that a lot of conflict and misunderstandings can be avoided, and better social relationships can be fostered if one takes the time to consider things from the other person’s perspective. While this is a great part of an excellent story, Harper Lee’s insight has science to back it up.

Research has shown support for the idea that when one feels more empathy for another individual, they will be less likely to express prejudice (Aronson, 2011; Marsden & Barnett, 2020; Miklikowska, 2018; Onal, et al., 2021). Empathy is comprised of three elements: 1) the ability to recognize emotions in oneself and others, 2) perspective-taking — the ability to imagine and understand another person’s life through their eyes, and 3) the capacity to experience similar emotions with others (Derntl & Regenbogen, 2014). Of the three components, perspective-taking has been shown to be the most relevant to efforts to reduce prejudice (Farmer & Maister, 2017; Vescio, Sechrist, & Paolucci, 2003).

This is specifically what Atticus is referring to in the opening quote: to really understand a person, you need to “get in their skin and walk around a bit” – i.e. you need to take their perspective. In so doing, you will gain a better appreciation for how the other person is experiencing life, or a particular situation, and you will come away with a better understanding of that person. In that understanding, one will realize that they are not so different from oneself in how they are seeing the world, and that similarity will foster more positive feelings toward the other person.

An interesting experiment was conducted by Matera and her colleagues (2021) a couple of years ago in which they asked 437 students aged 11-17 to travel in a wheelchair down a path, either in front of a person with a motor disability or when the person was not there. Perspective-taking and empathy were measured afterward. Results showed that perspective-taking significantly reduced ableist prejudice in the real-target present condition. Moreover, the data showed that this enhanced perspective resulted in lower prejudice against two other stigmatized groups: 1) immigrants and 2) gay men and lesbian women.

The Matera et al. study results, and those of the other perspective-taking studies, show the power of empathy and perspective-taking in particular to reduce or even eliminate prejudice toward other groups. When we take the time and effort to think about the world from another’s perspective, we come close to, as Atticus said, “walking around in their skin” and having a better understanding of their point of view. The Matera et al. study results go a bit further and suggest that perspective-taking can not only reduce prejudice toward a particular group, but it may generalize toward many other outgroups.

Prejudice reduction is not a simple process, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated either. We all would do well to heed the wisdom of Atticus in our daily lives. It would help to reduce misunderstandings and make our social relationships much more harmonious. It was a lesson learned by Scout when she stopped fearing the neighborhood “boogeyman,” Boo Radley, and started thinking about him as a person just like her. At that moment, she changed her feelings about him, and welcomed him as a friend with a simple, “Hey Boo.”