10 - Cultivating Group Empathy and Challenging Ethnonationalist Politics

Summary

Chapter 10 provides an overview of all our findings and offers additional avenues of research. We also discuss the many policy implications and political ramifications of group empathy, including what happens when it is lacking in specific contexts. In doing so, we consider the rise of ethnonationalist, far-right politics in the United States and many other parts of the world, and we discuss whether group empathy may counteract xenophobic, exclusionary appeals of populist leaders. The eight-year span of our data collection covers a stark transformation of the American policy landscape as the United States transitioned from Barack Obama’s presidency to Donald Trump’s. This allows us to contemplate how levels of group empathy might have shifted over time within and across racial/ethnic groups in the United States. We further consider how to cultivate group empathy at the societal level, in order to improve intergroup relations and social justice, and how to envision the role of educational experiences such as community engagement in these efforts.