Book contents
- Seeing Us in Them
- Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology
- Seeing Us in Them
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Prologue
- 1 The Puzzle
- 2 Group Empathy Theory
- 3 Measuring Group Empathy
- 4 An Origin Story
- 5 Group Empathy and Homeland Security
- 6 Group Empathy and the Politics of Immigration
- 7 Group Empathy and Foreign Policy
- 8 Group Empathy in the Era of Trump
- 9 Group Empathy, Brexit, and Public Opinion in the United Kingdom
- 10 Cultivating Group Empathy and Challenging Ethnonationalist Politics
- Epilogue Group Empathy in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
- References
- Index
- Books in the series
9 - Group Empathy, Brexit, and Public Opinion in the United Kingdom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2021
- Seeing Us in Them
- Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology
- Seeing Us in Them
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Prologue
- 1 The Puzzle
- 2 Group Empathy Theory
- 3 Measuring Group Empathy
- 4 An Origin Story
- 5 Group Empathy and Homeland Security
- 6 Group Empathy and the Politics of Immigration
- 7 Group Empathy and Foreign Policy
- 8 Group Empathy in the Era of Trump
- 9 Group Empathy, Brexit, and Public Opinion in the United Kingdom
- 10 Cultivating Group Empathy and Challenging Ethnonationalist Politics
- Epilogue Group Empathy in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
- References
- Index
- Books in the series
Summary
Chapter 9 extends our examination of Group Empathy Theory outside the United States using data from the British Election Study (BES) in May 2018. The BES included our short version of the Group Empathy Index (GEI). It also included a ten-item individual-level empathy scale, which allowed us to compare the predictive power of intergroup empathy versus interpersonal empathy. Group empathy significantly predicts the British public’s opinion across a myriad of policy issues, including opposition to Brexit, favorable perceptions of immigration, support for equal opportunity policies, social welfare, and foreign aid. By comparison, individual empathy has very little effect on most of these policy views. In line with our theory and consistent with the findings from the United States, nonwhite minorities in the United Kingdom score higher on the GEI than whites do, while no significant intergroup differences are observed when it comes to individual-level empathy. The data indicates large gaps in policy opinions between whites and nonwhites, and group empathy once again helps explain these differences.
Keywords
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- Information
- Seeing Us in ThemSocial Divisions and the Politics of Group Empathy, pp. 212 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021