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From The Golden Rule by Jeffrey Wattles (Oxford University Press, 1996), Chapter 9 

 In the Other Person's Shoes

 

                No one will say that the emotional life is simple, nor the intellectual life, nor the spiritual life.  Not only are they complex within themselves, but their interrelations also form a thicket that resists analysis.  The business of psychology is to plunge into that thicket and to bring forth increasingly well-established results that help us comprehend ourselves and others.  Surveying a century of psychological literature, one may observe that the major theorists are those who bring to light a previously neglected theme or cluster of themes, developed with enough systematic structure, empirical evidence, and philosophic-literary appeal to attract support and criticism; they focus discussion, affecting the shape of their discipline or sub-discipline for more than a decade.  This chapter will first review the work of several such theorists who have explicitly written about the golden rule and then present selected results on sympathy, empathy, self-deception, perspective-taking, and altruism that are helpful in applying the golden rule.

                The reader should not be deceived by the occasional semblance of coherence in the account formed from the studies distilled here.  The studies were designed to answer different questions, and they utilize different psychological methods: description of the researcher's own experience, psychoanalytic observation, observation of childrens' games, interviews with altruistic persons, interviews combined with moral problem-solving, interpretation of biography, experiments with subjects unaware of the focus of the investigation, dramatic adventures in personal realization, and programs for professional development.  Over a thousand studies have been done on empathy and altruism alone.  There are studies which confirm their hypotheses strongly, studies which confirm their hypotheses weakly, inconclusive studies, studies that disconfirm each other, studies that reconcile discrepancies between previous studies, discussions about whether empathy or altruism have been rightly conceptualized, and discussions about how difficult it is to give operational definitions of such concepts so that hypotheses can be tested.  The ship of psychology has steamed out of the harbor of intuitive understanding, but no port of scientific consensus is on the horizon, at least no agreed-upon general theory regarding the cluster of issues surrounding the golden rule.[i]

                Future research may well affect how we apply the golden rule by examining the practical import of distinctions between experiences including the following: observing the other, imagining how one would feel in the other's situation, imagining what the other is feeling, imagining the world from the perspective of the other, imagining the effect of an action on the other, imagining how the fairness of an act would be judged by the other, and taking the other's perspective vividly into account in moral decision-making.  There are auspicious beginnings, but ambition for the full range of relevant research is not yet on the horizon.

                Let it be noted that imagining oneself in the other's situation is not literally required by the golden rule, nor is it a necessary or sufficient condition for sound moral judgment.  In other words, sometimes one performs it but remains unenlightened through ignorance or self-deception, and sometimes one grasps intuitively what is to be done without any explicit act of imagination.

 

Reciprocity and the golden rule in childhood development: Jean Piaget

               Jean Piaget's writings, based on the observation of children, have proven very influential among psychologists of cognitive development.  In The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932) Piaget set forth a conception of moral development, based on the notion of morality as conformity to rules.  Following Emile Durkheim, he regarded morality as an affair of rules and regarded moral rules as products of society.  He approached the study of moral development by observing children of various ages playing rule-governed games.    Piaget identified stages of growth by observing differences in how children relate to the rules of their games.  He focused on experiences of reciprocity in the sense of "give and take," where roughly equal persons exchange roles, for example, taking turns being "it."  Prior to the emergence of morality, during ages two through five, the child engages in egocentric imitation, playing according to the rules of elders, without understanding the rationale of the conduct they are imitating.[ii]  For the child at age five, "rules are sacred and unchangeable because they partake of paternal authority."[iii]  Next, two stages of morality emerge in sequence.  The stages are a matter of proportion, and adults tend to emphasize one or the other of these two basic types of morality. 1.  The morality of obedience to rules.  Children of six to seven years have become capable of conforming to rules on the basis of an understanding what the rules mean.  At this age, children can exercise mutual control in applying the rules, together with an effective respect for obligations such as the prohibition on cheating.[iv]  The child tends "to regard duty and the value attaching to it as self-subsistent and independent of the mind, as imposing itself regardless of the circumstances."[v]   Retaliatory, retributive justice--repaying the offender in kind--is the norm.  Respect is unilateral and hierarchal.  According to Piaget, this moral attitude is associated with religious authoritarianism in adults.

2.  The morality of cooperation.  Children of 11-12 are capable of a systematic understanding of rules, and they experience a new level of freedom and potential for cooperation: they understand that conventional rules may be modified by group consensus.  They are ready to codify rules to cover all possible cases, though girls are less legalistic than boys.[vi]  Children can now cooperate as autonomous equals.  For this later stage, "a rule is looked upon as a law due to mutual consent, which you must respect if you want to be loyal" although it is possible to change it by agreement.[vii]  Respect is mutual.[viii]  "Cooperation is really a factor in the creation of . . . the self that takes up its stand on the norms of reciprocity and objective discussion, and knows how to submit to these in order to make itself respected."[ix]  According to Piaget, "The norms of reason, and in particular, the important norm of reciprocity, the source of the logic of relations, can only develop in and through cooperation.  Whether cooperation is an effect or a cause of reason, or both, reason requires cooperation insofar as being rational consists in 'situating oneself' so as to submit the individual to the universal."[x]

                It is in connection with the topic of justice that Piaget referred to the golden rule.  Put simply, there are two main types of justice, corresponding to the two levels of morality in the developing child.  In the spirit of the game, reciprocity operates "without any false respect for tradition nor for the will of any one individual" and without factors such as "inequalities due to chance, excessive individual differences in skill or muscular power."[xi]  At the initial level of morality, reciprocity operates to enforce a type of retaliatory justice which exacts a punishment equal to the infraction.  But retaliation leads to a cycle of responses that destroys the game.  The higher notion of reciprocity as involving equity facilitates a cycle of responses that allow the game to be sustained.  The play of reciprocity bound up with the initial sense of justice leads beyond itself to reciprocity in a higher sense of mutuality.

 

                In our view, it is precisely this concern with reciprocity which leads one beyond the rather short-sighted justice of those children who give back the mathematical equivalent of the blows they have received.  Like all spiritual realities which are the result, not of external constraint but of autonomous development, reciprocity has two aspects: reciprocity as a fact, and reciprocity as an ideal, as something which ought to be.  The child begins by simply practicing reciprocity, in itself not so easy a thing as one might think.  Then, once he has grown accustomed to this form of equilibrium in his actions, his behavior is altered from within, its form reacting, as it were, upon its content.  What is regarded as just is no longer merely reciprocal action, but primarily behavior that admits of indefinitely sustained reciprocity.  The motto "Do as you would be done by," thus comes to replace the conception of crude equality.  The child sets forgiveness above revenge, not out of weakness, but because "there is no end" to revenge (a boy of 10).  Just as in logic, we can see a sort of reaction of the form of the proposition upon its content when the principle of contradiction leads to a simplification and purification of the initial definitions, so in ethics, reciprocity implies a purification of the deeper trend of conduct, guiding it by gradual stages to universality itself.  Without leaving the sphere of reciprocity . . . between the more refined forms of justice, such as equity and love properly so called, there is no longer any real conflict.[xii]

 

For Piaget, then, morality is a matter of conformity to social rules, but there is a difference in the level of maturity between obedience to rules regarded as external impositions "from above" and cooperation with rules generated by one's own social group.  Describing the process in almost mystical terms, Piaget affirms that the practice of exchanging roles in rule-governed situations promotes moral growth.

 

The golden rule in stages of moral reasoning: Lawrence Kohlberg

                Among psychologists, Lawrence Kohlberg was the primary advocate of the golden rule as an expression of the highest level of moral reasoning.  Kohlberg found himself unprepared by his education for a dilemma he faced when he had a chance to escape from the Nazis after having been caught for getting a ship loaded with Jews to sail from Europe.  Should he stay with the Jewish prisoners or escape to try to rescue others?  Kohlberg's 1958 University of Chicago dissertation was based on his study of boys in a Chicago reform school, whom he asked to explain how they would handle a series of moral dilemmas.  The point of using dilemmas, presumably, is to force one to subordinate some legitimate considerations to others, to clarify priorities, to make what is implicitly or explicitly a choice of principle.  The best known of these puzzles is the Heinz dilemma.  Heinz's wife is dying for lack of a $2000 prescription drug which he cannot afford but may acquire only by stealing it.  What should Heinz do?  Kohlberg classified the responses not in terms of the particular solution chosen, but rather in terms of the kind of reasoning used.  According to Kohlberg, everyone goes through a universal and necessary sequence of stages (though many adults do not advance beyond stage 3 or 4).  He found two preconventional stages: reasoning about how to act to avoid punishment (stage 1) or to gain the rewards that come from pleasing authority figures (stage 2).  Next come two conventional stages: reasoning about how to act to satisfy the role expectations that go with one's immediate social relationships (stage 3), and then reasoning based primarily on respect for the law and order underlying one's society (stage 4).  In the postconventional stages, individuals are capable of criticizing conventional standards.  These stages are marked by reasoning that one must act according to agreements that result as different groups come together to establish a common framework of conventions (stage 5) and reasoning on the basis of universal moral principles (stage 6).[xiii]

                Kohlberg reported that persons at various stages of moral reasoning have different conceptions of the golden rule.  "We have systematically asked children who 'know' or can repeat the Golden Rule the question, 'If someone comes up on the street and hits you, what would the golden rule say to do?'  Children at moral Stages 1 and 2 say, 'Hit him back.  Do unto others as they do unto you.'"[xiv]

                The golden rule comes into its own in conventional reasoning.  "In contrast to Stage 1 and 2 concrete reciprocity, Stage 3 equates reciprocity with reversibility, with the golden rule.  The golden rule implies (1) ideal role taking or reversing perspectives . . . , not exchanging acts, and (2) reversing perspectives in terms of the ideal ('What would you like in his place?'), not the real ('What would you do in his place?')."[xv]  A person in stage 3 has a conception of equity: "It is fair to give more to helpless people, because you can take their role and make up for their helplessness."  A person at stage 3 is oriented to taking the initiative in "unilateral helping followed by gratitude, rather than to strict equal exchange."  Nevertheless, morality tends to function, at this stage, only within the context of reciprocal relationships.  "The sociomoral order is conceived of as primarily composed of dyadic relationships of mutual role taking, mutual affection, gratitude, and concern for one another's approval."[xvi]  For Kohlberg, stage 3 is limited by its somewhat exclusive focus on one-to-one relationships, in comparative isolation from the social systems in which many ethical dilemmas arise.

                Stage 6 reasoning is fully developed intellectually.  It is based on a commitment to universal moral principles.  For Kohlberg, the key insight is that "a moral judgment must be reversible, that we must be willing to live with our judgment or decision when we trade places with others in the situation being judged.  This, of course, if the formal criterion implied by the Golden Rule: 'It's right if it's still right when you put yourself in the other's place.'"[xvii]  Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and John Rawls illustrate Stage 6 reasoning.  In order to handle complex situations where more than two persons are involved, Kohlberg proposes his own method of moral reasoning, which he calls "moral musical chairs."

 

                1.  The decider is to successively put himself imaginatively in the place of each other actor and consider the claims each would make from his point of view.

                2.  Where claims in one party's shoes conflict with those in another's, imagine each to trade places.  If so, a party should drop his conflicting claim if it is based on nonrecognition of the other's point of view. . . .  In moral musical chairs there is only one "winning" chair, which all other players recognize if they play the game, the chair of the person with the prior claim to justice.[xviii]

 

                Kohlberg also described a seventh, post-moral stage involving religious faith either in a personal God or in a pantheistic, cosmic order.[xix]  Kohlberg had understood progress from one stage of moral reasoning to another as motivated by the need for an increasingly adequate way to think through moral issues.  Problems arise at one stage that are resolved at the next stage.  The question, "Why be moral?" however, is one that cannot be answered satisfactorily from within the moral standpoint; one can answer it either reductionistically--by reducing morality to a means to personal and/or group satisfaction--or by moving into religious thinking.  Confrontation with the apparent injustice of the course of the world provokes, in many people, a quest for deeper meaning which culminates in new depth of discovery and conviction.  A stage seven person still uses universal moral principles when issues of justice are raised.  Characteristically, however, such a person responds primarily on the basis of love for others as members in the family of humankind, fellow cosmopolitan citizens of the universe, or as beings in the unity of life and love.  Stage seven persons engage in service that transcends what justice and duty require.  Just as logical development is necessary, but not sufficient for moral development, so moral development is necessary, but not sufficient for the stage of agape or responsible love.  Kohlberg did not, however, identify a post-moral level of the golden rule in describing the highest religious stage.[xx]

 

Two clarifications prompted by feminist criticisms: Carol Gilligan

                Insofar as Kohlberg presented the golden rule is, at best, an abstract principle of justice, it is relevant that Carol Gilligan criticized Kohlberg for failing to recognize the importance of women's tendency to approach morally difficult problems by exploring the details of the relational situation (the "women's caring orientation") rather than by reasoning about how to apply abstract principles (the "men's justice orientation").[xxi]

                This criticism, whatever insight it may or may not express regarding differences between men and women, calls for a clarification.  A keen eye for situational complexity and a clear grasp of principle should be mutually helpful.  One wants to be treated with due regard for relevant situational details and with relational sensitivity, not on the basis of a blind application of an abstract principle (whatever that would mean).  Situational details are meaningful in terms of features that could be expressed in language, and thus in general terms that could be applied to other situations.  Moreover, principles are relevant only in terms of a particular description of a situation.

                If Kohlberg's post-moral, religious seventh stage had not been ignored in the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate, it would have been observed that Kohlberg's prime example of stage seven is a woman (Andrea Simpson) who devoted herself extraordinarily to the care of her insane brother.  More attention to that kind of example should lead to further understanding of the character of morality, the importance of religion, and the equality and difference of men and women.

                Another feature of the golden rule becomes evident in response to a point raised by some feminists.  Moral teachings have been used to keep women in their place within patriarchal systems.  The reason for this, some say, is that morality is typically called upon as a bulwark against men's selfishness and egocentric aggression, whereas women's excessive responsiveness to others' demands and needs is a problem of comparable importance.  A moment of reflection suffices to dispose of a false corollary to the golden rule: If I want to be treated kindly, does that mean that I must treat an abusive "superior" in a way he might regard as kindly?  More to the point is this golden-rule question: Would I want to be "served" by a person whose "good deeds" were prompted by deficient self-respect?  If the rule is to function in the emerging age of equality between men and women, the rule must also be understood as an antidote to an undervalued, imploded self.

 

Stages of maturity and the golden rule: Erik Erikson

                For Erik Erikson, the golden rule symbolizes a universal, humanitarian ethical orientation that presupposes many stages of growth.  Life sets a typical sequence of challenges, and the mature individual acquires a constellation of ego strengths, or virtues, by meeting these challenges successfully.  Each virtue lays the ideal foundation for acquiring the next one.  In response to the experiences of the first year of life, trust should come to predominate over distrust.  During the second and third years, the issue is whether autonomy, confidence in one's ability to assert oneself, will prevail over shame (being exposed before one is ready, revealing a vulnerability or deficiency felt to be intrinsic to the self).  At age 4-5, the issue is initiative (manifested differently by boys and girls) vs. guilt (a reprimand may be overpowering in the child's mind).  Next, in later childhood, one is challenged to acquire the virtue of industry: the "I can" attitude, a sense of competence about doing and learning and making a contribution, rather than developing a sense of inferiority by despairing of one's skills and status.  Then, during the teenage years, one must struggle with a sense of identity versus role confusion.  When identity is firm, one is able to commit oneself in fidelity to a friendship, a religion, a community.  Next, sustained intimacy implies mutuality in sexual satisfaction and the virtue of love.  The crisis of middle age is between generativity versus stagnation.  Is one willing to invest oneself caring for the next generation (in child rearing and contribution to society) or will one be captured by self-centeredness?  In later adult life one faces the challenge of ego integrity versus despair.  After triumphs and disappointments, there arises a new love of self as part of a world order grounded in spiritual depth.  The final virtue is wisdom, which refreshes courage, renews earlier visions of wholeness, and whose fearlessness toward death encourages children.[xxii]

                Erikson uses the terms "moral" and "ethical" to name contrasting orientations: "I would propose that we consider moral rules of conduct to be based on a fear of threats to be forestalled.  These may be outer threats of abandonment, punishment, and public exposure, or a threatening inner sense of guilt, of shame or of isolation.  In either case, the rationale for obeying a rule may not be too clear; it is the threat that counts.  In contrast, I would consider ethical rules to be based on ideals to be striven for with a high degree of rational assent and with a ready consent to a formulated good, a definition of perfection, and some promise of self-realization."[xxiii]  Thus, moral development begins as the child is restrained by means of threats, which instill in the unconscious vast "arsenals of destructive rage," which may lead in later life to moralism and cruelty.[xxiv]

                By contrast, maturity is achieved through interaction with others, since the individual participates in social actuality by activating others and by being activated by them.  Each rouses and responds to the other in an invigoration largely "preconscious and subconscious."[xxv]  In an intermediate stage, the developing person holds to some ideology as a tool for dealing with temporal uncertainty.

                The golden rule embraces humankind universally, including people and groups that lesser levels of maturity exclude.  The rule is not best interpreted as a counsel of prudence or as a maxim of sympathy, but as a principle of mutuality in which the agent takes initiative, "approaches an encounter in a (consciously and unconsciously) active and giving attitude), rather than in a demanding and dependent one."  Action fulfilling the golden rule strengthens the doer and the other in "whatever strength is appropriate to his age, stage, and condition."[xxvi]

                In India, Erikson delivered the address, "The Golden Rule in the Light of New Insight," and he took the occasion to expressing his sense of the dangers of international conflict and his respect for Gandhi.  Commenting on various formulations of the golden rule from Hindu tradition, he observed that the maxim, "Do not to others what if done to you would cause you pain" presupposes little maturity.  More advanced is another formulation, "No one is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."[xxvii]  Erikson recognized the most unconditional commitment in the teaching of the Upanishads, "He who sees all beings in his own self and his own self in all beings."  He concluded, "At our historical moment it becomes clear in a most practical way that the doer of the golden rule, and he who is done by, is the same man, is man."[xxviii]  Erikson's almost mystical conception of the unity of humankind is based on the experience of mutual activation, in which each is "acting upon and being guided by what is most genuine in the other."[xxix]  Clearly, for Erikson, the golden rule is a principle that persistently embraces all humankind, despite every device of narrow-mindedness to restrict the scope of considerate conduct to an in-group.

 

Concerns about stage sequences

                Some psychologists have expressed the concern that sorting people according to "hierarchal" stage sequences is harmful.  In one sense, the objection refutes itself, since a non-hierarchal approach would, presumably, be superior to the hierarchal approaches.  Thus, there may be no way to extricate oneself from such thinking.  But the concern is well taken, since there is a persistent risk of failing to respect those regarded as inferior, in some sense.  Level sequences are dangerous.  They risk obscuring the common humanity of the classifier and the classified.  It is all too easy to stereotype others and to cease letting oneself be interrogated by them.  To recognize that danger is not sufficient for safety, however, since pride can re-emerge in one's sense of superiority over "those people who go around classifying, those dualists, those compulsive intellectuals who construct level schemes, etc."

                Stage sequences sometimes give the impression of rejecting lower stages.  For example, one kind of rationalist may regard material emotions as a lower-level nuisance.  From a dialectical perspective, however, the lower achievements are presupposed by and contribute to higher ones, which, in turn, transfuse the lower levels with new meaning and value.  For example, a raw emotion of sympathy becomes an ingredient in a mature feeling of compassion.  Spiritual growth infuses the emotions so that loving sympathy gradually pervades natural desires and fears; people incline to "bear one another's burdens"; as Isaish wrote of God, "In all their afflictions, he is afflicted with them."[xxx]

                In defense of stage sequences, it should be possible to agree at least that two hypotheses are plausible: (1) each step of personal growth should yield an enhanced sense of self-and-other, giving rise to an enhanced interpretation of the golden rule; and (2) the practice of the golden rule conduces to personal growth.  Moreover, objections to stage thinking has still less force when the sequence characterizes the highest stage in terms of respect or caring or love directed potentially to any human being.  The highest stage should be marked by integration of the entire personality rather than by departure from the achievements of lower stages.  It seems more realistic to humanize the talk of stages than to try to eliminate it.  A sense of proportion in not overemphasizing stage talk is also essential.

                Distinguishing levels remains helpful for analysis, though it must be remembered that life blends what the intellect distinguishes, that the personality acts as a whole, and that a growing personality, at any stage, is a progressively unified personality.

 

A sketch of the development of sympathy

                The golden rule instructs the agent to treat others "as you want others to treat you."  The rule in its economy of statement does not make explicit that you need some understanding of the other person.  But how shall that understanding be gained?  Perhaps our most basic sense of others comes through feeling.  Indeed, the conventional sense of the golden rule does seem to be, in effect, a principle of sympathy: "Be considerate of others' feelings as you want others to be considerate of your feelings."  Sympathy--defined by Lauren Wispe as "the heightened awareness of another's plight as something to be alleviated"--develops through an interplay of affective and cognitive factors, and I would summarize some of the research by constructing a series of stages.[xxxi]

1.  The infant is not yet psychologically differentiated from the mother.  Especially during the first few months, cries of distress from another child elicit cries of distress from the infant.  Positive as well as negative feelings are contagious.  This phenomenon continues in adults, who may be buoyed up by others' infectious enthusiasm or invaded by their depression.

2.  The child spontaneously imitates the gestures of others.  In addition, there is a developmental connection between perception and social awareness.  The child begins to be able to move around and to identify objects--the same thing can be seen from here and from there.  The very sense of the objectivity of perceived things involves the sense that others, from their perspectives, could confirm one's own perceptions.  The child also shows an awareness of being able to be in another's place, e.g., by being jealous that another child is in its mother's lap.

3.  The child relieves the distress of another child by doing the same helping activities that a parent would do.  Sympathetic behavior can occur before the second birthday.

 

                In her suburban home, 18-month-old Julie was excited when another baby, Brian, came for a visit.  But Brian was less than pleased at being with strangers and soon began to shriek and pound his fists on the floor.  Almost immediately, Julie's delight vanished, her body stiffened and she looked worried, startled and anxious.

                                Julie's mom put Brian in a highchair and gave him cookies, but he continued screaming and threw the cookies on the floor.  Julie, who usually tried to eat everyone else's cookies, put them back on the highchair tray.  Brian's crying continued, and Julie tried to stroke his hair.  She then went to her mom, grabbed her by the hand and brought her to Brian.[xxxii]

 

This report shows sympathy operating prior to moral decision.  The child can act in ways that satisfy rules, but does not yet understand the meanings and values that the rules express.

4.  As early as age four, and surely by age eight, perspective-taking becomes a more cognitive activity, as distinguished from the predominantly affective experiences of emotional contagion and personal distress.[xxxiii]  Comparatively individuated experience is gained as the developing ego becomes assertive about its desires and as intelligent volition appears.  The child becomes capable of moral decision.  The child can give some account of his or her action that indicates some understanding of the point of rules, some recognition of moral meanings and values.  Sympathetic behavior can be motivated more by an interest in relieving the other's distress than by an interest in relieving one's own distress.

5.  Advancing stages of moral experience and commitment emerge on the horizon.  Thinking, feeling, and doing develop in new capacities for living accord with the golden rule, and sympathy can grow into compassion.

 

The problem of self-deception

                We typically assume that we understand others intuitively, that we empathize accurately, that our expressions of consideration are appropriate.  Psychology tells us, however, that despite our customary reliance on empathy to inform us about others, our empathic sense of others is often misleading.  The golden rule tells us to treat others as we want to be treated, thereby tacitly encouraging the assumption that there are important commonalities or similarities between self and other.  Over-reliance on commonalities can blunt sensitivities to difference just as much as being overly impressed with difference can blind people to kinship.

                The problem of empathic error is obviously important for the practice of the golden rule.  If the rule were taken to encourage complacency about understanding others, then the rule would appear to foster narrow-mindedness and treating others in an insensitive manner.  One might be simply unaware of differences between oneself and another, a natural tendency, according to Sigmund Freud:

 

                Without any special reflection we attribute to everyone else our own constitution and therefore our consciousness as well, and . . . this identification is a sine qua non of our understanding.  This inference (or this identification) was formerly extended by the ego to other human beings, to animals, plants, inanimate objects and to the world at large, and proved serviceable so long as their similarity to the individual ego was overwhelmingly great; but it became more untrustworthy in proportion as the difference between the ego and these 'others' widened.[xxxiv]

 

                Therapist Robert L. Katz has described the possibilities of error and self-deception in empathy.  Superficial empathy is one source of error.  "We recognize some parallels and vaguely apprehend some quality of the experience of the other and then proceed, quite without the necessary supporting evidence, to make inferences regarding the whole personality.  It is a case of premature disengagement and a withdrawal of emotional energies before the meeting has actually taken place.  We presume too quickly that we have overcome our strangeness and that we have understood the other person from within. . . ."[xxxv]  Katz notes the obvious dangers.  One needs to take care about imposing personal valuations on others and about the use of categories and language that reflect racial, cultural, gender, or class stereotypes.[xxxvi]  Katz writes of the "evangelical empathizer," who is "confident that his values and his conceptions of what is normal are valid for himself and for all of his clients.  He is more attached to his categories than to his clients . . . ."[xxxvii]  When the therapist employs his own feeling and does not rely exclusively on concepts that are necessarily abstract and stereotyped, he understands more profoundly.[xxxviii]

                There is of course hope.  Three professors of nursing responded to studies showing that intuitive abilities do not enable even many helping professionals to demonstrate empathy in a way that is actually helpful to the client.[xxxix]  Conceiving of empathy as a skill, Jean R. Hughes, E. Joyce Carver, and Ruth C. MacKay, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, designed a successful training program to develop empathy through interpersonal interaction.  They created programs for nurses in the Burn Unit of Victoria General Hospital, working with E. L. La Monica's three-stage definition:  "Empathy . . . involves accurate perception of the client's world by the helper, communication of this understanding to the client, and the client's perception of the helper's understanding."[xl]  The nurses learned better to recognize cues, to show understanding of the patient through verbal recognition of both content and affective dimensions of the patient's message, and to be alert to the client's perception of the helper's understanding.  Those participating in the study came to recognize that it is more difficult to understand others and to make oneself understood than we normally realize, and they learned "how misunderstandings could result from a series of small but inaccurate assumptions resulting from failure to validate client messages."[xli]  Though it was emotionally demanding to go through training concerning a matter that affects one's sense of professional and interpersonal competence, during the course of the training, the nurses moved from resistance and skepticism to commitment and personal initiative in seeking out supplementary materials relevant to their own felt needs.  The 20-25 hour programs began with initial sessions with lectures and written exercises, moved on to role-playing with partners, and concluded with videotaping and group review of role-playing exercises.  The nurses reported improved understanding in their relations with their patients and with colleagues as well.  The programs yielded consistent behavioral improvement throughout the group of nurses, with no decline after seven months.  A major lesson of this program is that, in cultivating empathy to the level of service effectiveness, it is helpful to communicate and test one's perceptions in conversation.[xlii]  Imagination is not enough.

 

Dramatic and therapeutic role reversals

                As Katz reported, in order to get beyond the limitations of imagining oneself in the other's situation, it may be necessary to do something.

 

                Trigant Burrow recorded a personal experience which made him sharply aware of certain built-in hazards in the therapist's position. . . .  One of his patients had questioned his sincerity.  He requested Dr. Burrow to change positions with him.  He would take the chair of the therapist and the doctor would take the reverse position of being the patient.  It was unprofessional and unorthodox, but Dr. Burrow acceded to his patient's request.  Soon after yielding his own chair to the patient, Dr. Burrow gained new and painful insight into the professionalism and authoritarianism which had crept into his own therapeutic attitudes.  He now recognized in himself certain tendencies toward self-vindication.  His awareness came into being only after he had changed places.[xliii]

 

Burrow's adventure was a form of role-playing, a technique which has been widely used in education.  The term role-reversal is fully appropriate since there was a (mutual) exchange of roles, not just a unilateral attempt to put oneself into the other's "role."

                Deliberate role-playing involves the imagination in what we may call the dramatic role reversal.  Its use in a combination of psychology and theater was pioneered by Jacob L. Moreno and is employed in workshops conducted by Armand Volkas, a psychologist, drama therapist, actor, and director from Oakland, California.  Volkas, a child of Holocaust survivors, brings together Jewish children of Holocaust victims and children of Nazis.  In Acts of Reconciliation, a two-day workshop, performed many times in Oakland and in Berlin, dramatic role reversals engage memory, perception, and imagination in improvisational acting.  There is no script; the participants create the drama as they go through a sequence of exercises, which give participants an opportunity to experience the moral and emotional power that comes from the two groups resolving to remember the Holocaust together, to transcend stereotypes, and to build communication.

                A few details that Volkas gives about some of the exercises indicate the place of the dramatic role reversal in the workshop.  He begins by having each participant begin telling about himself by saying, "I am a German," or "I am a Jew," and each one shares the thoughts and feelings associated with stating this fact about himself or herself.  They discuss their experiences and feelings as they arise.  Working with groups of, say, ten Germans and ten Jews, he next gathers them into pairs of a German with a Jew to exchange life stories.  Each then retells the other's story to the group in the first person, as if it were his or her own.  In another exercise, participants take the positions of individuals in photographs of scenes from Nazi Germany.[xliv]  Midway through the workshop, participants re-enact an experience of a parent, e.g., a man who had his wrists broken for stealing bread, having emerged from the sewer at dawn to find something to eat.  There is an exercise in which pairs alternate playing the roles of master and slave, partly to discover "the potential Fascist in each of us."  They create masks of the Fascist part of themselves.  Each group enacts stereotypes of its own culture.  At the end, there is commemoration.  Each participant finds something in nature that represents hope for the future.  Then they look forward to how the Holocaust may be remembered in two hundred years, and create a ritual of remembrance through mime, music, and poetry.  Finally they take some action and make some public statement.  Through these experiences, participants are helped to confront painful childhood memories, and they find themselves able to relate to their parents with new honesty.  The role reversal, for Volkas, is at the heart of the therapy: "If you can stand in somebody's shoes, it's impossible to dehumanize them."[xlv]

                Empathy is even used as a means of self-discovery by dramatist, theatre professor, and performer Anna Deavere Smith.  Her piece, "Twilight: Los Angeles 1992" brings the audience to empathize with the wide spectrum of people involved in the riots following the trial of policemen involved in the Rodney King incident.  On the basis of more than 170 interviews, Smith dramatizes on stage the pain in each of her characters.  As a solo performer on stage, playing the roles both of those she interviewed and of herself as interviewer, her primary purpose is clear.  In an interview with John Lahr done for a New Yorker article, she explained, "It's crucial that whites in the audience find points of identification . . . with themselves.  To create a situation where they merely empathize with those less fortunate than themselves is another kind of theatre."[xlvi]  Observes Lahr, "She creates a climate of intimacy by acknowledging the equality of the other.  She waits out the anger.  She accepts the contradictoriness.  She cleverly notes the body language.  And sometimes even her right to listen is tested."[xlvii]  Smith speaks about the horror of racism, of getting people to wake up: "The only way to master this fear of coming into consciousness is by coming into the consciousness of others, mimicking how other people did it, because it's terrifying to come into my own."[xlviii]

 

Ideas on altruism from experimental psychology

                A major reason for the interest in empathy, sympathy and perspective-taking is that they should promote helping behavior, actions in conformity with the golden rule.  Experimental subjects instructed to take the perspective of another person are somewhat more likely to perform the helpful action than subjects who do not receive such instructions.[xlix]  Nevertheless, there are qualifications, including the following noted by Dennis Krebs and Cristine Russell: "We can say that when people put themselves in the shoes of others, they may become more inclined to render them aid.  But the shoes of others do not fit all people equally well, and getting into them is never enough.  The path from role-taking to altruism is tortuous and indirect."[l]

                There is some evidence that effective practice of the golden rule maintains focus on the person and situation that calls for response.  A person who is actively involved tends to focus more on the situation, whereas the person who is simply imagining tends to focus more on the suffering person.[li]  In other words, productive involvement side-steps pity.  A high degree of empathy can be associated with a counterproductive level of physiological and psychological arousal.[lii]  "Arousal" is an umbrella term that incorporates many factors.  In an extreme case the individual may experience paralyzing fascination while witnessing a crime or panic at the scene of a horrible accident.  In less extreme cases, the sense, "I ought to do something--what am I going to do?" can precipitate a shift of focus from the urgent situation to the self that needs to measure up to certain standards.  A high degree of physiological arousal, associated with a strong feeling of personal distress, can reduce altruistic behavior.

                Indeed, the fact that much apparently altruistic behavior can be explained as a way of relieving personal distress or repairing one's mood has stimulated the debate about whether people ever do altruistic actions without an "underlying," dominant motive of self-interest.  The golden rule appears to call agents to act with the interest of the other ultimately in mind.  The moral tone of the rule differs intuitively from the tone of a maxim of self-interest.  But how far can psychology demonstrate the existence of true altruism, in this sense?  Although it is not possible to extinguish every doubt, it has been possible to turn the tide of psychologic opinion.  The weight of evidence is now on the side of the view that genuine altruism exists.  This shift is due to a series of experiments carried out by C. Daniel Batson and associates, showing, for example, that empathy differs from personal distress, where personal distress is defined in terms of emotions such as "shock, alarm, disgust, shame, and fear"; while empathy is defined in terms of emotions such as "compassion, concern, warmth, and softheartedness."[liii] 

                However, despite the evidence in favor of the claim that genuine altruism can be distinguished from behavior in which the dominant motive is self-interest, Batson, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis have also carefully organized evidence for the sobering conclusion that many people characterized as religious do not exhibit altruism more than those characterized as non-religious.  In Religion and the Individual, following a social-psychological approach not biased against religion, they use three categories of religious attitude: religion may function as a vehicle of self-interest; religious convictions may be regarded devoutly as truths of intrinsic value; and religion may be embraced as an ongoing quest.  Only with the last category is there clear evidence of increased tolerance for socially marginalized people and increased sensitivity to the needs of others.  Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan seems to convey a keen sociological generalization: many a religious person--when the cost of helping is high, when escape is easy, when one believes that one is unobserved by others--does not do more than the average.[liv]

                Experimental psychology has done little directly with the golden rule.  A lone experiment, however, has addressed the question of how people respond differently to the positive and negative formulations of the golden rule.  Ron B. Rembert asked sixth-grade students to make two lists, one list of actions they did not want others to do to them and one list of actions they did want others to do to them.  "Their list of 'Don'ts' was longer than their list of Do's.  For example, 'hit,' 'steal,' 'laugh at,' 'snub,' and 'cheat' appeared in the list of 'Don'ts' while 'love,' 'respect,' and 'help' appeared in the list of 'Do's.'  The list of 'Don'ts' . . . included specific behaviors which are relatively easy to identify.  This list of 'Do's' . . . focused upon general attitudes and behaviors which are more difficult to define."[lv]  The students concluded that the negative version of the golden rule would be easier to follow than the positive version.

 

Conclusion

                Psychological research into empathy, sympathy, and altruism is just beginning to affect the understanding of the golden rule.  However stages of development may be conceived, it is clear that those who think about the golden rule interpret the rule differently as they grow.  The fact that empathy and perspective-taking often fail to motivate altruism is in itself an important result, for it suggests that we look for moral motivation beyond sympathy.  Furthermore, if religious motivation is claimed to be an answer or the answer, it is clear that such motivation must be spiritual in an uncommon degree.

                It is also helpful to understand how deeply the practice of imaginative perspective-taking is part of human development.  Imagination makes difference understandable.  Not that the mystery of the personality we recognize is reduced to something we can define or fathom intellectually.  Not that the fluid, growing, changing individual can be pinned down by knowledge.  But mind can understand mind; imagination, here, is not a playful departure from the actual, but an approach to understanding.

                The capacity for identifying with others inheres in the mystery of personality.  Each unfathomably unique person recognizes other persons.  Each lives within the matrix of an ongoing interpersonal comprehension, and interpersonal experiences are double-sided; they involve the side of the agent and the side of the recipient, and they are comprehended only as both sides are known: loving and being loved, hurting and being hurt, learning and teaching, growing up as a child and then, as a parent, helping someone else grow up.  The mature practice of the golden rule involves an identification with others which includes understanding plus an appropriate level of shared feeling plus an appropriate practical response.


Chapter 9



                [i].  I am grateful Daniel Batson, who responded in detail to an earlier version of this chapter.  Though I cannot claim his support for the line of thought presented here, he helped by giving a seasoned perspective, clarifying issues, correcting errors, and indicating bibliographic resources.  His many books and articles, including The Religious Experience, The Altruism Question, and his new book, Religion and the Individual (1993) have been particularly helpful.

 

                [ii].  Piaget 1965, 78.

 

                [iii].            Piaget 1965, 56.

 

                [iv].  Piaget 1965, 78.

 

                [v].  Piaget 1965, 111.

 

                [vi].  Piaget 1965, 53, 77.

 

                [vii].           Piaget 1965, 28.

 

                [viii].          Piaget 1965, 295.

 

                [ix].  Piaget 1965, 95-96.

 

                [x].  Piaget 1965, 107.

 

                [xi].  Piaget 1965, 72, 73.

 

                [xii].  Piaget 1965, 323-324.

 

                [xiii].          It may be questioned whether Kohlberg's earliest stages represent moral reasoning at all, rather than rationales for conformity.  Nor is it clear that asking young children how to resolve complex adult issues such as the Heinz dilemma gives appropriate access to their moral consciousness.  What if genuinely moral decisions involve a recognition of meanings and values of relationships, such that mere conformity with authority or with one's social group hardly expresses what is genuinely moral about young persons' emerging morality?  From the perspective of a faith that morality ultimately means doing the will of God, Stage 2 behavior to please parents might show more than merely "preconventional" significance.  Could there be a spiral pattern in the sequence from parental influence to peer influence, such that religious "authority" returns, transformed into cooperation, in the growing adult?  What if moral principles are the propositional forms of ideas which can indeed be grasped by a child of six?  What if full moral development involves a grasp of spiritual meanings and values, followed by a supreme commitment to live by them, and, finally, the integration of the whole of one's life in accord with that commitment?

 

                [xiv].  Kohlberg 1981, 202.

 

                [xv].  Kohlberg 1981, 202.

 

                [xvi].  Kohlberg 1981, 149-50.

 

                [xvii].  Kohlberg 1981, 197.

 

                [xviii].  Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development, 199.  Kohlberg (1981), surprisingly, regarded his procedure, moral musical chairs (with its built-in appeal to "the prior claim to justice"), as equivalent to the decision procedures advocated by R. M. Hare (1963) and John Rawls (1971) (which are not circular in this way).  According to Hare, morality requires the agent to imagine himself in the position of each person affected by an action and then act so as to maximize the total satisfaction of desires and interests of those involved.  According to Rawls, agents must act according to principles that would be selected by a group of individuals that may be imagined to be (1) ignorant of what characteristics they will have in the society to be structured by the principles they will choose, and (2) desirous to maximize their own interests.

 

                [xix].  Kohlberg, with Clark Power, "Moral Development, Religious Thinking, and the Question of a Seventh Stage," in Kohlberg 1981.  The authors work with stages of faith as developed by James Fowler in which the highest stage of faith, Fowler's sixth stage, is here set forth as Kohlberg's seventh stage.

 

                [xx].  One social psychologist who connected the golden rule with the crucial ability to take the perspective (or role) of other persons was George Herbert Mead.  He envisioned the golden rule as the rule of conduct for a future global society, and he gave a social-psychological interpretation of the religious factor in altruism (see The Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead, ed. Anselm Strauss (1934, p. 19).  Mead taught that our self-concept is generated in large measure by learning to take the perspective of others on the self.  Social maturity develops along with the capacity for imaginative role-taking, identifying with progressively wider circles of persons--family, neighborhood, nation, and with humankind as one family.  Mead, a social psychologist and philosophical pragmatist envisioned religious living as an extension of sympathy.  For Mead, in the evolution of a universal society, religion plays an important role, but not a foundational role, since religion is just one of the factors conducing to this goal; other factors include the logic of science, the conception of democracy, and the tendency of market exchange to develop into global trade.  For Mead, the truths of social-psychological responses to others harmonize with the religious regard for all humankind as one family.  While recognizing that Christianity is not the only religion with a universal vision, he repeatedly cites the teachings of Jesus.  Mead commented that, in the parable of the good Samaritan, "Jesus took people and showed that there was distress on the part of one which called out in the other a response . . . .  This is the basis of that fundamental relationship which goes under the name of "neighborliness."  It is a response which we all make in a certain sense to everybody.  The person who is a stranger calls out a helpful attitude in ourselves, and that is anticipated in the other.  It makes us all akin" (Mind, Self, and Society, 272).  Religion built along these lines, for Mead, remains limited to the sympathetic response to distress or to emotional relationships.  It takes social integration of the many dimensions of human relationships in order to make fully concrete the religious ideal of humankind as one family.

 

                [xxi].  Gilligan initially set forth women's development as following a different sequence of stages than Kohlberg's stages for men.  On the basis of a study that she did, she proposed the following scheme.  (1) "an initial focus on caring for self in order to ensure survival" (2) "a new understanding of the connection between self and others" in which the concept of responsibility is associated with a "maternal morality that seeks to ensure care for the dependent and unequal"; and (3) realizing that the self, as well as the other, merits care, a new sense of morality remains focused on "relationships and response but becomes universal in its condemnation of exploitation and hurt"  (In a Different Voice [1982], 74).  Research has not, on the whole, supported Gilligan's initial generalizations, and she now talks about justice and caring as concerns for both men and women.

 

                [xxii].  Erikson 1963.  Erikson challenges the assumption that the sense of trust and the other virtues are achievements, "secured once and for all at a given state.  In fact, some writers are so intent on making an achievement scale out of these stages that they blithely omit all the "negative senses (basic mistrust, etc.) which are and remain the dynamic counterpart of the "positive" ones throughout life" (Erikson 1963, 273-274).

 

                [xxiii].  Erikson 1964, 222, quoted in Conn 1977, 251.

 

                [xxiv].  Erikson 1964, 243; quoted in Conn 1977, 261.  Unconscious, moralistic rage, for Erikson, justifies a call for advanced techniques of self-scrutiny.

 

                [xxv].  Erikson 1964, 165; quoted in Conn 1977, 258.

 

                [xxvi].  Erikson 1964, 233; quoted in Conn 1977, 258.

 

                [xxvii].  This formulation is generally attributed to Islam, not to Hinduism.

 

                [xxviii].  Erikson 1964, 243.

 

                [xxix].  Conn 1977, 259.

 

                [xxx].  Galatians 6.2; Isaiah 63.9.

 

                [xxxi].  Wispe, 1986, 314; Wispe has campaigned for a conceptual and terminological distinction between sympathy and empathy, a campaign that has had only marginal success among experimental psychologists.  See Hoffman 1984 for a highly differentiated account of stages of development of empathy, combining affective and cognitive factors in many stages of development.  The terms "empathy" and "sympathy" have a variety of meanings in the literature, and researchers disagree about how similar the feeling of empathetic person to the feeling of the other person, and about the extent to which "empathy" (as the etymology implies) specializes in emotion or feeling (pathe).  Note also that talk of imagining oneself in another person's situation implies a cognitive concession, an acknowledgement that what one desires to grasp is a bit out of reach because it is a possibility, not an actuality--how would I feel if I were in that situation, or how would the other person be affected if I were to do a particular action?

 

                [xxxii].  Alper 1985, 14.

 

                [xxxiii].  Strayer 1986, 222.

 

                [xxxiv].  Sigmund Freud, "The Unconscious," in The Standard Edition, vol. 14, p. 169, cited in Katz 1963, 60.

 

                [xxxv].  Katz 1963, 167.

 

                [xxxvi].  Katz 1963, 145, 179.

 

                [xxxvii].  Katz 1963, 184.

 

                [xxxviii].  Katz 1963, 17.

 

                [xxxix].  See Hughes, Carver, and MacKay 1990, 107.

 

                [xl].  Hughes, Carver, and MacKay 1990, 110.

 

[xli].  Hughes, Carver, and MacKay 1990, 112.

 

                [xlii].  It would be interesting to investigate how this program could be adapted to, e.g., Japanese culture, in which communication is less verbal.

 

                [xliii].  Burrow, The Social Basis of Communication, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1927, p. xvii; cited in Katz 1963.

 

                [xliv].  Douglas Adams of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, has pioneered the use of dramatic role reversals in response to works of art.  For example, his students take the positions of individuals represented in sculpture, move to embody the vectors in a painting, and discuss their experiences.

 

                [xlv].  From Morning Edition, National Public Radio broadcast, May 19, 1992.

 

                [xlvi].  Lahr 1993, 90.

 

                [xlvii].  Lahr 1993, 93.

 

                [xlviii].  Lahr 1993, 94.

 

                [xlix].  Mark H. Davis, Empathy (1994), p. 144.

 

                [l].  Krebs and Russell, 1981, p. 162.

 

                [li].  Wispe 1986, 317.  Nancy Eisenberg has found that subjects who report feeling very upset by witnessing another's suffering, often do little to help, and when they do help, they appear often to be motivated more by desire for personal relief than by concern for the one suffering.  She has found that these more egoistical "altruists" tend to be compliant and non-assertive.  Furthermore, those who feel bad from self-concern are less altruistic; while those who feel bad out of concern for others show enhanced altruism (Eisenberg and Strayer 1987).

 

                [lii].  "Arousal," of course, is a term that covers many phenomena.  Arousal can be produced by extraneous environmental factors that impede altruism.  It is not difficult to guess the effect of heightened pedestrian and traffic flow, abundance of visual stimuli, and a constantly high noise level on altruistic behavior (Moser, 1988).  Nor will we be surprised at the following report:

 

                [Princeton Theological Seminary students were] asked to prepare and deliver a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan and then to deliver their talks in another building, requiring a short walk between campus buildings.  Darley and Batson used the walk as an analogue of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and to complete the scenario, positioned a student confederate along the way who was slumped over, shabbily dressed, coughing and groaning.  Darley and Batson wanted to see how much the students would help the "victim."  The factor that made a large difference in helping behavior was the time pressure put on the subjects. (Rest, 17) 

 

Moreover, arousal may connote the positive mobilization of one's powers stimulated by a good mood.  People who feel good as the result of succeeding at a task, thinking happy thoughts, reading "elation" statements, receiving unexpected gifts, or finding money, subsequently show increased altruism.  See David Rosenhan, "Focus of Attention Mediates the Impact of Negative Affect on Altruism" (1980).

 

                [liii].  See Paul Rigby and Paul O'Grady, "Agape and Altruism: Debates in Theology and Social Psychology" (1989), p. 726.  See Batson 1986 for evidence that even in situations where it was easy to reduce personal distress by escaping from the distressing situation, subjects with a high degree of experimentally induced empathy tend to show an accompanying high tendency toward helping behavior.

 

                [liv].  Batson 1993, chapter 10.

 

                [lv].  Rembert 1983, 101.