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Comment on Breithaupt's ''A Three-Person Model of Empathy''

Peter Goldie
Emotion Review 2012 4: 92
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421386
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421386

EMR

Comment

Comment on Breithaupts A Three-Person

Model of Empathy

Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 9293
The Author(s) 2011
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421386
er.sagepub.com

Peter Goldie
Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester, UK

Abstract
Breithaupts central claim is that empathy can be regarded as a mechanism
for strengthening a decision (2012, p. 87). My concern is that it is not
clear what is meant by strengthen. Does empathy merely give more
motivational oomph to a decision already made, or does it strengthen a
decision in the normative sensedoes it give more reason for the decision?

Keywords
empathy, justice, reason

To begin with, Fritz Breithaupt (2012) outlines what he calls a

three-step model of empathy. (This is not to be confused with
the three-person model of empathy.) Step 1 claims that we
humans are hyper-empathetic; we have a tendency to empathize with all sorts of people (and things) in all sorts of ways,
sometimes at considerable disadvantage to ourselves. Step 2 is
the process by which the hypertrophy of empathy is damped
down or blocked. Step 3 is the mechanism which unblocks or
bypasses the blocking mechanism. This part of the article is
highly schematic and general, not really distinguishing the
variety of kinds of empathy (a slew of potential mechanisms
[2012, p. 85]; a range of different control mechanisms
[2012, p. 86]), and accordingly I will not discuss it in any detail,
except perhaps to comment that, given the generality of the
claims, it is hard to make out how the model can be predictive: it predicts that human empathy is the strongest (be it in
terms of intensity or duration) when it is paired with secondary
mental activities that help to bypass the blocking mechanisms
of empathy (2012, p. 86).
Having outlined his three-step model, the article continues
with the central discussion about the role of empathy in sidetaking in situations of conflict. Breithaupts central claim is that
empathy can be regarded as a mechanism for strengthening a
decision (2012, p. 87). My concern is that it is not clear what is
meant by strengthen.
The first comment is that this seems far too simple an account
of what the role of empathy is when one is observing or
otherwise engaged with some kind of conflict or competition.
For one thing, the claim is at such a high level of generality,

concerning all kinds of conflict, from sport to a legal conflict

between two persons or two corporations, and concerning all
kinds of empathy, from low-level resonance mechanisms to
high-level imaginative projects. There is no argument why we
should consider that empathy operates in the same way, or even
in roughly the same way, in every kind of case. At one extreme
might be the occasion where one switches on the television to
watch a football match where one has no idea who is playing
who, and, so to speak, waits to see which side one supports.
Here, empathy might play a role in forming a decision about
which side to take, rather than strengthening a decision
already taken. At the other extreme are the occasions where one
goes to court to hear a witness for the plaintiff, where you yourself have already taken sides with the defence, who happens to
be your husband. Here, it would be surprising if your lack of
empathy with the plaintiff strengthened your decision to take
the side of your husband, as if you were not so sure he was in the
right until you failed to empathize with the other side. Secondly,
and relatedly, one might think that empathy operates in many
other ways in a three-person model, other than as a mechanism
for strengthening a decision. As Breithaupt himself notes, citing references, It has been shown that empathy is significantly
influenced by fairness perceptions, so the extent to which one
empathizes with one or other of the protagonists will here
depend on prior fairness judgments.
Most important here, is the question of having reasons
which justify ones taking one side or another, which do not
apply in at all the same way with sport. What exactly is
meant by strengthen? One possibility is that it simply
means the extent to which one happens to take one side
against the other; this is the sport model and it may well be
that empathy does sometimes work in the way suggested.
But in the other kind of case, strength could be taken to
mean something normative, to do with reasons as such. I do
not find Breithaupt to be clear on this. At one point he says
that empathy can lead to a justification of ones choice
(2012, p. 88), and the abstract says justify her/his earlier
side-taking (2012, p. 84). But later this seems to be qualified as quasijustify, whatever exactly that might be. Let us
consider an example.

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Goldie Comment on Breithaupts A Three Person Model of Empathy 93

Some philosophers have argued that abortion fits what

Breithaupt (2012) calls the three-person model.1 Let us assume
that it does. In this imagined case, you know that an unmarried
woman wants to have an abortion, and you believe on balance
that she would be wrong to do so, as she has no health reasons for
her decision. Then you find out that the only reason why she
wants an abortion is because having the child will get in the way
of her planned skiing vacation. You now have more reason to
think that she would be wrong to have that abortion, for you now
have information that you did not have; your decision is, in just
that sense, strengthened by what you now know. The question
here is whether empathy can play that kind of normative reasongiving role, and if so, how. Does it merely give more motivational
oomph to a decision already made, or does it strengthen the

decision in the normative sensedoes it give more reason for

the decision? Few would doubt the possibility of the former on
some occasions, but what about the latter? To answer this
question, the sports model is irrelevant.

Note
1 Slote, M. A. (2010). Moral sentimentalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. The role of empathy in justice has been much discussed in philosophy and in psychology.

References
Breithaupt, F. A. (2012). A three-person model of empathy. Emotion
Review, 4, 8491.

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