Empathy, deservingness, and preferences for welfare assistance: A large-scale online perspective-taking experiment

Abstract

Online perspective-taking experiments have demonstrated great potential in reducing prejudice towards disadvantaged groups such as refugees or the Roma. These studies trigger the psychological process of empathy and evoke feelings of compassion. Meanwhile, a growing literature argues that compassion towards the poor is an important predictor of support for social welfare. This paper bridges these two literatures and predicts that perspective-taking with the poor could increase support for welfare assistance. This hypothesis is tested with a pre-registered experiment conducted on a large and diverse online sample of US citizens (N=3,431). Our results suggest that participants engaged with the perspective-taking exercise, wrote eloquent, often emotional essays. Nevertheless, perspective-taking had no meaningful causal effect on social welfare attitudes; we can confidently rule out effects exceeding 2 points on a 100 points scale. These results cast serious doubt on perspective-taking as a viable online tool to create compassion towards the poor.