The Dark Side of Empathy: Mimesis, Deception, and the Magic of Alterity
Abstract
This article challenges the tendency, both academic and popular, to assign empathy the status of a virtue. The widespread inclination to associate empathy with the morally and socially “good”—with compassion, understanding, cultural bonding, and non-violent sociality—ignores what we propose to call the “dark side of empathy”: that is, the multiple ways in which empathy is routinely deployed to manipulate, seduce, deceive, and dehumanize others by means of vicariousness. Two diverse ethnographic cases, of hunting in Siberia and political violence in Indonesia, provide the empirical background for a discussion of the complex relationship of empathy to mimesis, deception, violence, and sociality.
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Empathy and Theory of Mind can be used for manipulation and deception.
“Although empathy and ToM are often associated with prosocial virtues, both abilities can be used for manipulation and deception (e.g.Bloom, 2016;Breithaupt, 2018;Bubandt & Willerslev, 2015;Ding et al., 2015;Imuta et al., 2016;Lee & Imuta, 2021;Vermeule, 2010).”
From The effects of reading narrative fiction on social and moral cognition (2021) · cites this paper as Bubandt & Willerslev, 2015
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References 140 · Cited by 141
- Authors
- Bubandt, N., & Willerslev, R.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Corresponding author
- Bubandt, Nils
- Willerslev, Rane
- ORCID
- Bubandt, Nils
- Venue
- Comparative Studies in Society and History
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 57
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-34
- ISSN
- 0010-4175 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-2999
- OpenAlex
- W2010282418
- Cited by
- 141
- References
- 140
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 27.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Comparative Studies in Society and History (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Sociology and Norbert Elias
- Keywords
- empathy, mimesis, deception, otherness, manipulation, dehumanization, hunting, political violence, sociality, violence, Siberia, Indonesia
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