Empathy, Prejudice and Fostering Tolerance
The chapter discusses altruism, especially with regard to teaching. It describes the results from an experimental course program designed to use empathetic involvement with “the other” to help students think deeply about their own attitudes toward people judged to be different, whether these differences are the result of globalization and immigration or from more indigenous differences connected to race, religion, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual preference, etc. The results from a course taught at the University of California at Irvine use a class intervention in contrast with a nominee sample to determine whether a controlled university setting can provide the kind of empathetic involvement philosophers such as Adam Smith have long argued is the basis of ethical action. The authors use several measures of prejudice, before and after the class intervention, and find that empathetic involvement with “the other” can have an important and significant effect on existing levels of prejudice.
Keywords: tolerance, “other”/difference, prejudice, empathy, experimental course, United States of America
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