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The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society Hardcover – Bargain Price, February 5, 2009

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J. D. Trout (Author)
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J. D. Trout (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 8 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Viking Adult (February 5, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0670020443
  • ASIN: B002CMLR10
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,370,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 starsa clarification--not a review
By Read-Only on April 14, 2010
Format: Paperback
I was confused at the existence of two books by this author on the same topic published very close together. After considerable effort, I found that Why Empathy Matters is the paperback edition of The Empathy Gap, which doesn't seem to be explicitly stated on either Amazon page. The author's online vita explains this.

I just mention this so that readers don't buy the book twice by mistake or waste time (like me) wondering which one was more appropriate for them to read.

(I rated it five stars because Amazon wouldn't allow me to add this note without providing a rating.)
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5.0 out of 5 starsA fun book on decision making and policy
By G.A. Wilson on April 1, 2009
Format: Hardcover
The first thing I noticed about this book is that - to my pleasant surprise -- it is not at all a self-help book. Instead, it's a book that describes -- in entertaining and highly readable prose -- how we can effect significant improvements in well being by using social policy to make an end run around our most common human foibles.

Here I will briefly summarize each of the six chapters to give a sense of how the book unfolds.

Chapter 1 (Bridging the Empathy Gap) - introduces a theme that runs throughout the book - that empathy can be good, but can also be fickle, and we need social policies to harness its power for the good. I found myself wanting more of a sense cohesiveness to the examples. But they made more sense as I got deeper into the book.

Chapter 2 (The Trappings of Freedom) "Free will is a bit like a sheep. There really is an animal there, but it's amazingly skinny when you've shaved all the wool off." (That's my favorite quote from the book!). The argument here - familiar in social psychology but I'm betting not so in philosophy - is that much of our behavior is shaped by external forces, much more so than we ever recognize - an important premise for the proposals introduced later.

Chapter 3 (Can We Rebuild This Mind?) - here Trout urges that we should develop behavioral policies that impose external constraints to ensure that we do not fall prey to destructive biases that impede good decision making. This chapter provides a really nice summary of different cognitive biases that we are prone to - these are probably familiar to many readers already, but not everyone.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsQuit dithering while the world burns
By cassdog on November 29, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
You have biases in your thinking that hold you back from doing what is best for yourself. We are poor at saving money, constantly value our present self over our future selves, make decisions based on arbitrary starting points and we value the status quo for no other reason than 'it is the way things are'. These cognitive biases are a result of our evolutionary heritage, a patchwork of cognitive tools latched on to previous cognitive shortcuts which themselves were imperfect. Not only do these cognitive biases get in the way of thought processes and actions regarding our own lives, they inhabit our very thinking on public policy and social welfare issues. A particularly profound example used in the book is that we have more empathy for those close to us and those similar to us. A politician who if sitting next to a starving child would obviously withhold seconds so the child could eat but once around other wealthy politicians with no starving children around he would thoughtlessly pass a bill that day stripping the dinner off of the plates of millions of children. Additionally, we are notoriously short-sighted and bad at estimating future costs so we are awful at saving for retirement. So a plan like Social Security that forces society to save is an essential remedy to create a stable society where the elderly aren't homeless or hungry. After a tour-de-force of our hardwired sloppy thinking, the author spends most of the book creating prescriptions to get around our inherent weaknesses to create a better life for us all...sometimes against the will of our cognitive biases. The author terms these outside strategies. These are strategies that don't rely on individual changes, or individual willpower to overcome our biases.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsIf only our policy makers would all read this
By Matthew Sullivan on November 6, 2009
Format: Hardcover
this is an excellent and tremendously important book all around.

briefly, it's about our capacity to empathize with others who are suffering or are worse off in general, and why it is that relying on these feelings (and trusting in the charity they supposedly effect) makes for bad policy -- not only are our emotions often short-lived, but we also possess an impressive lineup of cognitive shortcomings that allow us to ignore or redirect our empathy, or occasionally to ignore our humane feelings and "blame the victim."

the best policy, he argues, would be transform the empathy we feel for our neighbors and for others around the world into concrete, consistent government programs that can create a safety net for others in order to reduce poverty and alleviate suffering around the world. (not that the solutions are always easy to come by, but we need policies in place that will direct our better intentions into reliable, effective programs.)

is it acceptable that we have one of the highest poverty rates, especially for children, among the wealthier nations of the world? what about our infant mortality rate?

he then sets about demonstrating ways in which both "outside strategies" have proven effective, whether in the lab or in the real world -- looking at foreign government and the private sector -- and discusses ways in which the "libertarian" (used generally) perspective regarding new government intrusions are misguided, as we can already find parallels today.Read more ›
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