The Empathy Paradox: When the Illusion of Understanding Breeds Bias

We connect with others most easily when we share. We use empathy to build common ground from shared experiences and often a shared identity, which, in turn, makes it easier to empathize even more deeply. But here’s the paradox: the more we have in common, and the more similar someone is to us, the more susceptible our empathy becomes to cognitive biases that interfere with true understanding. Instead of helping, our closeness may cloud our judgment. In suicide prevention and crisis intervention, the consequences can be grave.

The Pull of Similarity

Social psychology tells us that the starting point of empathy is already biased. It is biased toward those we see as us. According to Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory1, we’re wired to feel more concern and compassion for people we identify with. This in-group bias has become a central theme in recent critiques of empathy, including Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy2 and Fritz Breithaupt’s Dark Empathy3. These works argue that empathy can be biased, morally inconsistent, and even divisive, often because it privileges those who resemble us.

While these books provide an in-depth exploration of the limits and dangers of empathy, they overlook a crucial blind spot: many of us genuinely believe we’re empathizing when we’re actually failing to do so in any meaningful way. This can result in harmful outcomes, especially when decisions are made under the illusion of genuine empathy.

When Similarity Blurs the Lines Between Self and Other

This is where the Empathy Paradox emerges most clearly. When we take an opportunity to empathize with another person, we cognitively appraise the situation we find them in, we imagine ourselves in that situation and react affectively, recruiting an emotional response that we then communicate. We metaphorically put ourselves into their shoes. However, this response is rooted in our experiences, our own beliefs and values, our own worldview. The person we are trying to connect with might have a fundamentally difference experience. We project our frame of reference instead of further exploring how our attempt to empathize compares to the actual experience of the other person.

Projection is deceptively easy to fall into because we naturally shift from cognitive understanding to affective experience: we begin to feel, not just think. Instead of truly listening, we’re filtering their experience through our own emotional lens.

How Projection Undermines Rapport

  • It centers your experience, not theirs, undermining the overarching crisis intervention principle of patient/other-centricity.
  • It shuts down discovery, as we stop asking questions and being curious: empathy becomes a closed loop instead of an open door.
  • It creates emotional dissonance, because the other person may feel unseen, or worse, misunderstood.
  • It risks re-traumatization for both people, due to potentially disproportionate, misdirected, or emotionally charged reactions, making it harder to remain grounded or helpful.


Now add the dynamic nature of suicide and crisis intervention, where our brains are not only juggling emotional resonance but also rapid assessment, safety risks, and unpredictable behavioural cues, all under intense time pressure. These situations often exceed our processable cognitive load, overwhelming our working memory and pushing us to rely on mental shortcuts45. In that space, cognitive biases thrive. We may default to assumption over observation, projection over presence. And when empathy collapses under pressure, our connection with the person in crisis becomes more about our reaction than their reality.

Seeing Clearly Through Empathy

Empathy requires emotional boundaries. Not detachment but enough distance to allow someone else’s experience to stand on its own terms. Instead of projecting our pain onto others, we need to hold space for theirs, even when it echoes our own.

That’s the heart of the Empathy Paradox: what brings us closer can also blur the lines. And if we’re not careful, our best intentions to connect may actually leave someone feeling more alone, and more at risk.



References

  1. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of inter-group conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of inter-group relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole
  2. Bloom, P. (2016). Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. New York.
  3. Breithaupt, F. (2019). The Dark Sides of Empathy. Ithaca. 
  4. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive science, 12(2), 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1016/0364-0213(88)90023-7
  5. Yu R. (2016). Stress potentiates decision biases: A stress induced deliberation-to-intuition (SIDI) model. Neurobiology of stress, 3, 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2015.12.006

  1. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of inter-group conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of inter-group relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. ↩︎
  2. Bloom, P. (2016). Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. New York. ↩︎
  3. Breithaupt, F. (2019). The Dark Sides of Empathy. Ithaca. ↩︎
  4. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive science, 12(2), 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1016/0364-0213(88)90023-7 ↩︎
  5. Yu R. (2016). Stress potentiates decision biases: A stress induced deliberation-to-intuition (SIDI) model. Neurobiology of stress, 3, 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2015.12.006 ↩︎

more insights