This week, Pennsylvania police arrested a person of interest, Luigi Mangione, in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The arrest came after police received a tip from a McDonald’s employee who recognized the man from circulating photos. Instead of a majority of the public applauding the end of a multi-day manhunt where an alleged murderer was on the loose, the McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania — where he was arrested — has been flooded with negative reviews with people vaguely complaining about “rats.”
The sequence of events encapsulates a broader trend that has emerged since the death of the health insurance CEO: people expressing a lack of sympathy for Thompson, and instead hailing the alleged killer as a folk hero. It’s a notable contrast from how the American public reacted just a few months ago after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. Despite some people likening the once and future president to malevolent dictators, after the attempt many people publicly expressed — seemingly sincerely — their “thoughts and prayers” to the Trump family, saying that they’d never condone the death of human life, no matter how much they didn’t like them, disagreed with them, or loathed what they represented.
Over the last two decades, social psychologists have warned that Americans care less and less for others. Call it the empathy gap or empathy deficit, a landmark study of college students highlighted the issue in 2010 when it found a steep decline in empathy among young people between 1979 and 2009. Empathy is the ability to share and understand the feelings of another person.
More recently, an update from that same research team has shown that the tide is changing and empathy might be slowly increasing among Americans again. At the same time, narcissism has been on the rise.
According to the New York Times, Thompson was known in his Minnsetoan community as a “devoted” father to his two sons. He reportedly kept a low profile, attended his son’s lacrosse games, and maintained a love for golf. On his LinkedIn, according to the Times, he even expressed a desire to make health care more accessible. Is the public’s reaction to Thompson’s killing a reflection of Americans reportedly struggling with empathy, or could it be a symptom of empathy fatigue, specifically as a consequence of America’s for-profit health care system?
That's precisely what Newsweek chalked the issue up to, quoting Nicole Paulie, the mental health clinical lead at Spectrum Life, who said social media's "reactive nature often rewards engagement, whether through shock value, humor, or outrage over reflection or empathy. As a result, it becomes easier for users to focus on the systemic implications of a tragedy rather than on the real people and grieving families at its center." Less precisely, Gizmodo quoted an Instagram post that read "My empathy is out of network for this one.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, empathy fatigue is when a person is unable to care for another as a result of repeated exposure to stressful or traumatic events, like the COVID-19 pandemic. It can manifest emotionally or even physically, such as lacking energy to care about things around you or not being able to relate to others. Empathy fatigue is known in the health care industry as something that can frequently affect health care workers, a profession that is constantly exposed to stressful and traumatic events. But researchers say it’s affecting everyone in America as a result of the constant stream of crises from climate change to the erosion of reproductive rights.
Dr. Sara Konrath, the author of the groundbreaking empathy study and the director, of the Interdisciplinary Program for Empathy and Altruism Research at Indiana University, told Salon via email it’s important to note that it’s incorrect to assume empathy is on the decline, as research has been signaling otherwise. However, even if empathy is rising in America, Konrath said it can be “context-specific and selectively applied.”
“It’s possible for empathy to be increasing overall, and also selectively applied to those who are seen as victimized, rather than those who are seen as causing harms,” Konrath said. “What looks like an empathy crisis toward a specific person might actually reflect the public’s moral judgments about who deserves empathy.”
Konrath added it’s possible for people to have compassion for both, but empathy often gets applied to those “in need, more than those with power.”
From this perspective, it makes sense that in an ever more polarized society, many people are out of patience with being asked to have compassion and empathy for someone like Thompson, who represents a vastly unequal system in which health care is not a human right. Or in other words, some people might say he profited off the suffering of others. Research shows through a process called “moral typecasting,” that it’s common for people to see so-called “villains” as people who cannot feel pain. In other words, people like Thompson are not seen as human.
Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist, told Salon the “range of responses” to Thompson’s murder is a reflection of “humanity’s multiplicity.”
“Although the public’s response to a murder is generally empathic, feelings of empathy tend to dwindle if the victim is viewed in a negative light.” Manly said. “On a symbolic level, many people see Thompson as a representative of the unfeeling, avaricious corporate culture, and, if they cannot detangle Thompson as an individual — a loving father and husband — from his role as a high-earning CEO for a major insurance company, they may herald the murderer as a ‘force of good.’”
Manly pointed out this isn’t the first time frustrated people and masses have taken deadly action against those who symbolize privilege.
“And, although frustration and anger at the insurance companies’ business model is understandable, cheering on murderous actions signals both a loss of empathy and humanity,” Manly said.
Of course, not everyone is casting the alleged killer as a hero.
“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint. I understand people have real frustration with our health care system, and I have worked to address that throughout my career," Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said Monday at a press conference. As Jia Tolentino asked in the New Yorker, “Are we really so divided, so used to dehumanizing one another, that people are out here openly celebrating the cold-blooded murder of a hardworking family man?”
Manly offered some final advice: “In situations such as this,” she said, people are “well-served to stoke the embers of empathy rather than the flames of anger.”
