"Empathy Is Actually a Choice"

"Not only does empathy seem to fail when it is needed most, but it also appears to play favorites. Recentstudies have shown that our empathy is dampened or constrained when it comes to people of different races, nationalities or creeds. These results suggest that empathy is a limited resource, like a fossil fuel, which we cannot extend indefinitely or to everyone...

While we concede that the exercise of empathy is, in practice, often far too limited in scope, we dispute the idea that this shortcoming is inherent, a permanent flaw in the emotion itself. Inspired by a competing body of recent research, we believe that empathy is a choicethat we make whether to extend ourselves to others. The “limits” to our empathy are merely apparent, and can change, sometimes drastically, depending on what we want to feel...
other research suggests that the blame lies with a simple change in motivation: People with a higher sense of power exhibit less empathy because they have less incentive to interact with others."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=1

(credit to KM)

Related: "Just How Nepotistic Are We?"