Eastern Europe fares poorly in world empathy rankings

Put yourself in their shoes – this is never a nice thing to be told. According to a recent study, nine of the 11 least empathetic countries in the world are in the New East.

The research, which was lead by William Chopik of Michigan State University, ranked 63 countries based on data collected from an online survey on empathy and compassion, completed by more than 104,000 people globally.

While Ecuador topped the empathy list, nine New East countries counted among the bottom 11: Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Estonia all fared poorly, while Lithuania came in bottom in 63rd place.

“I think it’s worth noting that every country on the list is pretty close to one another, so really small differences might translate to a different/lower rank,” Chopik told LSM.

When asked about the reasons behind the apparent lack of empathy in eastern Europe, he replied, “We’re not entirely sure and the project was very exploratory. However, [...] more collectivistic countries had higher empathy on average, but so too did the more emotionally expressive countries and the happier people.”

It might be worth stressing again that this study covered only 63 countries… Have some compassion and imagine that the lowest scorers might have been different, had the study been larger.

Source: LSM