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Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.

Paul Bloom

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Paul Bloom
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 24
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Two
Freshman
Traditionally
Rats
Psychology
University
Population
Study
Freshmen
White
Populations

More quotes by Paul Bloom

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I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
Paul Bloom
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I think empathy is really important for pleasure.
Paul Bloom
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I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called the point of view of the universe, and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation.
Paul Bloom
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In my own life, I do not live like an effective altruist. An effective altruist would really disapprove of my life. I don't give enough to charity and I still have both my kidneys.
Paul Bloom
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Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel.
Paul Bloom
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We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good life: a life with sustained relationships, challenging work, and connections to community.
Paul Bloom
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The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.
Paul Bloom
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A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.
Paul Bloom
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You might argue on utilitarian grounds that the best way for the world to work is for everybody to take care of themselves first. And people have made that argument. But I just think we would be so much better off if we could care for distant others even a little bit more.
Paul Bloom
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If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
Paul Bloom
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I think we should really discourage this sort of empathic engagement when it comes to making moral decisions. I think we should focus on something like compassion, on getting people to care more for others without putting ourselves in their shoes.
Paul Bloom
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Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.
Paul Bloom
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By “empathy,” some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.
Paul Bloom
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My brother is severely autistic, so when I was a kid I spent a lot of time as a teenager in camps and programs for autistic kids. When I went to McGill as an undergraduate, I figured I'd be a therapist working with these kids. The truth is, and I knew this even back then, I'm just not good at this. I'm too empathic to do this sort of thing.
Paul Bloom
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It has been a period where people have been far nicer to one another in every possible way. I'm not saying it's because we're dropping our empathy that we're nicer to each other, just that the drop doesn't seem to be causing any harm.
Paul Bloom
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Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.
Paul Bloom
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When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy.
Paul Bloom
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Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.
Paul Bloom
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Even the charities I give to are related to things that touch my life, like the Special Olympics. I'm not fully rational I'm swayed by my biases and my emotions.
Paul Bloom
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I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.
Paul Bloom