Like adults, children experience less empathy toward some groups compared with others. In a series of studies, Dr. Shira Ran, Dr. Michal Reifen Tagar, Prof. Maya Tamir and Prof. Eran Halperin found that mothers differ from one another in how much empathy they want their children to feel towards specific outgroups, as a function of their political ideology.
The way rightist and leftist mothers differ is context-dependent since they did not differ from one another in how much empathy they wanted their children to feel in general. The extent of empathy mothers wanted their children to feel towards the outgroup was associated with how they chose to communicate messages to their children, and how their children actually felt towards the outgroup.
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