(I know, I know. Some of you are going to totally reject this on emotional grounds. But solutions to problems come from pursuing ideas, not from standing fast.)
I have found bell curves useful for illustrating how groups of people can differ from one another with regard to the capacity for experiencing compassion. I believe the capacity for compassion plays a major role in any society's development or lack of development. Bell curves, or something similar, are necessary if you want to talk about a society's capacity for compassion, because no single number can illustrate what is really a distribution.
Let's start by comparing Democrats and Republicans. Please read on.
There is a difference between Democrats and Republicans that is not only a matter of ideas. We all differ from one another in terms of the ideas that we think of as being "true." But this is a relatively shallow way of looking at things. In a more fundamental way, the two political parties differ in relative capacity for feeling compassion. This may not have been true decades ago, but it seems true in this age. That's why the phrase "compassionate conservative" makes one roll one's eyes. Republicans have less capacity for compassion. To expand on this a little, I would say that Republicans are of the attitude that "I've got mine, and I don't care if they get theirs or not," whereas Democrats form two groups: "I would like for everyone to get what they need," and "I'll vote Democratic because that's my only hope for getting what I need." You'll see my hypothetical Democrat vs. Republican bell curves below. Note the Democrat curve has a wider spread for the reason just stated, namely, because it incorporates two groups, one compassionate and one not necessarily compassionate.
What is compassion? I leave it to others to argue over the fine points of compassion vs. empathy etc. But compassion is a matter of feeling rather than of information. It cannot be taught. There is no way to pass feeling through our eyes or ears into our brain the way information is passed. We can perform compassionate activities through imitation, if sufficiently motivated, and we can be triggered to feel compassion by circumstances provided we have the innate capacity to feel compassion, but we cannot actually feel compassion if the requisite brain cell interconnections are lacking or inoperative. This is in line with Heurlin's Axiom:
The only thoughts we can think, and the only feelings we can feel, are those for which we have corresponding brain cell (neuron) interconnections.
The capacity for feeling compassion is a matter of personality or temperament. I prefer the term "temperament" because is seems to me to connote someone's average day-to-day attitude or mood, whereas "personality" is more complex, having been established in the literature as having several testable factors. (See wikipedia / big-five-personality-traits.)
And personality or temperament is associated with heredity. Heredity impacts brain structure, and brain structure largely determines mental capabilities. (See wikipedia / nature-vs-nurture.)
The relationship between brain physiology and compassion is treated in studies of what has been termed antisocial personality disorder (ASP). An article in the December 27, 1999 issue of Time reviewed several studies of the subject. ASP is described in terms of several antisocial behaviors but most essentially appears to be an inability to feel empathy or guilt. In other words, ASP is marked by the absence of the ability to experience compassion.
Identical twins are more likely to share the trait than fraternal twins, just as one would expect when genes are involved. A University of Southern California study showed that people with ASP have less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex than those who do not have ASP. The Los Angeles Times published a similar survey (August 6, 2000) citing brain imagery research on murderers and mentioning a long-term study that followed children into adulthood and disclosed that the prefrontal cortex is smaller in violent people.
There will no doubt be commentators who protest the use of data related to antisocial behavior in the development of theories applicable to large populations. But those with a scientific background or capability will recognize that the human brain, with its 50 or 100 billion brain cells, is capable of producing a continuum of behaviors. Many such behaviors will be far from extreme and will defy classification. Normal becomes abnormal by degrees. Furthermore, what is thought to be criminal in one society may be considered virtuous in another.
Some years ago I contacted the University of Minnesota, where they have been conducting personality studies for many decades, and purchased a few of the many published articles that were available regarding personality. To get the best deal at $4.00 per article I chose the ones with the most pages.
Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (1984). Twins reared together and apart: What they tell us about human diversity. In S. W. Fox (Ed.), The Chemical and Biological Bases of Individuality. New York: Plenum, 147-178.
McGue, M., & Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (1989). Genetic and environmental determinants of information processing and special mental abilities: A twin analysis. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.). Advances in the Psychology of Human Intelligence (Vol. 5), 7-45.
Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & McGue, M. (1990). Genetic and rearing environmental influences on adult personality: An analysis of adopted twins reared apart. Journal of Personality, 58, 263-292.
Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., Tellegen, A., Bouchard, T. J. Jr. (1992). Emergenesis: Traits that do not run in families. American Psychologist, 47, 1565-1577.
McCourt, K., Bouchard, T. J. Jr., Lykken, D. T., Tellegen, A. & Keyes, M. (1999) Authoritarianism revisited: Genetic and environmental influences examined in twins reared apart and together. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 985-1014.
Virtually all of the personality studies base their analysis on comparisons of twins, because it is with twins that you can best eliminate interfering variables. The bottom line is that personality differences are to a significant degree inherited. One summary of a large number of studies presented the results in tabular form in terms of the following individual traits: extraversion, neuroticism, socialization, dominance, masculinity-femininity, hypochondriasis, conformity, flexibility, and impulsiveness. The median heritability for identical twins was 0.48, and 0.23 for fraternal twins. Another summary listed the so-called "big five" variables: extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness. There were notations in the "big five" summary suggesting that compassion might be embedded somewhere in agreeableness.
Another of the UM studies was an analysis of a psychological attribute which was called Right-Wing Authoritarianism. The analysis was done using data from twin studies, and results showed a strong (approximately 50%) heredity component. Of interest here is the fact that test scores were presented in graphical form, and the graphs resembled bell curves. So personality factors as measured by testing can possibly take the form of graphs showing distributions over a range of scores, so that some day we might expect to see graphical comparisons of different societies with regard to the ability to experience compassion.
The shape of the bell curve reminds us of the fact that any large group of people with almost infinite gradations in a characteristic usually has lots of people near the average, but also a significant quantity of not-at-all average, and also outliers. My bell curves are purely hypothetical displays of the capacity for experiencing compassion. Probably no accurate curves exist. Think of the problems. Measuring compassion has political incorrectness implications. Also I believe that personality tests are normally in the form of questionnaires, and, well, how could questionnaires compete in terms of accuracy with, say, practical situational tests?
(I've often thought of a rudimentary test where you pay people to kill animals, and from the data develop a formula that incorporates the size of the animal and the amount of payment as independent variables. The measure of compassion would be the refuse-to-kill threshold, which would be a function of the person being tested, expressed using both independent variables.)
(I'm reminded that I once had a summer job at Stanford killing laboratory rats, and I quit after one day. Also let it be a matter of record that on 6/27/2009 my wife, while driving in a residential neighborhood, encountered a pigeon in the center of the street. She slowed almost to a stop, with another car following, to let the pigeon consider alternatives before fluttering away.)
Now back to Republicans vs. Democrats. In the figure below, the vertical axis is the number of individuals and the horizontal axis is their ability to experience compassion. R is for Republicans and D denotes Democrats. As I have already suggested, Republicans have less compassion and, overall, Democrats have relatively more compassion. In the figure you can see that Republicans are skewed toward less compassion. You might argue that the Republican curve should be more narrow and squeezed together over the "None" area.
In order to flesh out a psychological test and facilitate scoring of compassion you could develop criteria using tribal categories- for instance, measuring compassion for spouses, for other family members, neighbors, people in occupations other than you own, people who have no jobs, people in other political parties, people with religions other than yours, out-of-state people, people in other countries, dogs, cats, and so forth.
---------------R-----------------------------
------------R-----R-----------D-----------------------------
-----------R-------R--D---------------D-------------------------
---------R--------D--R--------------------D---------------------
-------R------D--------R-----------------------D-----------------
-----R----D--------------R---------------------------D------------
--R---D---------------------R-------------------------------D-----
NONE---------------MODERATE-------------MUCH-----------
(COMPASSION)
So much for the relative bias between Republicans and Democrats. But now that I think of it, there can be just as much if not more relative bias if you compare countries. To review, heredity impacts brain structure and brain structure impacts mental capabilities. Owing to worldwide migrations over thousands of years, and relatively little intermarriage from one side of the Earth to the other side, there is no scientific reason to believe that people are the same everywhere. Again bell curves are illustrative. You could go to town with such curves. I thought of several pairings where countries clearly differ from one another with regard to compassion (if we are to believe the totality of news accounts over decades) and the associated bell curves would be biased away from one another.
In the following example country A is composed of people who are moderately compassionate, with outliers at the high and low ends. Country B on the other hand may be noted for torturing, or decapitations, or massacres, or assassination of journalists, or oppression of minorities, or subjugation of women, or extortion, or the cruel activities of its police. Note that it is not necessary to have overt cruel activities on a large scale in order to identify a society without compassion. The identification is made if the majority of the population shows no interest in preventing such activities, whether small scale or large scale. (Furthermore, if you wanted to measure levels of compassion in country B, practically speaking it would only be necessary to test the men.)
----------B---------------------A-----------------------------------
--------B--B--------------A----------A-----------------------------
--------B--B----------A-----------------A--------------------------
-------B----B------A-----------------------A----------------------
------B------B--A-------------------------------A-----------------
----B-------A--B---------------------------------------A-----------
B----A-----------B------------------------------------------A----
NONE---------------MODERATE-------------MUCH----------
(COMPASSION)
I decided to not identify particular societies in this post. So reader comments, if any, can stick with the science of all this, minimizing the politically correct outrage that no doubt would be expressed if I attempted graphic comparisons between actual countries. Although readers are free to visit the Amnesty International website and draw their own conclusions (amnesty international / Report 2009). (Another hint: our President Obama is now responsible for an overseas adventure whose outcome will be largely determined by the temperament bias that I am talking about.)
I find it interesting that in the Western world there have been calls for the worldwide spread of freedom and democracy for decades, if not centuries, always missing the point. Freedom and democracy are unobtainable, or superficial, or perhaps worthless, if there is insufficient compassion in a given society.
Even though cruelty is to a significant extent inherited, the march of history has shown a general reduction of cruelty in some parts of the world. I believe this is due to tremendous increases over the centuries in quality of life and in communication of values within and between societies. The change is in social pressure, not in heredity. Note the curve for country A, being broad, will allow for historical improvements in compassionate behavior. Due to modern institutions the balance of power has changed. Now there are countries with middle classes and legislatures and prisons. Also there is no instinct more universal than the need for status and approval, and tokens of such are now exchanged locally, nationally, and around the world continuously at the speed of light. Expressions of compassion are lauded. So we see that leaders in certain countries are learning that, with the whole world watching, they must visit the sites of natural disasters and the families of submarine accident victims. But even today there are subsets of populations that will perform any sort of cruel act, more so when there is peer-group acceptance.
You may ask, Why am I posting this? Call it an experiment. Other experiments (letters to editors) haven't worked. It bothers me that so-called experts, whether in the White House, or at the Council on Foreign Relations, or on the Sunday morning network television interview programs, treat problems of development in various countries solely in terms of politics and economics, refusing to acknowledge the role of temperament. Sometimes you do see mention of cultural values. But that minority courageous enough to talk about cultural values still seems unable to distinguish between cultural and temperamental biases. There are people who really need to know about this topic, especially those whose vocations are somehow tied to effecting social change, either as givers or as receivers of associated funding. In such cases do you say, "Let's assume, without foundation, from now to doomsday, that people throughout the world are essentially the same with regard to temperament?" Or do you say, "You know what, some of this money should go toward finding out what differences there may be?" Seems to me it would make the most sense to do reality-based planning, where you first determine what you can change, before trying to make changes.