Does Empathic Communication Lead to Higher Public Support for Humanitarian Welfare Benefit for Ukrainian Refugees?

KROTKÝ, Jan and Zuzana RINGLEROVÁ. Does Empathic Communication Lead to Higher Public Support for Humanitarian Welfare Benefit for Ukrainian Refugees? In Sociology of Emotions Midterm Conference RN11. 2022.

Basic information

• Original name: Does Empathic Communication Lead to Higher Public Support for Humanitarian Welfare Benefit for Ukrainian Refugees?
• Authors: KROTKÝ, Jan and Zuzana RINGLEROVÁ.
• Edition: Sociology of Emotions Midterm Conference RN11, 2022.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL

Abstract

Even before the war in Ukraine, immigration was one of the most contentious political issues in Europe and it is likely to stay so into the future. Europeans' attitudes to immigration are one of the key factors that shape how European societies navigate the issue of immigration. Existing research on voting behavior in the United States shows that individuals are significantly more likely to accept a position if the speaker shows empathy. Building on this research, we ask the following research question: Are citizens more supportive of welfare benefits for refugees if governmental officials express empathy with citizens' concerns about immigration? Results from our original survey experiment conducted on an online access panel in Czechia (N = 922) show that even a mild modification towards empathic communication increases, on average, the support for humanitarian welfare benefits for refugees. This increase, however, did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance. Nevertheless, among city and suburb dwellers the empathic rhetoric leads to a clear increase in support for the policy. Overall, these results suggest that empathic communication about a divisive policy may have the potential to lessen societal polarization over the issue.