The present study examined if empathy and perceived similarity relate to empathic behaviors online. The study featured three real online influencers, one of whom was white, one Asian, and one Black. In a sample of 115 participants, I found that empathy significantly, negatively correlated with aggression for the two non-white influencers featured in our study. For the one white influencer, the more similar viewers felt toward her, the less aggression they felt toward her behaviors. Controlling for ethnicity of participants, participants indicated significantly higher levels of perceived similarity toward the white influencer, followed by the Asian influencer, and the Black influencer. **
While it is not "impossible" for any particular human to feel empathy for any other particular human, THE OVERWHELMING TENDENCY is for humans to feel MORE empathy for humans who are perceived to be "more similar".
For example,
Human ethnocentrism—the tendency to view one's group as centrally important and superior to other groups—creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members. In double-blind, placebo-controlled designs, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo and privately performed computer-guided tasks to gauge different manifestations of ethnocentric in-group favoritism as well as out-group derogation. Experiments 1 and 2 used the Implicit Association Test to assess in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Experiment 3 used the infrahumanization task to assess the extent to which humans ascribe secondary, uniquely human emotions to their in-group and to an out-group. Experiments 4 and 5 confronted participants with the option to save the life of a larger collective by sacrificing one individual, nominated as in-group or as out-group. Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence. **
Similarity can be something abstract. Someone may be physically different from you and yet you may feel that you are very similar to that person at psychological, mental and/or emotional level or because personality characteristics.
INTP FTW