Empathy is prone to bias. We are more likely to feel empathy for people we are socially close to, including friends, relatives, people we share some identity with, and also people we see as being more attractive (Gassam Assare, 2023, citing Bloom, p. 93).
This is evident in what PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill named “Missing White Woman Syndrome” which then also prompted a response leading to organizations that promote cases of missing or victimized Black women (African American Policy Forum, Black & Missing Foundation, Inc.) as well as Indigenous women (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) that too often go unnoticed by the public (Gassam Asare, 2023, p. 93—94).
We also saw the bias of empathy in the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. News reporters and public figures expressed their surprise at how such atrocities could take place in a European country, in a “civilized” place, to “people with blue eyes and blond hair” (Gassam Asare, 2023, p. 109, citing 2022 .
This empathy bias leads to what Bloom calls the “spotlight effect” where public consciousness singles out an event, usually one that affects a centered group. For example, Gassam Asare (2023, p. 94) points out the stark difference in coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting that killed primarily white children compared to the daily violence in Chicago that kills far more children, just not white children. Following the earlier example, news coverage of the Ukranian war in 2022 took the spotlight compared to concurrent crises happening in Sudan, Haiti, Ethiopia, Colombia, and several other countries.