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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
If so, I don't know how to explain the much stronger empathy for gorillas and lions. It seems to me that it's a matter of expectation. Peoples' intuitions about horrible violence taking place in the Middle East, Africa, etc. is that "this stuff happens there all the time".
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But we have different levels of empathy regarding the suffering of animals not necessarily correlated with the animals ability to 'feel' pain, but based on our opinion of how cute the animal is (Save the Pandas!).
As far as the racial basis for empathy, here is the study that many are referring to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/
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...we found that Caucasian observers reacted to pain suffered by African people significantly less than to pain of Caucasian people. The reduced reaction to the pain of African individuals was also correlated with the observers’ individual implicit race bias.
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I believe the study has been replicated to confirm that African's empathy towards caucasian suffering is similarly reduced, demonstrating that this is as 'human' characteristic rather than a caucasian one.