Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs.

= 1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as more effortful and aversive and less efficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting that cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others' feelings, people act as if it is not worth the effort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).