Perspective Taking through Partisan Eyes: Cross-National Empathy, Partisanship, and Attitudes toward International Cooperation

How does cross-national empathy influence public attitudes toward international cooperation? Few studies have considered whether the capacity to see the world from the perspective of other actors promotes international cooperation or how partisanship may condition empathy’s influence. In this article, we argue that cross-national empathy increases support for international agreements because seeing issues through the eyes of other states expands the range of considerations that individuals use in forming their attitudes. However, partisan attachments undercut this effect. Across three waves of an original survey experiment covering 6,292 respondents, we find that cues to “step into” the perspective of other states modestly increase aggregate support for international cooperation. But this effect is concentrated entirely among those with weak partisan attachments, regardless of the issue area (climate change or nuclear nonproliferation) and potential partner country (China or India). Our results speak to both the promises and shortcomings of empathy as a device for encouraging cooperative outcomes in international affairs.