Compassion ceilings

1. The idea of a compassion ceiling

Due to the social roles assigned to them, some critically important jobs ‘cap’ the compassion that those who hold them can possess, and this is undesirable.

The idea of a compassion ceiling is: the maximum degree of compassion a person can possess and hold a certain role, especially a role with substantial power. We create compassion ceilings all the time- sometimes through direct government actions, and sometimes through outgrowths of the economic system we live under.

Compassion may not be quite the word I am looking for, but it is hard to find exactly the right one. On some measures, police officers are no less compassionate than, say, firefighters. We do not have great measures of compassion in a general sense- it is measured by agreeableness and its facets only imperfectly. By compassion here I mean something like reluctance to exercise coercive power over an individual in circumstances in which the ethical warrant for doing so is questionable. Everyone agrees in principle that an appropriate level of compassion is absolutely essential in a state functionary, though of course, we disagree on what that level is.

Now how does being, for example, a cop impose a compassion ceiling?

I remember a night about eight years ago. It’s the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the police are present in force. In Australia, we have the following unfortunate practices:

1. The indiscriminate use of drug sniffer dogs at public events, train stations etc.

2. In some cases, strip searches of those the dogs indicate.

In less than half of strip searches is an object found.

Several of my friends are stripped searched. Fortunately, I am not. Nothing is found on any of my friends.

Contemplate for a minute the serious distress this procedure doubtless creates for many. I am sure there are some sensitive souls who enter long periods of deep anxiety or depression as a result. Some of those strip-searched, infamously, have been children and I believe this was true at the Mardi Gras. A great deal of harm is being done to enforce a law. All of this is perfectly foreseeable and puts a limit on how compassionate someone can be, and hold the role of cop.

The consequence is having a police service in which no one who refuses to perform such strip searches fairly indiscriminately is on the force.

2. The effect of “cutting off the top” of compassion

Say you are at the 45th percentile of compassion. Say making strip-searching people for drugs cuts out the top 40% of the population by compassion.

As you are at the 45th percentile of compassion you think that very compassionate people are too soft. Even so, you may still prefer decision making which includes a mix of such people, then a regime that cuts the 40% most compassionate out.

Assume, for the sake of simplicity, that organizational culture around issues of compassion is equal to the compassion of the median member of the group. Cutting out the top 40% will make the median compassion of the police force equal to the 30th percentile of the general population.

Thus, even though you yourself are much less compassionate than those cut out by the 60th percentile cap, cutting them out of the decision-making process moves practice away from what you would endorse, moving the median of compassion in the organization from the 50th percentile to the 30th.

But my suspicion is if you cut out the most compassionate people from holding a role, the effects on the culture of that organization will go far beyond what taking the median would suggest. Noticeably compassionate people alter the organizations they are in, they set the culture. I think, especially, they are likely to act as whistleblowers and to spend ‘social capital’ speaking out against immoral organizational ‘shortcuts’. If these people are gone, everything changes.

We all know someone who has been bullied by a cop seemingly at random. This is not merely anecdotal. Cops are especially likely to be bullies, we know this through workplace bullying data- where cops and related industries like prison guards come out ahead:

3. It doesn’t matter whether or not the conditions that impose the virtue ceiling are ‘objectively’ right or wrong, they still have adverse social effects

This is the critical point that makes it interesting from a public policy point of view- the moral rightness or wrongness of an action that imposes a compassion ceiling has no direct bearing on whether or not that ceiling is desirable. The argument against strip searches posed by the idea of the compassion ceiling doesn’t rely on strip searches being wrong.

Maybe you think strip searches are in principle A-okay, maybe you think that while obviously they come with costs, they are necessary to prevent the de facto soft-legalization of drugs or something.

That doesn’t change the fact that you’re making an organization that is going to be much less compassionate than the population as a whole, since, it excludes those too compassionate to systematically strip search people who probably haven’t got drugs on them.

Compassion caps are almost always a cost.

4. Some more cases

There are numerous caps on the compassion of cops beyond strip searches. For example, many people want marijuana to be illegal but would be uncomfortable prosecuting someone just for dealing it, because it would seem a bit harsh they want someone else to get their hands dirty. But the effect of assigning this work is to cap the compassion of cops in a way that goes far beyond Marijuana. Much the same is true of prosecuting the poor thief with no alternatives, or the otherwise truly pathetic figure. Most of us couldn’t bring ourselves to do that. A necessary effect of having police who do that is that the median level of compassion is reduced.

It goes to many other professions to.

Consider a society in which teachers caning students is common. If teachers have to participate in the caning students, even if they don’t directly do the caning themselves but hand it on to specialists, then the maximum compassion a teacher can possess is the compassion compatible with frequently caning students. Caning in schools is now no longer much of a live issue, but if it were, I’d suggest that one of the best arguments against it is even if caning is right, do you want teachers to have a culture in which no one totally opposed to caning is present?

Compassion caps don’t apply only to the public sector. HR are the people we trust to handle the most sensitive interpersonal matters at work. To be a HR manager in a society with at-will employment, you have to be willing to fire people who don’t need to be fired. We have effectively imposed a cap on the virtue of the operators of our system for settling disputes at work and negotiating working conditions.

There are many other types of virtue ceiling

Compassion ceilings are the most common example of a virtue ceiling- where the way we have designed certain roles excludes those more virtuous than a certain level. There are however many others affecting various virtues and professions (honesty, caution, abstentimoniousness)

More generally, I think there is much more to be said about the political economy of virtue by economists, sociologists, philosophers etc. than has previously been realized.

I am quite poor, spend many hours a week on this blog, and make it available for free. Your paid subscription and help getting the word out would be greatly appreciated. A big thanks to my paid subscribers, and those who share the blog around.