U.S. President Joe Biden, left, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. AFP-TNS

Natural selection played a trick on Homo sapiens. It gave us the vital skill of empathy, the ability to imagine ourselves into other people’s minds and feelings. But it did so with a hitch: In situations of anxiety, strife or trauma, our empathy becomes selective. At worst, that makes us identify entirely with our own in-group and simultaneously demonize or dehumanize people in the out-group. The results can be dire, ranging from extreme political polarization all the way to war crimes.

Distinguishing between inclusive and exclusive — or indivisible versus zero-sum — empathy helps to diagnose all sorts of bitter conflicts. Some are military, such as those raging between Israelis and Palestinians or Ukrainians and Russians. Others are “merely” political, psychological or cultural, such as the enmity between fans of former President Donald Trump and their opponents, whether those are old-school Republicans or Democrats.

Public figures such as politicians and, ahem, pundits are among the first to notice a general breakdown in empathy, in the form of increasing vitriol. Even if they genuinely try to understand, acknowledge and feel the pain on both sides of a chasm, they will invariably be heard by some audiences as showing too much empathy for one group and too little for another.

Since Oct. 7, for example, President Joe Biden has been empathetic to........

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