makes sense but what about agentic acts of kindness / saving or protecting people. wouldn’t that sound like the republican version? maybe some sort of feeling/thoughts of protecting ingroup others scale?

Hmm…that is interesting. But I wonder if it’s a function of the types of items that are on the IRI. I haven’t looked at in a while, but based on the example you gave, it seems like that result would be expected. But if you had some item about empathy for an unborn child, or empathy for someone in your ingroup (e.g., family member, fellow church member), I would think Republicans would give at least similar results to Democrats. Republicans seem to just not have as much empathy for people who are different from them (low income, or foreigners, or people of other religions). I really think it’s something about ingroup/outgroup rather than empathy in general. Maybe we need a new scale that measures the two different kinds.

Both good points that I’ll be sure to follow up on.