Circle of Empathy
Who do you count as fully human, deserving consideration?
"Moral progress is mostly the slow expansion of this circle."
What is Circle of Empathy? Who do you count as fully human, deserving consideration? Stakeholder theory and ESG are operationally an expansion of who's inside the corporate circle.
Peter Singer's expanding circle: family → tribe → nation → species → future generations → non-human.
Stakeholder theory and ESG are operationally an expansion of who's inside the corporate circle.
Quarterly: who's currently outside your circle whose welfare your decisions are affecting?
Use the model. Pick the move.
Who do you count as fully human, deserving consideration? You've just seen this: Peter Singer's expanding circle: family → tribe → nation → species → future generations → non-human. Which lever does the model recommend?
Pick a lever. There are no neutral ones — every incentive funds a behavior somewhere.
Pick a reaction to Circle of Empathy
One tap. We'll point you at the most useful next surface based on how this hits.
The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Circle of Empathy can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Circle of Empathy most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Circle of Empathy?
- If we removed every payoff for Circle of Empathy, what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Circle of Empathy persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of circle of empathy.
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Circle of Empathy through 3 lenses
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Circle of Empathy?
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Which best describes Circle of Empathy?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
When you encounter Circle of Empathy, your default mode network folds the experience into your ongoing story-of-self — which is why the same fact lands differently depending on who you think you are.
Self-referential thought, mind-wandering, narrative-of-self, mental time travel. Most of your waking thought is this network running scenarios about you, your status, your past, and your future.
See Default Mode in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
Believing people get what they deserve.
Context-switching feels productive but cuts effective output and quality.
Originators paid on volume, not on default rates, fueled the subprime collapse.
Teams under-reporting AI capability to protect comp or status.
Past investment should not influence future decisions.
Criteria for a workable outcome: stated positively, in your control, sensory-specific, ecological, and worth the cost.
Substituting feeling for argument.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
A hidden variable that influences both supposed cause and supposed effect.
Generous post-disaster aid lowers the political cost of skipping preventive infrastructure investment.
Doing something for an external reward.
Groups make more extreme decisions than individuals would alone.
Sources & key excerpts
- [1]Mental Model Master ListMichael Simmons · Section: Ethics & Stakeholders
"Draw the boundary of who counts in your decision. Most cruelty isn't malice — it's a circle drawn too small."
Underlying researchPeter Singer, The Expanding Circle (1981)