单项选择题

Study after study has shown what has come to be known as an "empathy gap" in people. In its simplest form, this means that when we are happy we have trouble identifying with someone who is sad, or when we’re angry we have difficulty understanding why someone is content. Basically, our ability to empathise with another person is dependent on the state we ourselves are in, and this has some interesting implications for public policy.
A recent study by Loran Nordgren of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Mary-Hunter Morris of Harvard Law School, and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University, examined the empathy gap with regard to torture policy. Man’s propensity to turn monster has long been of interest to behaviourists and psychologists. Witness Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment. Both of those studies, along with many others, support the idea that our actions depend as much on context as on any inherent disposition. This new study moves in a similar direction, but examines how a person’s decisions are affected by his ability to relate to the consequences.
The authors note that nearly all countries condemn torture and that most laws define torturous acts based on the severity of the pain inflicted. For example, the UN Convention Against Torture, of which America is a signatory, defines torture as the "infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering." So lawmakers must be able to accurately assess the pain of their interrogation policies in order to determine whether they constitute torture. And because they don’t themselves experience the pain, they must rely on their subjective intuition about the resulting trauma.
The study shows, once again, that humans aren’t good at this. Participants were asked to evaluate the pain resulting from three interrogation techniques—exposure to cold temperatures, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. Some of the participants made their judgments while experiencing a mild version of the pain associated with those techniques, while others were placed in normal conditions. The results turned out as expected. Those who experienced some of the same discomfort and pain as the interrogation technique were more likely to classify that technique as torture.
Polieymakers should be waterboarded before debating new interrogation techniques. Or, as the authors put it, "judgments made in a state of pain are more fully informed, and hence more valid, than those made in the absence of pain." Perhaps, then, it was Jay Bybee’s lack of near-death experiences that explains his memo from 2002, which concluded that "pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death. " As with Mr. Bybee, our inability to appreciate the pain caused by certain techniques means we are more likely to authorise acts that we’d probably consider torture if they were ever performed on us. Therefore, the study’s authors suggest more restrictive legal standards be adopted.
Might this also hold for other policies Certainly most politicians cannot appreciate the pain caused by the government’s alienation of homosexuals, or the distress caused by cuts to unemployment insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood is less likely to trouble the rich old pols who have never had to visit one of its clinics. Obviously lawmakers cannot experience all of the hardship that their policies cause. And many of these measures are worthy in spite of their harsh consequences. But having some knowledge of our own empathy gap could lead to more balanced decisions in all areas of public policy.
It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ______.