The term for caring more about problems that you see as directly affecting yourself

I came up with "relatable" and the idiom "hit home". I think either of these could be used in an academic context. They both address "self-interest" in a broader sense.

As an alternative, there are many words that can be made using "self-" as a suffix. "self-association", for one, would seem very fitting for academic purposes.

I did find one final possibility that might better express an academic term for the "self" aspect of the human condition. A term used in Psychotherapy is "self-centric" (or "self-centrism" as a noun). It is better defined and distinguished at the last link below.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/relatable

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/hit+home

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/self-interest

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/association

https://www.kgrierson.com/uncategorized/great-reframe-selfish-vs-self-centric/

It is sometimes called nimbyism.

NIMBY = "Not in my back-yard".

If you're looking for a philosophical term for the belief or behaviour, egoism fits:

[Merriam-Webster]

1 a : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action
b : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the valid end of all actions
2 : excessive concern for oneself with or without exaggerated feelings of self-importance

In such beliefs or behaviour, if something doesn't concern the person directly, they care less about it.

Similarly, if they see somebody else as being like them, they may have more interest in how things affect the other person because it might have a similar affect on them. To an egoist, how the other person is affected would be taken as a kind of early warning system—similar to the canaries miners used to take into caves to see if they needed to worry about breathable air.

Note that in this case, empathy doesn't equate to sympathy, but merely practicality and intellectual interest.