, and Kimberly BirchUniversity of KansasIt has been suggested that emp - PDF document

No , and Kimberly BirchUniversity of KansasIt has been suggested that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic mo-tivation to help. This hypothesis was tested by n (low versus high) and their ease of escapefrom continuing to watch the victim suffer if theydtp help whe escape was difficult than when it was easy.Results of each experiment followed the former pattern when empathy was highand the latter pattern when empathy was low, supporting the hypothesis thatempathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help.Evidence indicates that feeling empathyfor the person in nee years, a number of researchers (Aron-freed, 1970; Batson, Darley, & Coke, 1978;Hoffman, 1975; Krebs, 1975) have hypoth-esized that this motivation might be trulyaltruistic, tha ,it would have motivationallow for the possibility of truly altruisti (cf. Bolles, 1975, for a review).Current theories tend to be egoistic; they arebuilt on the assumption that everything wedo is ultimately directe toward the end-state goal of benefiting ourselves.We would like to thank Edward Morrow, Elaine Al-exander, Theresa Lahey, Paula Fremerman, and Mar-tha Rosette for their assistance in making the videotapesused in these experiments. Jac s 66045.The egoistic orientation of modern psy-chology should not be dismissed lightly; ithas prevailed for decades, and it can easilyaccount for what might appear to be altruis-ticn arising from empathic emo-tion. To illustrate: You may answer the ques-tion apparently altruistic con-cern to reduce another's distress may nothave bee the end-state goal of your actionbut rather an intermediate means to the ul s you experi-enced as a result of you anticipated if you did not help(guilt or shame). Interpreted in thi way distres is no clear empirical evi-dence that empathic emotion leads to al- egoismand altruism are motivational concepts, andwe cannot directly observe motivation, onl c emotion leads to s of conceptual difference. helping rewards ) or a desire to avoid personal pain(e.g., punishment, social castigation, privateguilt, helping is directed toward the end-state goal of increasing the helper's ownwelfare. In contrast, a person's helping isaltruistic to the degree that he or she help truism and egoism; it need intermediate c andaltruistic motivation for helping. As Piliavi n without helpingÑshouldbe different, depending on whether the by-stander's motivation isc or s motivation is egoistic, hisor her goal is to reduce choosing to escape. These costsinclude the physical effort involved in es-caping fro s ofdistress, guilt, and shame anticipated as aresult of knowing thate person in need iscontinuing to suffer. Thus, ife bystanderwere BUCKLEY continuing distress should decreasethe rate of helping.If the bystander's motivation is altruistic,his or her goa difficult.These predictions suggest a way of deter-mining whether the motivatio g and the less chance of abystander's helping. But to the unaffected by thedifficulty of escaping helping should be justas high when escape is easy as whe to the Problem of theMotivation Resulting From EmpathicEmotionNow let us apply this general techniquefor discriminating between egoisti nTable 1Rate of Helping When Difficulty of Escape isVaried and Motivation is Egoistic or AltruisticType of motivation(level of empathic emotion)Difficultyof escapeEasy empathy)HighHighassociated with feeling empathy for the per-son in nee altruistic (the empathy-altru-ism hypothesis), individuals induced to feela hig enrelabel the columns in however increas feelings ofpersonal distress or in anticipated guilt orshame. And in eac Table 1 is im-portant if one is to provide evidence for theempathy-altruism hypothesis. If, for exam-ple, one were to compare the easy and dif-ficult escape cells only in the column markedaltruistic motivation (high empathy) , the costo n is for noe inthe rate o e cannot be dismissed asbein an insensitive measure.It is also clear that onet be on guardfor ae ceiling effect. A ceiling effectin the high-empathy column could obscurethe two-main-effect pattern that would beexpecte k like the one-versus-three in-teraction that would be d that if they did not takeElaine's -ently i ) prior to havingthem watch him perform in a roulette gamei telling subjects thattheir responses to a personality test com-pleted several days earlier indicated tha receive mr own. Compared withsubjects in the dissimilar condition, subjectswho g worse whilewaiting for factorial design.MethodSubjectsSubjects wer were assigned to the fourconditions of the 2 (easy versus difficult escape) X 2(similar versus dissimilar victim) design through the useof a randomized block procedure, 11 subjects to eachcell. Fou subject wer tol tha the have to wait a few minutes for the arrival of asecond subject, Elaine (actuall econditions increases proportionately with the amounto is perceived. that the rd corner of thenscreen. The no hav provide informatio s responses to sixitems that had only wa he remind the subjects how many moretrials they would be observing if they did not help. Sincethe empathy-altruism hypothesis predicted that the twoindependent variables would interact, remaining blindto one independent variable was sufficien to see if Elaine had arrived. Shereturned to say that she had was actually a videotape.Need situation. On the videotape, subjects first sawElaine, a moderatel 0 of the digit-recall trials. As ask about thenature of the electric shocks that were to be used. Th answered that the shocks would be of constantintensity and, although uncomfortable, would cause "nopermanent damage." "You know if you scuff your feetwalking across a carpet and touch something metal?Well, they'll be about two to three times more uncom-fortable than that."After GSR electrodes were attached to the first andthird fingers on Elaine's nondominant hand an shockelectrode was attached to her other arm, the digit-recalltrials began. The experimente h the second trial, herreactions were so strong that the assistant interrupted sh re experiment?" Finally, to checkon the effectiveness of the similarity manipulation, theywere asked, "How similar to you is th experiment?" Responses to each ofthese four questions wer finishe din the future might react strongly to even mild shocks.(Thisn was provided to ensure that subjectswould -pleasant if they chose to . . . I entered the observation roo need to dois answer a few questions about your impressio and you'll be fre go) ([difficult-escape con-dition] I need yo r impression of, you'l u decide to e you,an any of the eightremaining trials that you don't want to do. [Experi-menter gets response.] Fine.The experimenter the excused s in the-lar-victim condition perceived Elaine to bemore d items: ratings ofElaine' , ; it had some effect onperceive Mean number of shock trials (from 0 to 8) that subjectsagreed to tak s were aware ofrescape condition and its implications.Perception of Elaine's DistressAs intended, subjects in be suffering.n e overall mean was 6.25.There were no reliable differences acrossconditions.RelievingTh (overall Af=5.18) easy-escape-sim-ilar-victim and the difficult-escape-dissimilar-victimconditions tha fo thi neffect for similarity, x n wasmuch lower than ine e ofthisd one-versus-three pattern, therate o s did not approach signifi-cance, x variance and planned comparisons on thenumber of shock trials subjects in each con-dition volunteered to take for Elaine.The oneexception was that the number of trials wassignificantly lower in the two difficult-escapeconditions (pooled) than in the easy-escape n the dissimilar-victim condition, where em-pathic emotional response to Elaine's dis-tress was n escape e motivation to helpshould be at least in part altruistic, difficultyo s and not justtheir own, they were very likely to pattern of results be dis t would be expected if a ceiling effectwere operating. Moreover, a ceiling-effectexplanation was even less plausible for thenumber of shock trials subjects volunteeredto take, since the mean response on -ber of trials to be largerr easy than s o anything nega that derogation was inhibitinghelping in thi condition. And covarianc one-versus-three pattern that, according to Table 1,would be expected if increased empathicemotion led to altruistic motivation; the t emo-tional disgust eother source, such as a placebo, they , ACKERMAN, BUCKLEY, BIRCHperceive their response to Elaine's distressto be predominated by the other. That is, ifthey attributed their feelings of empathicconcern t be predomi-nantly s to the pla-cebo, they motivation to help, crossing suc n of helping re-sponses depicted in Table 1. Subjects in-duced to attribute their empathic concern to t for were 48 female introductory psychology stu the University of Kansas participating in partialfulfillment of a course requirement. They were assignedto the four conditions of the 2 (easy vs. difficultescape) X 2 (persona distres a placebo manipulation.Fortunately ss in the number of participantsexcluded for suspicion, and data analyses, with all sus- nrate did results s in Experiment 1,-cept for three changes. First, instead ofg aymanipulation, level of s to aplacebo administered ine context y a dichotomous(yes-no) measure of. Third, since the changein the number of trials necessitatedn of fo ar believe d into their system, and absorption was neces-sarye the gthe first memory task, subjects were given a capsulecontaining Millentana (actually a corn starch placebo).Before taking the capsule, all subjects were informedo e effect. Subjects ine personal-distressn read:Prior to total absorption, Millentana produces a clearfeeling t will disappear within twenty-five clea g a particularly were led to misattribute feelings of empathicconcern to Millentana would perceive their emotionalresponse to watching Elaine to be primarily personaldistress, whereas those led to misattribute feeling read and understood the information aboutthe sid d blind to the emotional response manipulationuntil debriefing.3Escape manipulation. After ingesting the Millen-tana capsule, subjects were given instructionsrrrol e the difficult-escape condition they read: "Th a glassof water.Manipulation check. During this break, subjectswere given a list of 2 t in previous research (cf. Batson & Coke,in press) had , bothered,disturbed, upset, troubled, worried, anxious, uneasy,grieved, and distressed). Not only did completion of thisform provide a partial check on the subject . As in Experiment 1, it led up tothe ideate subject might be willing to help e condition subjectswere reminded that if theyd not help they would nothave to watch Elaine's second trial; in the-cape condition subjects were reminded that they would.The dependent variable was whether or not subjectsvolunteered to trade na four-item questionnaire assessing their reactions to " and "warmth and sensitivity" ob-serving the task performancey caused them to ex- y. As s perceived her to be in-erable distress. On the 9-point responsescale, the modal response in the- describ-ing the emotions that they were experiencingas side effects of Millentana sh . What wasmanipulated wase nature of thel the placebowould produceÑempathy or d onlyone reliable effect, a main effect for theemotional response manipulation, F(l, 44) =14.82, p .001. As intended, subjects in thepersonal-distress condition reported experi-encing ae predominance persona the two emotionalresponse condition s in emotion-ality or d no reliable differences onthis index (overall M = 4.59).To provide an th side effectof the placebo. Subject provide no evidenc for dif-ferences independent of the experimentalmanipulations; non y from zero. Look-ing separately at the ratings of uneasinessand of warmth and sensitivity, the main ef-fect s inthel amount of emotion reported as aresult of Moreover, unlikee l condition of Experi-ment 2 is presented in Table 3. As in Ex-periment 1, these dichotomous datae dthats predicted one-versus-three patternwas highly significant, x2( 1) = 5.96, p .02;residual variance across the other threeconditions did not approach significance,X2(2) = 1.94, p&#x Tj ;� Tc;&#x ET ;T 0;&#x.048; Tc;&#x 10.;؈ ;� 0 ;.2;&#x 214;&#x.652; 52;.56;&#x Tm ;&#x/F1.;� 1 ;&#xTf [;&#x 000; .40. Individuall com-parisons revealed that the proportion helpingin the easy-escape-distress condition dif-fere n (2 =, e differences (all zs 1.38).These results were again quite consistentwith the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Inthe distress conditions, where motivation wasassumed to b n helpingand thex ofe of emotional re-sponses significantly more positive in theeasy-escape conditions, rpb(24) = .27, thanin the difficult-escape conditions, rpb(24) =Table escapeconditionEasyDifficultPersonaldistress.33.75Empathicconcern.83.58Note, n = 12 in eac and helping in theeasy- tha es no evidence of a ceil-ing effect in the difficult-escape-empathycondition. Instead, in the empathy condi-tions there was again a nonsignificant trendfor the rate of helping to b e of helping in could accountfor the pattern of results. Paralleling resultsof Experiment 1, within-cell correlation andcovariance analyses revealed no evidence ofderogation in the easy-escape-distress con-dition.General DiscussionAs we noted at the outset, the hypothesisthat empathi c assumption, it is only e an t lo hypothesis tha human motivation, especiall e person in h there is evidence thatfemales report experiencing quantitativelymore empathy than males (Hoffman, 1977),we know of no evidence nor any a priori rea-son why y formales. Second, both experiments came outof the same laboratoryÑours. r helping maybe truly. In doing so, we are leftfar less confident than we were of reinter-pretations ofy altruistically moti-vatedg in Wh an , C. D., & Coke, J. S.: A Source of press.Batson, C. D., Darley, J. M., & Coke York: Plenum Press, 1978.Bolles, fo , 26-32.Mehrabian, emotiona .Stotland, E. psychology (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press,1969.Winer, B. J. Statistical priniciples in experimental de-sign M. P., & Cooper, J. M. P., Higgins, E., & Taves,