Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 27, 2026
04:14
Observational Fear as a Model of Affective Empathy in Mice
Published on: November 22, 2024
Expectations for others' outcomes: do people display compassionate bracing?
Kate Sweeny1, James A Shepperd, Patrick J Carroll
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 91521, USA. katharine.sweeny@ucr.edu
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
|December 9, 2008
Summary
People tend to lower expectations when facing challenges. However, this "compassionate bracing" does not extend to friends unless their outcomes directly impact oneself, suggesting self-interest influences protective predictions.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Individuals often adjust predictions downward to mitigate potential disappointment when facing personal challenges.
- This phenomenon, known as 'bracing,' is a common self-protective cognitive strategy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether 'compassionate bracing'—lowering predictions for others' outcomes—occurs in interpersonal relationships.
- To determine the conditions under which individuals might adjust their predictions for friends' outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Three experimental studies were conducted involving participants making predictions about outcomes.
- Studies manipulated the relevance of a friend's feedback and its importance to the participant.
Main Results:
- Participants did not exhibit 'compassionate bracing' for friends, even when the friend's outcome was important or imminent.
- Bracing for a friend's outcome was observed only when the friend's performance had direct self-relevant implications for the participant.
Conclusions:
- The tendency to brace for negative outcomes is primarily self-focused and does not automatically extend to close relationships.
- Understanding these self-centered prediction biases is crucial for effective interpersonal communication and maintaining relationship health.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
02:34Empathy
Some researchers suggest that altruism operates on empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s perspective, to feel what he or she feels. An empathetic person makes an emotional connection with others and feels compelled to help (Batson, 1991). Empathy can be expressed in several ways, including cognitive, affective, and motor.
01:55Egoism and Altruism
Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior. Why do people help other people? Is personal benefit such as feeling good about oneself the only reason people help one another?
01:08Obedience
According to obedience research, we may harm others under the forceful pressures of an authority figure (Milgram, 1974). How about if the inappropriate orders were delivered with less force? The increasing interdependence between nurses and physicians compelled Hofling and his colleagues to explore nurses’ reactions to a potentially harmful medical request made by the perceived authority figure, the doctor (Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966). In this situation, obedience...
02:09Bystander Effect
The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.
01:14Fundamental Attribution Error
According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution...
01:54Attitudes
Attitude is our evaluation of a person, an idea, or an object. We have attitudes for many things ranging from products that we might pick up in the supermarket to people around the world to political policies. Typically, attitudes are favorable or unfavorable: positive or negative (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). And, they have three components: an affective component (feelings), a behavioral component (the effect of the attitude on behavior), and a cognitive component (belief and knowledge;...