Standing in Others' Shoes: Empathy and Positional Behavior

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Social Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Individual differences in empathy influence social comparison.
• Positional concerns, or the importance placed on relative standing, vary across individuals and consumption types.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between empathic capacity and positional consumption concerns.
• To differentiate how empathy affects concerns for goods versus bads.

Main Methods:

• Utilized survey experiments and a large subjective well-being (SWB) dataset.
• Employed empathy quotient (EQ) and interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) to measure dispositional empathy.
• Assessed positional concerns via stated choice experiments and the SWB approach.

Main Results:

• Positional concerns significantly differ based on empathic capacity levels.
• Higher EQ and IRI positively correlate with positional concerns for goods (e.g., income, luxury items).
• Higher EQ and IRI negatively correlate with positional concerns for bads (e.g., working hours, poverty rates).

Conclusions:

• Empathic capacity is a key determinant of positional consumption concerns.
• Findings suggest empathy drives self-focused concerns for gains and other-focused concerns for losses.