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Social evaluation and the empathy-altruism hypothesis
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|April 1, 1986
Summary
Empathy increases helping behavior, even without social pressure. This suggests that helping is driven by altruism, not just the desire to avoid negative social evaluation.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Previous research suggested empathy increases helping due to a desire to avoid negative social evaluation.
- This theory posited that empathy-driven helping only occurs in socially evaluative situations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the claim that empathy-driven helping is contingent on social evaluation.
- To investigate whether empathy motivates helping behavior independently of social evaluation concerns.
Main Methods:
- Study 1: Examined the relationship between empathy and helping in a situation devoid of social evaluation.
- Study 2: Employed a 2x2 factorial design manipulating empathy (low/high) and social evaluation (low/high).
Main Results:
- A positive relationship between empathy and helping was observed in Study 1, despite the absence of social evaluation.
- In Study 2, empathy positively correlated with helping behavior in both low and high social evaluation conditions.
Conclusions:
- The findings challenge the notion that empathy-driven helping is solely egoistic, aimed at avoiding social disapproval.
- Results support the hypothesis that empathy primarily motivates altruistic behavior to alleviate the need of others.