Empathic concern and helping behavior: Egoism or altruism?

Abstract

The present experiment investigated whether empathic concern produces an egoistic motivation to reduce one's own distress or an altruistic motivation to reduce another person's distress. Subjects ( N = 120) were exposed to a person in distress and instructed either to observe the victim's reaction (personal distress) or to imagine the victim's feelings (empathic concern). In addition, half of the subjects were led to believe that their mood was temporarily fixed (i.e., unalterable), whereas the other half were led to believe that their moods were labile and, therefore, manageable. Ease of escape without helping (easy or difficult) was also manipulated. Consistent with previous work supporting the empathy-altruism model, subjects in easy escape/personal distress conditions (based on assignment to conditions and on an internal analysis) helped less than did subjects in the easy escape/empathic concern, difficult escape/personal distress, and difficult escape/empathic concern conditions. Beliefs about the lability of one's own mood did not significantly mediate the relationship between empathic concern and helping. These results suggest that, at least when helping is not personally costly, concern about another person's distress rather than about one's own emotional state, can be the primary motivation for helping.