Empathic concern drives costly altruism

Oriel Feldmanhall,Tim Dalgleish,Davy Evans,Dean Mobbs

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.043

Oriel Feldmanhall, Tim Dalgleish + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.043

Copy DOI

Abstract

Why do we self-sacrifice to help others in distress? Two competing theories have emerged, one suggesting that prosocial behavior is primarily motivated by feelings of empathic other-oriented concern, the other that we help mainly because we are egoistically focused on reducing our own discomfort. Here we explore the relationship between costly altruism and these two sub-processes of empathy, specifically drawing on the caregiving model to test the theory that trait empathic concern (e.g. general tendency to have sympathy for another) and trait personal distress (e.g. predisposition to experiencing aversive arousal states) may differentially drive altruistic behavior. We find that trait empathic concern – and not trait personal distress – motivates costly altruism, and this relationship is supported by activity in the ventral tegmental area, caudate and subgenual anterior cingulate, key regions for promoting social attachment and caregiving. Together, this data helps identify the behavioral and neural mechanisms motivating costly altruism, while demonstrating that individual differences in empathic concern-related brain responses can predict real prosocial choice.

Highlights

On a daily basis we are inundated with powerful media images of child famine, domestic violence, and natural disasters
We investigated whether the Personal Distress and Empathic Concern subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Davis, 1983) differentially influenced selfish/altruistic choices in the Pain vs. Gain (PvG) task
In line with the empathy–altruism hypothesis, subjects' trait Personal Distress scores were not significantly correlated with Money Given-Up and the effect size estimate was small (r = .16, p = .53), while trait Empathic Concern did positively correlate with Money Given-Up with a large effect size (r = 0.53, p = .02; [Fig. 2B])

Summary

Introduction

On a daily basis we are inundated with powerful media images of child famine, domestic violence, and natural disasters. One aim of such ‘shock tactic’ images is to evoke feelings of distress in the observer with the desire of increasing charitable donations. This is supported by a theory suggesting that altruistic behavior – helping others at a cost to the self (de Waal, 2008) – is a function of the desire to minimize one's own discomfort when observing others in pain (Cialdini et al, 1987).

Methods

Results

Conclusion