Abstract
What are the determinants of altruism? While economists assume that altruism is mainly driven by fairness norms, social psychologists consider empathy to be a key motivator for altruistic behavior. To unite these two theories, we conducted an experiment in which we compared behavior in a standard economic game that assesses altruism (the so-called Dictator Game) with a Dictator Game in which participants’ behavioral choices were preceded either by an empathy induction or by a control condition without empathy induction. The results of this within-subject manipulation show that the empathy induction substantially increased altruistic behavior. Moreover, the increase in experienced empathy predicted over 40% of the increase in sharing behavior. These data extend standard economic theories that altruism is based on fairness considerations, by showing that empathic feelings can be a key motivator for altruistic behavior in economic interactions.
Highlights
IntroductionResearchers have suggested that in both humans and animals empathy has evolved in order to promote altruism towards others in need, pain, or distress[3]
Using a repeated measures ANOVA, we assessed the effect of the empathy induction on altruistic behavior by comparing the amount of MUs shared with the recipient in the standard DG with the amount of MUs shared following the empathy induction or the control condition in the Empathic DG
This finding extends the notion that situational empathy is a central motivator of altruism directed at helping others in need, pain, or distress[3] to economic interactions
Summary
Researchers have suggested that in both humans and animals empathy has evolved in order to promote altruism towards others in need, pain, or distress[3] Despite these developments in psychology and economics, there have been few attempts to integrate the knowledge from both fields in order to further the understanding of altruism. Previous research showed that compassion, which denotes a feeling of care for a suffering other accompanied by the desire to help[15], motivates prosocial behavior in less religious individuals[16] In spite of these first attempts to bridge the psychological concept of empathy (or the related concept of compassion) with economic measures of prosociality, to our knowledge no previous study has tested whether the degree of empathy experienced for the recipient represents the key mechanism motivating prosocial behavior towards this target[3,5,11] in economic contexts.
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