Prosocial Behavior in Caregivers to Older Adults with Chronic Conditions

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundIn the United States, 1 in 9 adults 65 years of age and older have Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, there is an urgent need for caregivers to support individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, and other chronic diseases of aging. However, due to the challenging physical and emotional nature of caregiving, caregivers are at risk for experiencing chronic stress and burnout which can negatively impact the well‐being of both the care recipient and the caregiver. The purpose of the present study is to examine the degree to which currently serving in a caregiving role affects individuals’ capacity to empathize and exhibit prosocial behavior towards others.MethodThe study included 60 caregivers (Mage = 60.6) to older adults with chronic conditions, and 104 healthy comparison participants (Mage = 62.9). The groups were not significantly different in terms of age (p = .50) or gender (p = .6). Participants played an economic game in which they decided how much money they would like to allocate out of $10 to two different players. During the study, they read a series of notes from the other players which were designed to evoke either an empathetic or neutral state. (Notes were developed by the researcher prior to the study.) Monetary offers were compared between the empathy and neutral experimental conditions. Participants also completed a measure of trait empathy (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index).ResultWe found that the caregivers gave more money in the empathy condition than the non‐caregivers (p<.05), with no statistically significant group differences found in the neutral condition. Within the caregiver group, there was a positive correlation between offer amount in the empathy condition and trait emotional empathy (p<.05).ConclusionDespite the stressors involved in caregiving, we show that caregivers exhibited greater prosocial behavior than non‐caregivers towards strangers in an empathy‐eliciting context. This suggests that in specific contexts the stressors involved in caregiving may not reduce caregivers’ capacity to show prosocial behaviors towards others. Future research may investigate whether this finding extends to empathy and prosocial behavior towards care recipients.