Love to Help: The Roles of Compassion and Empathy in Regards to Altruism (original) (raw)
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Considering others in need. On altruism, empathy and perspective taking
In the social psychological literature, empathy is seen as an emotional response which evokes the altruistic motivation to help others. One cognitive tool to increase the experience of empathy is perspective taking. The current dissertation investigates how different perspectives on the suffering of others, in combination with individual differences and situational variations, lead to empathy and the willingness to help those others. It also explores how empathy has been measured within psychology in the past five decades. On the basis of new data, a more optimal measurement of the construct is proposed, by dividing the original measure into two new scales: a sympathy and a tenderheartedness scale. These concepts are subsequently distinguished from related concepts such as emotional contagion, personal distress and compassion. Finally, a new model is proposed in which altruistic behaviour is a consequence of several choices one can make while perceiving the suffering of others.
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy, 2017
Altruism is the opposite of egoism. In a philosophical context altruism and egoism are regularly discussed as contrasting theories regarding the ultimate motivation of human behavior. Psychological egoism claims that any conduct, even if on the surface it promotes the welfare of others, can ultimately be traced back to the motive of promoting an agent's self-interest. Altruism is hence not a reality, according to psychological egoism. Once the debate is reduced to such a contrast, focusing on ultimate motives of human conduct, important theoretical decisions have been made that then also affect the discussion around the impact of empathy on altruism. Even where psychological egoism is rejected, discussions are aligned along the problem whether a person's motive is to benefit or increase the welfare of another person.
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2014
Psychological theories of human altruism suggest that helping results from an evolved tendency in caregiving mammals to respond to distress or need with empathy and sympathy. However, theories from biology, economics, and social psychology demonstrate that social animals also evolved to affiliate with and help desirable social partners. These models make different predictions about the affect of those we should prefer to help. Empathic models predict a preference to help sad, distressed targets in need, while social affiliative models predict a preference for happy, positive, successful targets. We compared these predictions in 3 field studies that measured the tendency to help sad, happy, and neutral confederates in a real-world, daily context: holding the door for a stranger in public. People consistently held the door more for happy over sad or neutral targets. To allow empathic motivations to compete more strongly against social affiliative ones, a 4th study examined a more cons...
An Investigation of the Relations Between Altruism
2016
This study investigated the relations between altruism, empathy, and spirituality in a sample of 186 university students. Zero-order and partial correlations controlling for age, sex, and social desirability indicated that, although altruism and empathy are related to each other in a manner consistent with previous research, the association of both of these to spirituality is complex and multidirectional. In particular, empathy was found to be significantly positively related to nonreligious spiritual cognitions, religiousness, and spiritual experiences and negatively associated with existential well-being. Altruism, on the other hand, was most strongly linked to spiritual experiences, followed by spiritual cognitions. Regression analyses revealed that nonreligious spiritual cognitions and spiritual experiences are the most potent predictors of both empathy and altruism, respectively. Based on the findings and literature suggesting that spirituality may have an impact on empathy and...
Relation of Sympathy and Personal Distress to Prosocial Behavior: A Multimethod Study
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1989
Assessed sympathy and personal distress with facial and physiological indexes (heart rate) as well as self-report indexes and examined the relations of these various indexes to prosocial behavior for children and adults in an easy escape condition. Heart rate deceleration during exposure to the needy others was associated with increased willingness to help. In addition, adults" reports of sympathy, as well as facial sadness and concerned attention, were positively related to their intention to assist. For children, there was some indication that report of positive affect and facial distress were negatively related to prosocial intentions and behavior, whereas facial concern was positively related to the indexes of prosocial behavior. These findings are interpreted as providing additional, convergent support for the notion that sympathy and personal distress are differentially related to prosoeial behavior.
The Role of Sympathy and Altruistic Personality Traits in Helping: A Reexamination
Journal of Personality, 1989
The purposes of this study were (a) to examine the role of social evaluative concerns in the self-report of sympathy and in the relation of sympathy to helping, and (b) to determine the role of "altruistic personality" traits and situationally induced vicanous emotional responses in the intention to help Dispositional and situational self-reports of sympathy and other vicarious emotional reactions were obtained for jiersons who also were given the opportunity to assist a needy other Moreover, dispositional measures of concem with social evaluation and an altruistic onentation were obtained, and a bogus pipeline manipulation was instituted for half the study participants Both dispositional and situational self-reported sympathy were positively related to helping, as were other personality indices viewed as reflecting altruistic charactenstics The relations for the dispositional indices of sympathy were not due solely to social evaluative concems or to other egoistic concerns The effects on intended helping of dispositional sympathy, perspective taking, and the tendency to ascnbe responsibility for others to the self appeared to be both direct and mediated by
Perceived altruism – A neglected factor in intervention and research.
Perceived altruism, an attitude that clients may attribute to those who work with them, was examined in a qualitative and quantitative study about the impact of volunteers in drop-in centers for youth at risk in Israel. Data were collected by interviews, observations, case studies, and questionnaires. The results show that the volunteers' unique contribution affected the service as a whole. The beneficiaries knew that volunteers were servicing them, perceived volunteers as true altruists, were satisfied to the degree of preferring their services over that of paid workers, and were positively affected by the encounter with volunteering. A significant impact was that volunteers set a living example of the possibility of human goodness via personal encounters and demonstrated the existence of a responsive society with mutual, unconditional caring. These results exhibit practical implications for innovative interventions with youth at risk and illustrate the significance of the psychology of goodness.
The Relationship Between Empathy Ability and Altruistic Behaviour
Journal Universitas Muhammadiyah Gresik Engineering, Social Science, and Health International Conference (UMGESHIC)
Life in a social environment will never be separated from helping each other, this action can be interpreted as altruistic behavior. Where, this behavior is an action that arises from the person himself to provide assistance voluntarily. Phenomena related to altruistic behavior by conducting interviews with university student subjects. Based on the results of the initial interview with the survey method on the subject above, it can be concluded that the subject shows altruistic behavior by showing behavior that has a high sense of empathy, social spirit that exists in the respondent. The urgency in this research is to be able to provide an education that is beneficial for readers and students in behaving to help fellow human beings within the scope of friendship and in the wider community. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the ability to empathize with the tendency to behave altruistically. This research uses quantitative research with survey method...