Journal
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 93, Issue 4, Pages 583-599Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.583
Keywords
prosocial; motives; empathy; agreeableness; helping
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Funding
- NIMH NIH HHS [R01 MH50069] Funding Source: Medline
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This research program explored links among prosocial motives, empathy, and helping behavior. Preliminary work found significant relations among components of self-reported empathy and personality (N = 223). In Study 1, the authors examined the generality of prosocial behavior across situations and group memberships of victims (N = 622). In Study 2, empathic focus and the victim's outgroup status were experimentally manipulated (N = 87). Study 3 (N 245) replicated and extended Study 2 by collecting measures of prosocial emotions before helping. In Study 4 (N = 244), empathic focus and cost of helping as predictors of helping behavior were experimentally manipulated. Overall, prosocial motivation is linked to (a) Agreeableness as a dimension of personality, (b) proximal prosocial cognition and motives, and (c) helping behavior across a range of situations and victims. In persons low in prosocial motivation, when costs of helping are high, efforts to induce empathy situationally can undermine prosocial behavior.
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