Showing papers by "Michael E. McCullough published in 2017"
TL;DR: A high-powered, preregistered effort that addressed methodological shortcomings of previous experiments to clarify how and when perspective-taking manipulations affect emotional arousal and prosocial motivation in a prototypical experimental paradigm administered over the Internet.
Abstract: Researchers have identified the capacity to take the perspective of others as a precursor to empathy-induced altruistic motivation. Consequently, investigators frequently use so-called perspective-taking instructions to manipulate empathic concern. However, most experiments using perspective-taking instructions have had modest sample sizes, undermining confidence in the replicability of results. In addition, it is unknown whether perspective-taking instructions work because they increase empathic concern or because comparison conditions reduce empathic concern (or both). Finally, some researchers have found that egoistic factors that do not involve empathic concern, including self-oriented emotions and self-other overlap, mediate the relationship between perspective-taking instructions and helping. The present investigation was a high-powered, preregistered effort that addressed methodological shortcomings of previous experiments to clarify how and when perspective-taking manipulations affect emotional arousal and prosocial motivation in a prototypical experimental paradigm administered over the Internet. Perspective-taking instructions did not clearly increase empathic concern; this null finding was not due to ceiling effects. Instructions to remain objective, on the other hand, unequivocally reduced empathic concern relative to a no-instructions control condition. Empathic concern was the most strongly felt emotion in all conditions, suggesting that distressed targets primarily elicit other-oriented concern. Empathic concern uniquely predicted the quality of social support provided to the target, which supports the empathy-altruism hypothesis and contradicts the role of self-oriented emotions and self-other overlap in explaining helping behavior. Empathy-induced altruism may be responsible for many prosocial acts that occur in everyday settings, including the increasing number of prosocial acts that occur online. (PsycINFO Database Record
74 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the role of interpersonal valuation and gratitude in the formation of cooperative relationships and found evidence that cooperation and gratitude, while both sparked via benefit delivery and both underpinned by estimates of welfare valuation, are nevertheless produced in parallel via different paths.
40 citations
TL;DR: This article found that cognitive representations of welfare valuation inversely correlate with gratitude: the greater the expected welfare valuation, the more difficult it is to exceed expectations of benefit delivery and, therefore, the less felt gratitude.
39 citations
TL;DR: Frey et al. as discussed by the authors used a game named Ikarium to test whether the behavioral strategies identified in the public goods game (PGG) also emerge in a setting where potential contributors to public goods interact repeatedly over long periods of time.
3 citations