Reinterpreting the Empathy-Altruism Relationship: When One Into One Equals Oneness
TLDR
It is suggested that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but is also directed toward the self.Abstract:
Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness.read more
Citations
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References
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Book ChapterDOI
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the experience of self by the person at particular reflective moments, on the ways the content and process of the phenomenal sense of self are affected by situational and dispositional variables.
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Social evaluation and the empathy-altruism hypothesis.
TL;DR: It is suggested that the motivation to help evoked by empathy is not egoistic motivation to avoid negative social evaluation, and the observed pattern was what would be expected if empathy evokes altruistic motivated motivation to reduce the victim's need.