Altruistic personality in the context of the empathy–altruism hypothesis

Abstract

In this study the influence of the altruistic personality in general and social responsibility in particular on prosocial behaviour were investigated in the context of the empathy–altruism hypothesis. In an experiment 56 female participants had an opportunity to help a person in distress. In this setting, ease of escape without helping was manipulated. In addition, on the basis of their self‐reports of situation‐specific emotions, participants were divided into an empathic‐concern and a personal‐distress group. The results of the 2 (ease of escape) × 2 (predominant emotional response) design were in agreement with the empathy–altruism hypothesis. Further results indicated that in the easy‐escape condition an altruistic motivation prevailed, whereas in the difficult‐escape condition an egoistic motivation was more dominant. Besides the full scale, two subscales of social responsibility were formed: Moral Fulfilment of the Justified Expectations of Others and Adherence to Social Prescriptions. The full social responsibility scale was significantly related to helpfulness only in the difficult‐escape condition. Further analyses including the subscales showed that the component Moral Fulfilment of the Justified Expectations of Others correlated positively with helping in the easy‐escape condition. Results were interpreted as showing that specific profiles of personality variables are associated with helpfulness in the easy‐escape and difficult‐escape conditions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Courageous altruism: Personal and situational correlates of rescue during the Holocaust

“…Social responsibility is a personal norm that requires people to help those who are dependent on them for help without expectation of gain, because it is the right thing to do (Berkowitz & Lutterman, 1968). Evidence for the relationship between social responsibility and helping behavior has been found in naturalistic and laboratory experiments (Bierhoff & Rohmann, 2004;Midlarsky & Kahana, 1994, in press). Tec (1986) found that rescuers from Poland maintained a strong sense of personal commitment to the helpless and needy, and Oliner and Oliner (1988) found that rescuers scored significantly higher than bystanders on the Social Responsibility Scale (Berkowitz & Lutterman, 1968).…”

Asymmetrical Effects of Justice Sensitivity Perspectives on Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior

“…The second group of variables contains personality constructs such as impulsivity (White et al, 1994), self-control (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990), delay of gratification (Riddle and Roberts 1977), empathy (Davis, 1983), social responsibility (Berkowitz and Daniels, 1964), denial of responsibility (Schwartz, 1977), neutralization techniques (Sykes and Matza, 1957), belief in a just world (Rubin and Peplau, 1973), moral mandates (Skitka, 2002), social value orientation (DeCremer and van Lange, 2001), and level of moral judgment (Kohlberg, 1981). This second group of personality variables differs from the first group in that they are deduced from theory and are embedded in action and decision models (Bierhoff and Rohrmann, 2004;Blasi, 1980;DeCremer and van Lange, 2001;Montada et al, 1986;Schmitt et al, 2000;Schwartz and Howard, 1980). The present paper addresses the role of a variable from this second group, justice sensitivity (JS).…”

Empathy in future teachers of the Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia

“…Hoffman (2000) points out that social behavior refers to the deliberate actions carried out by another/other individual/s. Prosocial conducts during adolescence and early adult age consequently determine individual empathic differences (Bierhoff & Rohmann, 2004;Eisenberg et al, 2002).…”