Empathic emotion regulation in prosocial behavior and altruism

Abstract

The regulation of emotion evoked in response to another's distress may be important for biasing an individual toward a concerned response rather than personal distress. But, another threat to a prosocial response is regulation of empathic affect resulting in apathy. The role of empathic emotion regulation in promoting prosocial motivation and costly donation behavior was tested across two studies, first in a community sample and then in a sample of altruistic kidney donors and matched controls. Participants engaged in hopeful and distancing reappraisals while viewing photos of others in distress, then decided how much money to donate to help.While hope was expected to evoke an approach motivation indexed by increased donations, distance was expected to evoke an avoidance motivation indexed by decreased donations. It was hypothesized that varying effects of the two reappraisals on positive and negative affect would influence donation decisions. Across both studies, both reappraisals decreased negative affect and the hopeful reappraisal additionally increased positive affect. While instructed reappraisal was found to affect donation behavior in the community sample, in which a hopeful reappraisal resulted in higher donations than a distancing reappraisal, effects of reappraisal in altruists and controls were limited with regard to donation outcomes, suggesting that altruists and controls may instead differ in interacting effects of negative and positive affect on donation behavior across conditions. Keywords: empathy, altruism, emotion regulationPrior research has highlighted that emotional processes can be automatically evoked in response to distressed and vulnerable others, particularly in highly altruistic individuals (Marsh et al., 2014;Brethel-Haurwitz et al., 2017;Brethel-Haurwitz et al., 2018). As reviewed by Vaish (2016), it is thought that our concerned responses to others are a result of not only these seemingly bottom-up emotional responses, but also top-down cognitive processes that can modulate the behavioral effect of such emotional responses, resulting in a "multidetermined concern." The influence of modulatory processes on emotions evoked in response to another's distress, particularly emotion regulatory processes, may be important for biasing an individual toward a concerned and compassionate response rather than personal distress (Batson et al., 1983;Batson et al., 1987;Eisenberg et al., 1989;Klimecki et al., 2014). However, another threat to a concerned prosocial response is regulation of empathic affect resulting in apathy (Cameron and Payne, 2011). The current studies thus sought to examine the role of emotion regulatory appraisals in promoting prosocial helping behavior, first in a proof of concept test of an empathic emotion regulation task and then in an extension of this concept to extraordinary altruists.Emotion regulation is the set of processes by which we can change the occurrence, strength, and duration of negative or positive emotional reactions (Gross, 2015). Specifically, i...

Strategic Regulation of Empathy

“…And specifically, emotion reappraisals that encourage people to reflect on how they could help others reduced negative and increase positive affect in empathic responding. This in turn was associated with increased altruistic behavior [96]. Determining which regulatory strategies reliably predict specific outcomes is an exciting avenue for future research.…”

Strategic Regulation of Empathy

“…And specifically, emotion reappraisals that encourage people to reflect on how they could help others reduced negative and increase positive affect in empathic responding. This in turn was associated with increased altruistic behavior [128]. Determining which regulatory strategies reliably predict specific outcomes is an exciting avenue for future research.…”

Motivating empathy: Three methodological recommendations for mapping empathy

“…Indeed, some suggest that the “objectivity” instructions contrasted against empathy in classic empathy‐altruism studies—which encourage people to be detached and non‐emotional in response to others' suffering—might act as a regulation or reappraisal manipulation, reducing empathy compared to baseline (McAuliffe, Forster, Phillippe, & McCullough, ), which suggests that people might be quite adept at distancing themselves from feelings of empathy for others. Intriguingly, the motivation behind the reappraisal appears to matter: Reappraisal motivated by hope has been shown to increase donation compared to reappraisal motivated by distancing (Brethel‐Haurwitz, Stoianova, & Marsh, ), suggesting that effects of reappraisal may be contingent on what goals the regulator is trying to achieve. Similarly, general skill in emotion regulation, although sometimes linked to higher empathy (Eisenberg, 2000), can also be linked to lower empathy (Cameron & Payne, ; Ministero et al, ).…”