Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 1

In another study, by Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore and Robertson (1997), individuals with Aspergers syndrome who had low levels of trait empathy were compared to normal individuals with higher levels of trait empathy on a cognitive empathy task, Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. The test involves a basic aspect of empathy, recognizing emotions and inferring the mental state of an individual by looking at photographs depicting only their eyes. The results from the study revealed that individuals with Aspergers syndrome did not perform as well on the task as compared to normal individuals, hence providing evidence for the relationship between trait empathy and the empathy related process of recognizing emotions.

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 2

The Impact of Empathic Concern and Trait Empathy on Prosocial Behaviour Empathy is the affective response that results from a persons apprehension or comprehension of anothers emotional state and involves feeling similar to what the other person is feeling (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1991). It can be best considered as a set of related constructs, which includes both cognitive and emotional components (Davis, 1983). The cognitive component focuses on perspective taking: an individuals ability to view situations from a third person perspective by taking account of ones own and others subjective perspectives and the emotional component include feelings of warmth, compassion and concern for others (Batson, 1997a). The ability to empathize varies among individuals and is considered as a stable personality trait (Leinberg & Anders, 2006). Personality traits are stable characteristics that do not differ substantially over different contexts and are thought to independently predict the way an individual behaves (Vreeke & Van der Mark, 2003). In line with the view of empathy as a personality trait, several

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 3 researchers have studied individual differences in trait empathy and how these differences affect empathy related processes. One such research carried out by Dimberg et al. (2005), the influence of trait empathy on facial mimicry reactions was explored. Facial mimicry is a process highly related to emotional empathy (Bavelas, Black, Lemery & Mullett, 1986; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Hatfield, Cacciopo & Rapson, 1994). The results from their study revealed that individual with high levels of trait empathy were better at mimicking facial expressions when they passively viewed graphics depicting happy or sad faces as compared to individuals with low levels of trait empathy hence suggesting that trait empathy influences an individuals emotional empathy. Another factor that has an effect on empathy related processes are situational factors. An individuals empathic reaction to two identical emotional cues varies depending on the situational context (Leiberg & Anders, 2006). A study by Batson, Ekuland, Chermok, Hoyt and Oritz (2007) provided evidence for this. In the mentioned study, the authors manipulated the situational context by presenting to participants a vignette, which portrayed a protagonist as nasty or nice, and this manipulation resulted in a variation of how much the participants valued the welfare of the protagonist. Measures of Empathic Concern (EC) were then taken. The results of the study led to the conclusion that the amount of EC felt for an individual is dependant on the value that is placed on their welfare and as valuing increased, so did EC.

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 4 Much research suggests that EC is also a motivator of prosocial behaviour (Oliner & Oliner, 1988; Trobst et al., 1994; Batson et al., 1997b; Davis, 1983). In Oliner and Oliners (1988) study of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, EC was found to be an important motivator for one third of the rescuers. In another study by Davis (1983), students were asked to donate money to a medical charity and it was found that students with higher levels of EC were more likely to donate as compared to students with lower levels of EC. Despite numerous research on individual differences in trait empathy and empathy related processes, the relationship between individual differences in trait empathy and its ability to predict prosocial motivation and behaviour is far from understood (Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin & Schroeder, 2006). Based on the current research findings, we have established that trait empathy influences EC and situational contexts influence the level of EC, which in turn motivates prosocial behaviour. The primary aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between trait empathy and prosocial behaviour. In addition to this, we set out to simultaneously explore the relationships between individual differences in trait empathy, EC and prosocial behaviour. To achieve these aims, we will build on the methodology employed by Batson et al. (2007) We hypothesise that trait empathy will positively correlate with prosocial, behaviour for both the low and high valuing condition. However, the mean for prosocial behaviour will be lower in the low valuing condition. Since trait empathy affects EC and EC motivates prosocial behaviour, we further hypothesise that EC will also positively correlate trait empathy and prosocial behaviour.

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 5 Method Participants Four hundred and eighty-six participants from the University of Western Australia took part in this experiment. The low valuing condition comprised of 153 females, 62 males and 3 unspecified with a mean age of 20.2 and SD of 2.7. The high valuing condition comprised of 200 females and 68 males with a mean age of 20.7 and SD of 4.9. Apparatus A vignette similar to the one used by Batson et al. (2007) was used. The vignette depicted a protagonist as nice (high valuing) or nasty (low valuing) to create variability in the level of empathic concern. The vignette gave an account of the protagonist, Luisa, a university student who whilst rushing to school encountered an old lady who appeared to be lost. Participants in high valuing condition read that Luisa was nice to the old lady, helped her and as a result was even later for her class. While rushing to school, Luisa met with a traffic accident, which left her wheelchair bound and unable to attend school. Her laptop was also broken in the accident and she had problems keeping up with her schoolwork. In the low valuing condition, the vignette was identical except that Luisa was nasty to the old lady and did not offer her any help. An emotional response scale was used to obtain a measure of EC. It consists of 11 emotions and participants had to indicate from a scale on a 9 point scale the extent they which they felt each emotion. A reaction questionnaire was used to obtain a measure of the extent to which the participants valued the welfare of the protagonist It comprised of 12 statements and responses were made on a 9 point scale. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI: Davis, 1983) and a short version of the

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 6 Empathy Quotient (EQ; Wakabayashi et al., 2006) were used to measure trait empathy. A measure of prosocial behaviour was obtained by presenting participants with options to volunteer time to help the protagonist. Participants choose from options ranging from not being able to volunteer any time to volunteering an hour a week from between 1 to 7 weeks. If participants were keen on volunteering, they were required to leave their names and contact details. Procedure Participants logged on to a custom designed website individually. They were randomly assigned to either the low valuing or high valuing condition. After registering on the website by providing information such as age and sex, participants read the vignette. Then they completed the emotional response scale, followed by the IRI (Davis, 1980), EQ-short (Wakabayashi et al., 2006) and lastly the measure of prosocial behaviour. Results The data was screened for normality and outliers. The descriptive statistics summarising the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) for trait empathy, EC, helping and value index of both high valuing and low valuing conditions are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Mean and Standard Deviation for the high valuing and low valuing condition.

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 7

High Valuing Condition M Trait Empathy Empathic Concern Helping Value Index 20.35 6.06 2.37 6.74 SD 4.01 1.36 2.41 1.27

Low Valuing Condition M 19.89 3.42 1.60 3.5 SD 4.25 1.69 2.08 1.74

An independent samples T-test carried out to ensure that there were no significant differences in the levels of trait empathy between participants in the high valuing and low valuing condition, revealed that there were no significant differences, t (484) = 1.25, p = 0.213. The manipulation in this experiment was successful. The Pearsons correlation coefficients between trait empathy, EC and helping for the high valuing condition are shown in Table 2. Table 2 Correlations between trait empathy, EC and helping for the high valuing condition. Subscale 1. Trait Empathy 2. EC 3. Helping **p < 0.01 (two-tailed) Table 2 indicates a significant positive relationship between trait empathy and EC, a significant relationship between trait empathy and helping and a significant relationship between EC and helping. The Pearsons correlation coefficients between trait empathy, EC and helping for the low valuing condition are shown in Table 3. 1 2 .36** 3 .20** .19**

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 8 Table 3 Correlations between trait empathy, EC and helping for the low valuing condition. Subscale 1. Trait Empathy 2. EC 3. Helping **p < 0.01 (two-tailed) Table 3 indicates a non-significant relationship between trait empathy and EC, a significant relationship between trait empathy and helping and a significant relationship between EC and helping. Discussion Based on the aims of the present study, we hypothesized that in both the high and low valuing conditions, there would be a positive significant correlation between trait empathy and prosocial behaviour, however the mean in the low valuing condition would be lower than in the high valuing condition. We further hypothesized that EC would have a significant positive correlation with trait empathy and prosocial behaviour. The results from the current experiment provide partial support for the first hypothesis as we did find a significant positive relationship between trait empathy and prosocial behaviour in both the high and low valuing conditions. However the means in both conditions were similar. This suggests that trait empathy influences prosocial behaviour regardless of whether the welfare of an individual 1 2 .08 3 .35** .29**

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 9 is highly valued. A possible reason as to why the means did not differ significantly across both conditions can be attributed to feelings of guilt as a result of not helping. Feeling guilt is known to produce egoistically motivated helping with the goal of relieving ones own emotional state (Batson, 1991; Cialdini, 1997; Pillavin et al., 1981). In the low valuing condition after participants read that the protagonist needed help and if providing that help was within their capacity, they could have been overcome by feelings of guilt if they choose not to help. To avoid such feelings of guilt, participants in the low valuing condition would have displayed prosocial behaviour despite placing low value on the welfare of the protagonist. There is also a possibility that participants in the low valuing condition, overcompensated on helping behaviour to avoid feelings of guilt. These feelings of guilt could affect participants in the high valuing condition but is unlikely as they were not manipulated to value the welfare of the protagonist lowly thus resulting in unwillingness to help. In terms of the second hypothesis, our results show partial support for it. We found a positive significant relationship between empathic concern and helping behavior in both the high and low valuing condition hence partially supporting the findings of Batson et al. (2007). This can possibly be attributed to methodological issues, as perspective taking was manipulated in their experiment but was not in the present study. These results suggest that despite valuing the welfare of an individual highly or lowly, as EC increases so does

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 10 prosocial behaviour. However, in terms of the relationship between trait empathy and EC, our results showed, a significant positive correlation between trait empathy and EC in the high valuing condition but no correlation was present in the low valuing condition. These findings suggest that trait empathy influences EC only when the welfare of the protagonist was valued highly. The absence of a significant relationship between trait empathy and EC in the low valuing condition could possibly be caused by a methodological problem. Measures of trait empathy were obtained after participants had read the vignette. Their self-report measures of trait empathy could have been influenced by the emotions they experienced as a result of reading the vignette. This could have affected participants in both conditions hence resulting in very different results between trait empathy and EC. The findings from the present study can be applied to real world settings in a bid to better understand the underlying mechanisms that drive humans to be more generous with time and money in some causes and not others. However, before this is done, the limitations of the present study should be improved on. These limitations include using university students as a sample thus resulting in limited variance of age and education level, which may be factors that influence prosocial behavior therefore limiting the application of the present findings to the general population. Another limitation would be the overrepresentation of females. This may have had a significant impact on our findings as previous research by

Trait Empathy, Empathic Concern and Prosocial Behaviour 11 Baron-Cohen and Wheelright (2004) has shown that women are more empathic than men. Future research, should seek to explore factors that that underlie that relationship between trait empathy and prosocial behavior. The results in the present study suggests that only a small amount of variation in prosocial behaviour can be explained by trait empathy hence suggesting that there may be other factors mediating this relationship.

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