The Influence of Emotion and Empathy on Decisions to Help Others

Abstract

Many decisions to help others are made in emotionally associated circumstances. Empathy is known to motivate prosocial behavior. However, no studies have investigated the interaction between empathy and emotion in deciding to help others. In total, 151 students scoring either high or low in empathy viewed three types of emotional clips (anger vs. sadness vs. neutrality) and completed the “Help for Another Study” task. Analysis of variance showed that participants chose to invest more time in helping others when they felt sadness than anger. Participants with high empathy chose to spend more time helping others than those with low empathy. Pearson’s correlation revealed a significant positive correlation between perspective-taking, empathic concern, and willingness to invest time in assistance under anger state; perspective-taking and fantasy were significantly correlated with willingness to invest time under sadness state. The results suggest that both emotion (i.e., sadness) and empathy (i.e., high trait empathy) are vital motivators that exert impact on prosocial helping decisions.