Authors
Jon K Maner, Carol L Luce, Steven L Neuberg, Robert B Cialdini, Stephanie Brown, Brad J Sagarin
Publication date
2002/11
Journal
Personality and social psychology bulletin
Volume
28
Issue
11
Pages
1601-1610
Publisher
Sage Publications
Description
To investigate the existence of true altruism, the authors assessed the link between empathic concern and helping by (a) employing an experimental perspective-taking paradigm used previously to demonstrate empathy-associated helping and (b) assessing the empathy-helping relationship while controlling for a range of relevant, well-measured nonaltruistic motivations. Consistent with previous research, the authors found a significant zero-order relationship between helping and empathic concern, the purported motivator of true altruism. This empathy-helping relationship disappeared, however, when nonaltruistic motivators (oneness and negative affect) were taken into account: Only the nonaltruistic factors of oneness (merged identity with the victim) and negative affect mediated helping, whereas empathic concern did not. Evidence for true altruism remains elusive.
Total citations
Scholar articles
JK Maner, CL Luce, SL Neuberg, RB Cialdini, S Brown… - Personality and social psychology bulletin, 2002