The authors propose that a distinction should be made between two different emotional responses to seeing another person suffer-personal distress and empathy. Moreover, they propose that these different emotions lead to two different kinds of motivation to help: Personal distress leads to egoistic motivation; empathy, to altruistic motivation. Three studies were conducted to assess the value of these distinctions. Across the three studies, factor analysis of subjects' selfreported emotional response indicated that feelings of personal distress and empathy, although positively correlated, were experienced as qualitatively distinct. Moreover, the pattern of helping in Studies 1 and 2 indicated that a predominance of personal distress led to egoistic motivation, whereas a predominance of empathy led to altruistic motivation. Results of Study 3, in which the cost of helping was made especially high, suggested an important qualification on the link between empathic emotion and altruistic motivation. In that study, subjects reporting a predominance of empathy displayed an egoistic pattern of helping. Apparently, making helping very costly evoked self-concern, which overrode any altruistic impulse produced by feeling empathy.

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