Three experiments tested whether empathy evokes egoistic motivation to share vicariously in the victim's joy at improvement (the empathic-joy hypothesis) instead of altruistic motivation to increase the victim's welfare (the empathy-altruism hypothesis). In Experiment 1, Ss induced to feel either low or high empathy for a young woman in need were given a chance to help her. Some believed that if they helped they would receive feedback about her improvement; others did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, Ss induced to feel either low or high empathy were given a choice of getting update information about a needy person's condition. Before choosing, they were told the likelihood of the person's condition having improved--and of their experiencing empathic joy--was 20%, was 50%, or was 80%. Results of none of the experiments patterned as predicted by the empathic-joy hypothesis; instead, results of each were consistent with the empathy-altruism hypothesis.

We predicted that feeling empathy for another member of the collective in a social dilemma would create an altruistic desire to allocate resources to that person as an individual, reducing collective good. To test this prediction, 2 studies were run. In each, participants faced a dilemma in which they could choose to benefit themselves, the group, or other group members as individuals. In Study 1, empathy for another group member was manipulated; in Study 2, naturally occurring empathic response was determined by self-report. In both studies, participants who experienced high empathy allocated more resources to the target of empathy, reducing the overall collective good. These results suggest the importance of considering self-interest, collective interest, and other-interest (altruism) as three distinct motives, each of which may operate in social dilemmas.When will people act for the collective good, contributing to public TV or the symphony, supporting school-bond issues or welfare programs, volunteering services for community projects, recycling trash, or conserving energy and other scarce environmental resources? The orthodox answer to this question among behavioral and social scientists over the last half-century has been based on classic game (decision)

Two studies tested the prediction that having had prior experience with a need increases empathy for another person currently experiencing that need. In Study 1, subjects reported their feelings of empathy after observing a same-sex peer endure mild but uncomfortable electric shocks. Compared with those given no prior experience with the shocks, women who had prepared to receive the shocks themselves reported more empathy, whereas men who had prepared reported less. In Study 2, subjects reported their feelings of empathy after reading a transcript in which a same-sex adolescent described an upsetting life experience. Women who had had a similar experience during adolescence reported more empathy than women who had not; men who had had a similar experience reported no more empathy than men who had not. Across both studies, then, prior experience with the need increased empathy among women but not among men.

Often people fail to respond to those in need. Why? In addition to cognitive and perceptual processes such as oversight and diffusion of responsibility, a motivational process may lead people, at times, to actively avoid feeling empathy for those in need, lest they be motivated to help them. It is predicted that empathy avoidance will occur when, before exposure to a person in need, people are aware that (a) they will be asked to help this person and (b) helping will be costly. To test this prediction, Ss were given the choice of hearing 1 of 2 versions of an appeal by a homeless man for help: an empathyinducing version or a non-empathy-inducing version. As predicted, those aware that they soon would be given a high-cost opportunity to help the man chose to hear the empathy-inducing version less often than did those either unaware of the upcoming opportunity or aware but led to believe that helping involved low cost.

Child-directed cues support imitation of novel actions at 18 months, but not at two years of age. The current studies explore the mechanisms that underlie the propensity that children have to copy others at 18 months, and how the value of child-directed communication changes over development. We ask if attentional allocation accounts for children's failure to imitate observed actions at 18 months, and their success at two years of age, and we explore the informational value child-directed contexts may provide across ontogeny. Eighteen-month-old (Study 1) and two-year-old (Study 2) children viewed causally non-obvious actions performed by child-directed (Study 1 & 2), observed (Study 1 & 2), or non-interactive (Study 2) actors, and their visual attention and imitative behaviors were assessed. Results demonstrated that child-directed contexts supported imitative learning for 18-month-old children, independent of their effects on proximal attention. However, by two years of age, neither directness nor communication between social partners was a necessary condition for supporting social imitation. These findings suggest that developmental changes in children's propensity to extract information from observation cannot be accounted for by changes in children's interpretation of what counts as child-directed information, and are likely not due to changes in how children allocate attention to observed events.

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