Empathic concern and personal distress, two facets of empathy, have opposing relations to prosocial behavior: A 63-country study

Abstract

In everyday life, empathy is a powerful driver of prosocial behavior, yet research to date has yielded weak and inconsistent evidence for this relationship. Here we investigate a potential explanation for this paradox, by testing whether two different facets of empathy differentially relate to prosocial behavior. Specifically, we examined empathic concern and personal distress in relation to prosocial behavior by studying ecologically validprosocial behaviors in 24,407 participants from 63 countries. As predicted, we found that stronger feelings of concern were associated with more prosociality, while more intense feelings of personal distress were associated with less prosocial behavior. Moreover, these associations were consistent across diverse cultural contexts. This set of results point to a complex relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior, with implications for interventions targeting prosociality. In particular, the findings underscore the importanceof fostering empathic concern while managing personal distress to promote prosocial behavior during times of stress.