Explaining altruistic sharing in the dictator game: The role of affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and justice sensitivity

Edele, Aileen; Dziobek, Isabel; Keller, Monika

doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2012.12.020

Cited by 172 publications

(168 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

137

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The current work showed that the degree of empathy experienced towards a specific person changes as a function of the situation and motivates altruistic behavior in an economic context. This finding extends previous evidence on the relation between trait empathy and altruism towards anonymous strangers14 as well as the research on the role of compassion as a motivator for prosocial behavior in less religious participants16. Moreover, our findings provide an explanation for the observation that putting a face to the victims increases altruistic behavior23 by showing that the extent of empathy experienced towards another person strongly predicts how much people are willing to share in economic interactions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Empathy promotes altruistic behavior in economic interactions

Klimecki

Mayer

Jusyte

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

111

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What are the determinants of altruism? While economists assume that altruism is mainly driven by fairness norms, social psychologists consider empathy to be a key motivator for altruistic behavior. To unite these two theories, we conducted an experiment in which we compared behavior in a standard economic game that assesses altruism (the so-called Dictator Game) with a Dictator Game in which participants’ behavioral choices were preceded either by an empathy induction or by a control condition without empathy induction. The results of this within-subject manipulation show that the empathy induction substantially increased altruistic behavior. Moreover, the increase in experienced empathy predicted over 40% of the increase in sharing behavior. These data extend standard economic theories that altruism is based on fairness considerations, by showing that empathic feelings can be a key motivator for altruistic behavior in economic interactions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…So far it has been established that empathic traits are positively related to donations in the standard DG14. Previous research also showed that compassion, which denotes a feeling of care for a suffering other accompanied by the desire to help15, motivates prosocial behavior in less religious individuals16.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathy promotes altruistic behavior in economic interactions

Klimecki

Mayer

Jusyte

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

111

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The authors suggested that activity in posterior cingulate may indicate a moral sensitivity or justice sensitivity and that activity in ACC may indicate altruistic motivation (see also Mathur et al, 2010). Recently, three subcategories, related to altruism (affective empathy, cognitive empathy, justice sensitivity), have been investigated as an influence to the donating behavior in the dictator game (Edele, Dziobek, & Keller, 2013), showing that justice sensitivity (Schmitt, Gollwitzer, Maes, & Arbach, 2005;Schmitt, Neumann, & Montada, 1995) and affective empathy (e.g., Davis, 1983;Davis, Luce, & Kraus, 1994) were leading to higher offers. Taken together, theta activity may be reflecting altruistic motivation or empathy as the emotional source of such a motivation, leading to fair offers (Edele et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A neural signature of fairness in altruism: A game of theta?

Rodrigues

Ulrich

Hewig

2014

Social Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the dictator game, a proposer can share a certain amount of money between himself or herself and a receiver, who has no opportunity of influencing the offer. Rational choice theory predicts that dictators keep all money for themselves. But people often are offering money to receivers, despite their opportunity to maximize their own profit and therefore showing altruistic behavior. In this study, we investigated the influence of the altruism of the dictator, the anonymity of the decision and the income of the receiver on the offer made by a dictator. Additionally, we were interested in the influence of midfrontal theta activity prior to the offer, indicating the upcoming decision. The height of the offer made by the dictator was dependent on all variables investigated: Altruism of the dictator led to higher offers and income of the receiver led to higher offer the poorer the receivers are. The anonymity of the decision had two effects, depending on the altruism of the dictator, with higher offers for highly altruistic dictators, when they were not observed, and lower offers for less altruistic dictators in this condition. Finally, midfrontal theta activity predicts upcoming fair offers, maybe indicating altruistic motivation or empathy on physiological basis.

show abstract

“…However, research indicates that personality factors, such as justice sensitivity, trait empathic concern, perspective-taking, or people's values contribute to altruistic and moral behavior more generally (Edele, Dziobek, & Keller, 2013;Fetchenhauer & Huang, 2004). Future research might investigate how state and trait variables interact and impact on costly third-party interventions to gain a full picture of the proximate causes of human moral behavior.…”

Section: Implications and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%