The benefits of empathy: When empathy may sustain cooperation in social dilemmas

Abstract

Cooperation in social dilemmas is often challenged by negative noise, or unintended errors, such that the actual behavior is less cooperative than intended-for example, arriving later than intended for a meeting due to an unusual traffic jam. The present research was inspired by the notion that doing a little more for one's interaction partner, which may be movitvated by empathetic feelings, can effectively reduce the detrimental effects of ''negative noise,'' or unintended incidents of noncooperation. Consistent with hypotheses, negative noise exhibited detrimental effects on cooperation, but such effects were absent when empathy-motivated cooperation was present. We conclude that empathy has broad benefits for social interaction, in that it can be an effective tool for coping with misinterpreted behaviors, thereby maintaining or enhancing cooperation. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Human behavior is universally guided by social norms or unspoken rules of social behavior. One such rule is reciprocity, or response to another's action with that same action (Gouldner, 1960;Perugini, Gallucci, Presaghi, & Ercolani, 2003). The idiom ''an eye for an eye'' is a colloquial expression of this social norm. The norm of reciprocity guides human behavior in most types of interpersonal situations, from families to the political arena. One such situation is a dyadic social dilemma. Dyadic social dilemmas are situations in which self-interest is at odds with collective or long-term interest. When these situations involved repeated interactions, people can often effectively pursue both self-interest and collective interest by adopting the behavioral norm of reciprocity, as it serves to maximize outcomes without making the user vulnerable to exploitation by others (Axelrod, 1984). For example, tit-for-tat (TFT) is a strictly reciprocal strategy in that the previous behavior of an individual is always matched during the next encounter by the reciprocator (Axelrod, 1984). TFT appears to be successful at maximizing outcomes for at least two reasons: It is forgiving, and retaliatory (Axelrod, 1984). TFT is forgiving because after a cycle of noncooperation if the other cooperates, the strategy will follow suit. It is invulnerable to exploitation because it is retaliatory-if the other actor defects, TFT will reciprocate the defection. Thus, TFT is a reactive strategy that does not change behavior unless there is a change in the other's behavior. If the other actor always defects, TFT will reciprocate defection regardless of the long-term costs.One unfortunate consequence of reciprocal behavior in dyadic social dilemmas is an increase in noncooperative actions (i.e., conflict escalation). That is, when one or both partners intentionally or unintentionally make a noncooperative choice, the result will be noncooperative interaction, or escalating conflict. Noncooperation will increase within a strictly reciprocal environment when only one actor pursues a competitive strategy-the so-called ''bad apple '' effect (Colman,

Empathy in the field: Towards a taxonomy of empathic communication in information gathering interviews with suspected sex offenders

“…Empathy was deemed absent if officers ignored conversations in which suspects appeared to be expressing underlying emotions they were feeling. Empathy was found not to impact upon the amount of information obtained during interviews, a finding that runs counter to those of others, and to theoretical accounts of empathy and cooperation (e.g., Balconi & Bortolotti, 2013;Holmberg & Christianson, 2002;Kebbell et al, 2006;Rumble, Van Lange, & Parks, 2009).…”

Narrowing down to open up for other people's concerns: Empathic concern can be enhanced by inducing detailed processing

“…Empathy is related to a host of socially advantageous behaviors such as helping (Batson, O'Quin, Fultz, Vanderplas, & Isen, 1983) and cooperation (Rumble, Van Lange, & Parks, 2010). It promotes health after physician-patient encounters (Van Dulmen & Bensing, 2002) and improves intergroup relations (Dovidio et al, 2010).…”

No control, no drive: how noise may undermine conservation behavior in a commons dilemma

“…Then, the other party may reciprocate again with non-cooperation, leading to endless cycles of defection and suboptimal collective outcomes. Such an unwanted development can be prevented with means that may facilitate cooperation in the presence of noise, for example generosity (Van Lange et al, 2002;Wu & Axelrod, 1995), communication (Tazelaar, Van Lange, & Ouwerkerk, 2004) or empathy (Rumble, Van Lange, & Parks, 2005). In a commons dilemma, however, direct reciprocity is often less relevant than in a dyadic situation because people do not directly interact, but we expect noise to have a different mode of operation than the one described above.…”