The link between perspective-taking and prosociality — Not as universal as you might think

Sassenrath, Claudia; Vorauer, Jacquie D.; Hodges, Sara D.

doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.036

Cited by 26 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Not all prosocial actions are preceded by careful thinking about their impact on a recipient. Our theorizing therefore predicts that any factors that decrease people’s motivation (e.g., distraction) or capacity (e.g., age) to engage in effortful social cognition would also decrease the impact of miscalibrated expectations on prosocial behavior (Epley et al, 2006; Sassenrath et al, 2022). Prosocial behavior should therefore be moderated by both the content of people’s expectations and the likelihood that they will consider their expectations.…”

Section: From Expectation To Actionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Not all prosocial actions are preceded by careful thinking about their impact on a recipient. Our theorizing therefore predicts that any factors that decrease people's motivation (e.g., distraction) or capacity (e.g., age) to engage in effortful social cognition would also decrease the impact of miscalibrated expectations on prosocial behavior (Epley, Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006;Sassenrath, Vorauer, & Hodges, 2022).…”

Section: From Expectation To Actionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action

Epley

Kumar

Dungan

et al. 2023

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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Behaving prosocially can increase well-being among both those performing a prosocial act and those receiving it, and yet people may experience some reluctance to engage in direct prosocial actions. We review emerging evidence suggesting that miscalibrated social cognition may create a psychological barrier that keeps people from behaving as prosocially as would be optimal for both their own and others’ well-being. Across a variety of interpersonal behaviors, those performing prosocial actions tend to underestimate how positively their recipients will respond. These miscalibrated expectations stem partly from a divergence in perspectives, such that prosocial actors attend relatively more to the competence of their actions, whereas recipients attend relatively more to the warmth conveyed. Failing to fully appreciate the positive impact of prosociality on others may keep people from behaving more prosocially in their daily lives, to the detriment of both their own and others’ well-being.

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Section: From Expectation To Actionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: From Expectation To Actionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action

Epley

Kumar

Dungan

et al. 2023

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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“…Compared to inactive controls, however, effect sizes of perspective taking on empathic concern clustered around zero. Related to this, many such experiments rely heavily on self‐report measures of prosociality, and thus may be limited by demand characteristics specifically for those conditions related to perspective taking (e.g., Sassenrath et al., 2021; Zaki, 2020).…”

Section: Can Enhancing General Empathy Motivate Intergroup Empathy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Closing the empathy gap: A narrative review of the measurement and reduction of parochial empathy

Behler

Berry

2022

Social & Personality Psych

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Recent research indicates that empathy-enhancing interventions are limited in their ability to produce meaningful and lasting reductions in bias and hostility toward outgroup members. Parochial empathy-defined as preferentially higher empathy felt for ingroup over outgroup membershas been shown to be a promoter of intergroup conflict and antipathy. Our review will discuss the shortfalls of enhancing empathy for its own sake in intergroup contexts. We leverage the longstanding theory and science of multidimensional perspectives and operationalizations of general empathy, which include cognitive, affective and motivational responses to others' suffering. Thereafter we will discuss the current state of the science on measuring parochial empathy. We close by suggesting a multidimensional perspective of parochial empathy can inform interventions to promote intergroup prosociality, particularly interventions that directly and/or indirectly motivate other-oriented empathy and concern.

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“…Likewise, persons scoring high on the traits narcissism or psychopathy—that are both characterized by reduced prosocial behavior—appear to display normal 26 , 27 or even slightly increased mentalizing performance 28 . Beyond that, it has also been shown and argued that the association between mentalizing and prosocial behavior underlies contextual variation (for reviews, see 29 , 30 ). Prosocial behavior is diminished when the target of perspective-taking is too dissimilar to oneself, when the targets’ perspective bears the potential of negative self-evaluation, or when the context holds threats to the goals of the perspective taker 29 , 31 , 32 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathy and correct mental state inferences both promote prosociality

Lehmann

Böckler

Klimecki

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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In a world with rapidly increasing population that competes for the earth’s limited resources, cooperation is crucial. While research showed that empathizing with another individual in need enhances prosociality, it remains unclear whether correctly inferring the other’s inner, mental states on a more cognitive level (i.e., mentalizing) elicits helping behavior as well. We applied a video-based laboratory task probing empathy and a performance measure of mentalizing in adult volunteers (N = 94) and assessed to which extent they were willing to help the narrators in the videos. We replicate findings that an empathy induction leads to more prosocial decisions. Crucially, we also found that correct mentalizing increases the willingness to help. This evidence helps clarify an inconsistent picture of the relation between mentalizing and prosociality.

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The link between perspective-taking and prosociality — Not as universal as you might think

Cited by 26 publications

References 44 publications

A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action

A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action

Closing the empathy gap: A narrative review of the measurement and reduction of parochial empathy

Empathy and correct mental state inferences both promote prosociality

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