Why do People Engage with the Suffering of Strangers? Exploring Epistemic, Eudaimonic, Social, and Affective Motives

Abstract

Reading violent stories or watching a war documentary are examples in which people voluntarily engage with the suffering of others whom they do not know. The central question of this paper is why people make these decisions. Using a mixed-method approach, we investigated people’s motives to engage with the suffering of strangers. In doing so, we also mapped the characteristics of strangers’ suffering to enable a rich understanding. In Study 1, an online qualitative study (N = 247), participants described situations of suffering and their reasons to engage with it. Using thematic analysis, we developed a typology of the stranger (who), the situation (what), the source (how), and the reason(s) for engaging with the situation (why). We categorized the motives into four overarching themes – epistemic, eudaimonic, social, and affective –, which reflect diversity in the perceived functionality of engaging with a stranger’s suffering. Next, we tested the robustness of the identified motives in a quantitative study. In Study 2, participants (N = 250) recalled a situation in which they engaged with the suffering of a stranger and indicated their endorsement with a variety of possible motives. Largely mirroring the motives emerging from Study 1, Study 2 participants engaged with strangers’ suffering to acquire knowledge (e.g., learn something about the world), for personal utility (e.g., to prepare for an emergency), for social utility (e.g., supporting others), and to feel positive (e.g., gratitude) and negative (e.g., outrage) emotions. We discuss implications for understanding the exploration of human suffering as a motivated phenomenon.