The relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs for helping and how it is affected by similarity perceptions
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
Standard
The relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs for helping and how it is affected by similarity perceptions. / Siem, Birte.
in: The Journal of Social Psychology, Jahrgang 162, Nr. 1, 02.01.2022, S. 178-197.Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - The relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs for helping and how it is affected by similarity perceptions
AU - Siem, Birte
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2022/1/2
Y1 - 2022/1/2
N2 - One explanation for the positive effect of state empathic concern on helping is that such other-focused feelings reduce helpers’ perceptions of their personal costs for helping. Results from an experiment (N = 186) supported these assumptions and showed further that self-focused feelings of personal distress, another form of affective empathy, were a positive predictor of perceived costs. Moreover, I examined whether the strength of the negative relationship between empathic concern and personal costs depends on two forms of perceived similarity between the helper and the target, person similarity and experience similarity. For this purpose, I manipulated person similarity by portraying the target as either similar or dissimilar with regard to essential characteristics, and assessed experience similarity by asking whether or not participants share the target’s negative experience. As predicted, the negative relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs was strongest when person similarity was high and experience similarity low.
AB - One explanation for the positive effect of state empathic concern on helping is that such other-focused feelings reduce helpers’ perceptions of their personal costs for helping. Results from an experiment (N = 186) supported these assumptions and showed further that self-focused feelings of personal distress, another form of affective empathy, were a positive predictor of perceived costs. Moreover, I examined whether the strength of the negative relationship between empathic concern and personal costs depends on two forms of perceived similarity between the helper and the target, person similarity and experience similarity. For this purpose, I manipulated person similarity by portraying the target as either similar or dissimilar with regard to essential characteristics, and assessed experience similarity by asking whether or not participants share the target’s negative experience. As predicted, the negative relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs was strongest when person similarity was high and experience similarity low.
KW - Psychology
KW - Empathic concern
KW - personal distress
KW - similarity
KW - costs
KW - helping
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85120639081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00224545.2021.1996321
DO - 10.1080/00224545.2021.1996321
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 34850671
VL - 162
SP - 178
EP - 197
JO - Journal of Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Social Psychology
SN - 0022-4545
IS - 1
ER -