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The Effects of Perspective Taking on Motivations for Helping: Still No Evidence for Altruism
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Short Title: Pers Soc Psychol Bull
Format: Journal Article
Publication Date: 2002/11/01/
Pages: 1601 - 1610
Sources ID: 48431
Notes: doi: 10.1177/014616702237586
Collection: Altruism
Visibility: Public (group default)
Abstract: (Show)
To investigate the existence of true altruism, the authors assessed the link between empathic concern and helping by (a) employing an experimental perspective-taking paradigm used previously to demonstrate empathy-associated helping and (b) assessing the empathy-helping relationship while controlling for a range of relevant, well-measured nonaltruistic motivations. Consistent with previous research, the authors found a significant zero-order relationship between helping and empathic concern, the purported motivator of true altruism. This empathy-helping relationship disappeared, however, when nonaltruistic motivators (oneness and negative affect) were taken into account: Only the nonaltruistic factors of oneness (merged identity with the victim) and negative affect mediated helping, whereas empathic concern did not. Evidence for true altruism remains elusive.