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On Altruism, Empathy and Perspective Taking
Cover Design: Judith Grob
Cover Layout: Taco de Jong
Printing: Offsetdrukkerij Ridderprint B.V., Ridderkerk
RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN
CONSIDERING OTHERS IN NEED
On Altruism, Empathy and Perspective Taking
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de
Gedrags- en Maatschappijwetenschappen
aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
op gezag van de
Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op
donderdag 27 maart 2008
om 16.15 uur
door
Lidewij Welmoed Niezink
geboren op 27 januari 1979
te Schildwolde
Promotor: Prof. dr. A.P. Buunk
Copromotor: Dr. F.W. Siero
Boordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. S.M. Lindenberg
Prof. dr. T. Postmes
Prof. dr. H.W. Bierhoff
ISBN: 978-90-367-3352-6
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Altruism does not only encompass the sole motive to increase the benefit of
someone else, it also encompasses action. A question which I did not explore in this
dissertation, but which keeps haunting me lately, is this: When an action is altruistically
motivated and carried out, does it have to be effective (in terms of the goal of benefiting)
to be labeled altruistic? Sometimes I think yes, because otherwise, what is the point of the
altruistic motive if there is no actual benefit for the person suffering? Then again, if the
altruistic intention was there and the action was taken, there is no subsequent personal
control over the consequences resulting from it. If the action turns out unbeneficial, we
could term it an altruistic mistake, yet no less altruistic. But if altruism results from
compassion, as I state in the discussion section of this dissertation, understanding the
suffering of others is inherent to compassion and therefore to altruism too. Then, if one
understands the suffering and intends to eliminate its root causes, altruistic action is
inherently beneficial for the other.
I have been very fortunate to work on such a fascinating and challenging topic.
Writing this dissertation has brought me many things for which I am grateful, one of
which is a certain dose of modesty. While this dissertation was taking shape, my opinion
on whether altruism exists has progressively shifted 180 degrees. When I started this
project I remember fierce discussions with my advisor Prof. dr. Bram Buunk. He told me
I was a pessimist, being so convinced that all human action is eventually egotistically
motivated. Indeed, now I think that this conviction underestimates our human capacities
and might even serve as “an easy way out”. Nevertheless, although as a person, I now do
believe in altruism, as a scientist I have not even been close to proving it exists.
It won’t be very surprising that, working on empathy, sympathy, perspective
taking and altruism, I have many people to thank. I will not be able to thank you all in
person in these few words, but I do thank you all for your wonderful support which has
helped me to finish what I have started. I wish to dedicate any merit produced by this
dissertation to your altruistic choices and happy life.
Especially I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. dr. Bram Buunk. Not only did
you provide me with this opportunity to become a graduate student, you also taught me
v
Preface
valuable lessons. Lessons on how to write, what choices to make and what perspectives to
take. I want to thank you for this special start of my scientific career.
Frans Siero, ook jij was cruciaal. Omdat je me aanmoedigde en het me niet in de
schoot wierp. Omdat je me vaak de juiste vragen wist te stellen, moeiteloos om
vissenkoppen wist te lachen en omdat je me leerde consolideren. Voor mij ben je een
held.
I have to thank all my colleagues from both S&O as well as DPMG who have
been inspiring and with whom I had so many laughs. Justin Park, thank you for our very
pleasant contact and for working with me on chapter 3 of this dissertation. Diederik
Stapel, thank you for the inspiring discussions I enjoyed so much and your generous
support and hospitality. Nynke, Jacomien, Saskia, Arne, Anna, Marcus, Carla, Sarah,
Janneke, Rink, Ilse, Mark, José, Hanny en Kina. Thank you all.
Also a special thanks to Judith Grob. Not only did you provide me with the
beautiful cover for this dissertation, you have also been a wonderful friend. Being around
you has been very often like creating a cocoon where we could play joyfully as if suffering
does not exist at all.
My paranimfen, Jacomijn Hofstra and Jurjen Niezink. You have been there at the
moment I needed you most, when times got rough for me. I am convinced you will be
there to pull me through the last bits of it. I feel honored to have you two beside me.
My family, the whole bunch. Happily, Sinterklaas keeps us distracted only nine
months a year ;-). My dissertation says it might be due to our beliefs about mutual
reciprocity that we have such frequent prosocial interactions. Indeed, I moved houses six
times during my graduate period; you helped me out every single time. I think it is a
choice. One we keep making.
Finally, Michel, my best friend and Love, who was there all the way. You were able
to highlight my best qualities and you were able to stand my worst habits. It is because of
you that I have been able to finish this work. We’re finished now, time to move on ;-).
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Contents
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Chapter 1 General Introduction 9
Chapter 2 When Your Suffering Becomes Mine: The Influence of 19
Social Comparison Orientation on Affect Resulting in a
Willingness to Help Others
Study 2.1 21
Study 2.2 26
Chapter 3 Psychological Motivators of Altruism Among Kin and 33
Friends
Study 3.1 35
Study 3.2 40
Chapter 4 What Happened to Pandora’s Box: Reconsidering the 45
Measurement of State Empathy
Defining Empathy within Psychology 46
Review Factor Analysis 49
Nine Factor Analyses based on new data 54
The Discriminatory Power of the newly appeared 61
scales of Sympathy and Tenderheartedness
Conclusion 67
Chapter 5 Summary and Discussion 71
Summary 72
Relations with other Research 74
Altruism, from inclination to choice 78
Limitations and Ruminations 82
Conclusion
References 85
Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch) 103
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CHAPTER 1
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Few of us have a clear idea of the process that takes place within our mind when
we encounter someone in need of help. Why would we anyway; situations in which
someone is in need usually require immediate action. In such situations, what matters is to
provide adequate help, not to ponder on why we help. Science, on the contrary, has placed
this question of why we help in the center of a long philosophical and empirical inquiry.
The debate has been especially concerned with whether human beings are ever, to any
degree, capable of helping which transcends the bounds of self-benefit, and which is based
solely on the genuine concern for the welfare of another. This basic question about our
human nature is often referred to as “The Altruism Question”. In the scientific literature,
the question why people do and don’t act prosocially has been asked for two different
reasons (Batson, 1998): either to reach the practical goal of encouraging prosocial
behaviour, or to challenge currently dominant theories of social motivation, which are
firmly founded on assumptions of universal egoism (Mansbridge, 1990; Wallach &
Wallach, 1983).
The terms “helping behaviour”, “prosocial behaviour” and “altruism” are
frequently used interchangeably. However, they can be distinguished for analytical
purposes (Bierhoff, 2002). Helping is the broadest term, including all forms of
interpersonal support such as the customer service of a salesperson. Prosocial behaviour is
narrower, in that it covers all actions intended to benefit one or more people other than
oneself (Batson, 1998), excluding all paid activities in the service sector (Bierhoff, 2002).
When a certain act is beneficial to another and is also intended, we call it prosocial. Yet,
prosocial behaviour can be either altruistically or egoistically motivated. It can be
motivated by internal or external rewards, by the wish to reduce aversive arousal, or by the
ultimate goal to try to increase the other’s welfare. In this last case, according to most
psychologists, the helping is altruistically motivated. Thus, altruism is even narrower than
prosocial behaviour, in that it implies the primary and ultimate motive to increase another
person’s welfare.
Altruism as a psychological concept is quite different from altruism as a biological
concept. Evolutionary biology does not take motives into account, and defines altruism
10 Chapter 1
entirely in terms of survival and reproduction. A behaviour is altruistic when it increases
the fitness of others and decreases the fitness of the actor (Sober & Wilson, 1998). A shift
from biology, where altruism is deduced from behaviour, to psychology, where altruism is
viewed in terms of motives, implies a shift from the behavioural products of evolution to
the proximate mechanisms which direct these behaviours. These mechanisms are to be
found in the human mind. In general, models on helping and altruism assume either an
egoistic or an altruistic motivation behind helping.
Egoistic Motivation
In egoistically motivated helping behaviour, the helper aspires to fulfill the ultimate
goal of increasing his own welfare. In other words, egoistically motivated helping uses the
instrumental goal of relieving the other’s suffering to reach the ultimate goal of receiving
self-benefits. One model which explains helping in terms of egoistic motives is the
negative state relief model.
Negative State Relief Model. According to Cialdini, Baumann and Kenrick (1981) is
prosocial behaviour motivated by the desire to reduce uncomfortable negative emotions
and thus improve one’s own emotional state. This is known as the negative state relief
model. It does not matter whether these negative emotions are already present or whether
they are aroused by the encounter with an emergency situation. Either way, one engages in
prosocial behaviour to make oneself feel better (Fultz, Schaller, & Cialdini, 1988). Thus,
theories based on egoism maintain that the only ultimate goals an individual has are self-
directed. Theories based on altruism do not make such a universal claim. Research in this
tradition claims that some people, at least some times, have the welfare of others as ends
in themselves. Although this seems a very modest claim, it is precisely what advocates of
psychological egoism deny, and therefore central to research on the altruism question.
Empathy and Altruistic Motivation
Empathy is an emotional state which is thought to evoke altruistic motivation.
Research on empathy has a long tradition in philosophy and since the beginning of the
twentieth century also in psychology. Within psychology, the term empathy was first
coined by Titchener (1909) as a translation of the German word “Einfühlung”. Titchener
(1915) referred to empathy either as the subject’s awareness in imagination of the
emotions of another person as well as a kind of social-cognitive bonding. Within a clinical
context, empathy was initially viewed as a cognitive process referring to accurately and
