Project SherlockEst. Knowledge

Paper

1981

Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation?

C. Daniel Batson et al.

People who feel empathic concern for a person in distress will help even when escape without helping is easy, evidence that empathy can produce genuinely altruistic motivation rather than help driven only by a wish to relieve one's own distress.

Before you start

FreeIntermediate

Read these first

Not a difficulty warning — a route. These are in the library too.

Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of ResponsibilityJohn M. Darley & Bibb Latane, 1968People are less likely to help a stranger in trouble the more other bystanders are present, because responsibility to act is shared out among everyone present rather than falling on any one person - a lab-tested effect independent of the since-disputed newspaper account of Kitty Genovese's murder that first prompted it.

Filed under Social Psychology in Psychology.