The role of dispositional empathy and social evaluation in the empathic mediation of helping.

Abstract

University of Texas at Austin Coke, Batson, and McDavis have proposed a two-stage model of empathy-mediated helping, based on emotional arousal and perspective taking. We hypothesized that in addition, a dispositional factor—individual differences in empathy—and a situational factor—potential evaluation from others (demand)— should be included in the process. A study was conducted in which female subjects received false galvanic skin response feedback, indicating that they had either high or low arousal during a broadcast of a person's need for help, as in the Coke et al. experiment. In addition, subjects were led to believe that the experimenter either did or did not know their level of arousal (demand vs. no demand). Subjects' premeasured dispositional empathy constituted the third (continuous) variable in the design. The effect of greater help following high- rather than low-arousal feedback found by Coke et al. was replicated. However, as predicted, this was true only for subjects higher in dispositional empathy in the demand condition. The implications of these results for a revised model of empathy-mediated helping are discussed.