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Empathic Concern and Positive Empathy Predict Increased Goodwill Behavior in Adults

Sharee N. Light, Van Lee, Lena Swander and Richard J. Davidson


Feelings of empathic concern (i.e. the ability to feel sorrow in response to the suffering of another person and feel goodwill towards them), empathic happiness (i.e. the ability to share in the positive emotional experience of another person and experience feelings of goodwill toward them), and empathic cheerfulness (i.e. the ability to use positive emotion as a means to draw another person out of a negative or neutral mood, and experience feelings of goodwill towards them) were elicited in a sample of 68 adults using video clips from the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Goodwill is a mental state characterized by a feeling to do good to others, more than a desire to remove suffering. Vicarious emotional responsivity was measured via participants self-report immediately following each video clip (i.e. task empathy score). The presence of goodwill was quantified via performance on a book donation task that called for each participant to select 1 of 3 types of books (goodwill, science, or fairytale-themed) over multiple trials of our empathy task. Participants emotional reactions (i.e. smiles and frowns) were tracked via facial electromyographic recording during video clip viewing and book selection. One motivation for empathy may be pleasure. Participants ability to enjoy abstract/creative tasks may map onto their ability to feel joy in empathic situations. Increased smiling during the empathy task predicted greater task empathic concern and task empathic happiness (ps<.05, data not shown). The combination of decline in corrugator during the second happy half of the empathy task and increased depressor activity across the first sad half of the empathy task predicted increased task empathic cheerfulness (R2=21%, p<.001, data not shown). Together, greater task empathic happiness and trait empathic concern predicted the percentage of goodwill-themed books selected (R2=36%, p<.001) above and beyond Full Scale IQ, and Full Scale IQ was no longer significant in the model. Greater smiling during book selection related to greater selection of goodwill-themed books (R2=18%, p<.05). Greater frowning during the sad half of the empathy task predicted greater selection of goodwill-themed books (R2=11%, p<.05). Empathic cheerfulness related to persistent selection of books during the happy half relative to the sad half (ps<.05). The induction of different empathy subtypes contribute uniquely to subsequent goodwill behavior.

Abstract

Methods
How did we measure emotion?

Sample: Our participants had the following characteristics: 45 were women (66%), and

all were age 18-63 (M=25.68, SD=10.64). The majority of participants were undergraduate students (51.47%). 20.59% of participants were college graduates, 17.65% were high school graduates or had obtained their GED, and 10.30% had obtained a graduate degree (e.g. masters, PhD, MD, JD, etc.). 74% of participants were white, 8.82% of participants were Asian, 8.82% of participants were African-American, 7.4% of participants were Hispanic, and 1.4% of participants were of Native American descent. Only 4 participants were parents, so no separate analyses were run.

Measures: K-BIT intelligence test, facial electromyography, book


donation task, extreme Makeover Home Edition video clips, originally designed positive empathy self-report scale

Book examples

Background
Behavioral economic-decision making tasks have been used to probe how individuals in society can be organized to contribute to necessary institutions (e.g. maintaining a quality public education system) when individuals may lack incentives to contribute voluntarily, e.g. by paying taxes. Decision-making tasks, of which the Public Goods game is one type, were developed to observe how people behave naturally in such social situations, and to determine what factors may contribute to differences in peoples willingness to work for the greater good. In the Public Goods game, at the extremes, each individual can contribute nothing to the public good (i.e. the Nash equilibrium) or everyone can contribute all of their wealth (i.e. the social optimum). Over several rounds of the game, participants contribute less and less (Hichri, 2005). The scatter in the data might be explained by any number of individual difference variables (Anderson, Goeree & Holt, 1998), including individual differences in empathy and/or goodwill.

Results

2= R

11%

(1) (ABOVE) The greater the increase in frowning during the first half of the video portion of the empathy task, the greater the percentage of goodwill themed books selected (p<.05). (2) (BELOW) The graph below demonstrates that task empathic cheerfulness predicts greater selection of books during the first sad half of the empathy task relative to the second happy half of the empathy task, and trait empathic cheerfulness predicts persistent selection of books during the second happy half of the empathy task.

Problem
A prominent gap in the literature pertains to the following: (1) our understanding of the extent to which goodwill co-occurs with vicarious emotion; and (2) the extent to which eliciting feelings of empathic concern, empathic happiness, or empathic cheerfulness may reduce the decline in goodwill behavior observed in typical Public Goods games.

Objectives

Percentage of goodwill-themed books selected

Hypothesis 1: Does electromyographically measured empathy predict goodwill behavior? Our primary task was to show empirically that there is a link between the experience of vicarious emotion (via self-report and/or change in facial expression) and goodwill. The following was predicted: participants who expressed more vicarious emotion while watching emotionally evocative video stimuli (quantified via self-report and EMG facial activity) would select a greater percentage of goodwill-themed books relative to participants who did not demonstrate vicarious emotion in response to video clips. Hypothesis 2: Does empathy induction reduce or eliminate the drop in goodwill typically observed in multi-trial Public Goods games? It was predicted that the following physiological patterns would emerge across the course of the empathy inducing video stimuli (i.e. the television show EMHE) The television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition begins by showing the audience why a particular family is in need of a remodeled home. This portion of the episode (i.e. the first half) generally elicits negative emotions such as sadness and concern. Later in the show, the team reveals the remodeled home to the family, who has been sent away while the team works on their home. This part of the episode (i.e. the second half) generally elicits happiness. Thus, typically, the events in the show move a viewer from initial feelings of sadness and concern to feelings of contentment, happiness and/or joy. We attempted to confirm, and empirically tested whether providing a empathy stimulus would dampen or eliminate the typically observed decline in participants tendency to demonstrate goodwill toward others after repeated trials when playing the Public Goods behavioral economic decision game. We accomplished this by comparing the number of books selected in the first sad half of the empathy task relative to the second happy half of the empathy task. Support for our hypothesis would be second half books first half books.

Results 2=36% R

Goodwill is a form of positive affect!

2=18% R

Model 2=20% R
Discussion
We found that an empathy invoking experience (i.e. watching a reality TV show) predicted goodwill feelings towardas measured by change in facial expression during book selectionand goodwill behavior towardas measured via book donationpeople who were NOT the direct focus of the empathy induction (i.e. Madison Metropolitan School District children). Furthermore, specific types of empathy (e.g. empathic concern versus empathic happiness versus empathic cheerfulness) predicted unique portions of variance in actual goodwill behavior.
Facial expression is a manifestation of emotion, and was used as a measure of emotional reactivity in the present paradigm. Our results indicate that different configurations of facial affect are associated with different forms of empathy, and prior work indicates that these different forms of empathy have different neuroelectrical characteristics as well (Light et al., 2009a). These unique facial configurations, and the empathy forms they relate to, appear to provide unique routes to goodwill behavior; as certain negatively toned facial configurations related to goodwill behavior and multiple positive facial configurations related to goodwill behavior (see Table above). Importantly, our results go beyond showing that a feeling of goodwill can be induced when vicarious emotion occurs, but illustrates how emotional reactivity to video stimuli can invoke (a) vicarious emotion, (b) a feeling of goodwill and (c) goodwill behavior.

Together, task empathic happiness and trait empathic concern (IRI) predicted the percentage of goodwill books selected (r=.60, R2=36%, p<.001) above and beyond Full Scale IQ and Book Familiarity. Trait empathic concern accounted for 11% of unique variance separate from task empathic happiness, and task empathic happiness accounted for 10% of unique variance separate from empathic concern; the rest of the variance accounted for is shared variance.

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