| The empathy-altruism hypothesis proposes that empathic emotion leads to altruistic motivation to help individuals in need. If this is the case, volunteers who experience empathy should make more use of information regarding the instrumental effectiveness of the volunteer task than those who are lower in empathy and therefore less altruistically concerned. Three experiments examined the combined effects of empathy and task instrumentality on volunteer activity. Consistent with predictions, data from these experiments suggest that volunteers who experience greater empathy and perceive the volunteer activity to be highly instrumental engage in more volunteer activity than low-empathy volunteers or those who experience high empathy but perceive the volunteer activity to be an ineffective means of helping. Applied implications are discussed. |
