Immorality from empathy-induced altruism: when compassion and justice conflict

Results of 2 experiments supported the proposal that empathy-induced altruism can lead one to act in a way that violates the moral principle of justice. In each experiment, participants were asked to make an allocation decision that affected the welfare of other individuals. Participants who were not induced to feel empathy tended to act in accord with a principle of justice; participants who were induced to feel empathy were significantly more likely to violate this principle, allocating resources preferentially to the person for whom empathy was felt. High-empathy participants who showed partiality agreed with other participants in perceiving partiality to be less fair and less moral (Experiment 1). Overall, results suggested that empathy-induced altruism and the desire to uphold a moral principle of justice are independent prosocial motives that sometimes cooperate but sometimes conflict. Implications of this independence are discussed

[1]  S. S. Zalkind.  Civil Liberties: An Overview of Some Contributions from the Behavioral Sciences , 1975 .

[2]  Robert C. Solomon,et al.  A passion for justice : emotions and the origins of the social contract , 1990 .

[3]  Michael A. Wallach,et al.  Psychology's sanction for selfishness : the error of egoism in theory and therapy , 1983 .

[4]  K. Lewin,et al.  Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers , 1951 .

[5]  B. J. Winer.  Statistical Principles in Experimental Design , 1992 .

[6]  C. Batson.  The Altruism Question: Toward A Social-psychological Answer , 1991 .

[7]  Thomas Lickona,et al.  Moral development and behavior : theory, research, and social issues , 1976 .

[8]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Empathy and its development , 1987 .

[9]  C. Batson,et al.  Five studies testing two new egoistic alternatives to the empathy-altruism hypothesis. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. , 1987, Psychological bulletin.

[11]  Peter M. Bentler,et al.  EQS : structural equations program manual , 1989 .

[12]  N. Eisenberg.  Values, Sympathy, and Individual Differences: Toward a Pluralism of Factors Influencing Altruism and Empathy , 1991 .

[13]  D. Aderman,et al.  Empathic observation of an innocent victim: the just world revisited. , 1974, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[14]  C. Daniel Batson,et al.  Prosocial Motivation: Is it ever Truly Altruistic? , 1987 .

[15]  Samuel P. Oliner,et al.  The altruistic personality : rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe , 1989 .

[16]  M. Lerner,et al.  The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion , 1980 .

[17]  Robert P. Abelson,et al.  The semantics of asking a favor: How to succeed in getting help without really dying. , 1972 .

[18]  A. Tesser,et al.  Advanced social psychology , 1995 .

[19]  L. Kohlberg.  Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization , 1969 .

[20]  D. Campbell.  On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition. , 1976, Zygon.

[21]  M. Hoffman.  Empathic emotions and justice in society , 1989 .

[22]  Jane Mansbridge,et al.  Beyond self-interest , 1991 .

[23]  C. Batson,et al.  Empathic mediation of helping: A two-stage model. , 1978 .

[24]  Gramercy Books,et al.  Webster's desk dictionary of the English language , 1990 .

[25]  Terrence Des Pres.  The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps , 1976 .

[26]  E. Staub.  Altruistic and Moral Motivations for Helping and Their Translation Into Action , 1991 .

[27]  N. Noddings.  Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , 1984 .

[28]  Nancy Eisenberg,et al.  Altruistic emotion, cognition, and behavior , 1986 .

[29]  L. L. Shaw,et al.  Encouraging Words Concerning the Evidence for Altruism , 1991 .

[30]  M. Hoffman,et al.  The contribution of empathy to justice and moral judgment , 1993 .

[31]  T. K. Abbott,et al.  Kant's Critique of practical reason and other works on the theory of ethics , 1871 .

[32]  C. Gilligan.  In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982. , 1982 .

[33]  M. Deutsch.  Equity, Equality, and Need: What Determines Which Value Will Be Used as the Basis of Distributive Justice? , 1975 .

[34]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The relation of empathy to aggressive and externalizing/antisocial behavior. , 1988, Psychological bulletin.

[35]  P. Bentler.  MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS WITH LATENT VARIABLES: CAUSAL MODELING , 1980 .