EMPATHY AVOIDANCE - FORESTALLING FEELING FOR ANOTHER IN ORDER TO ESCAPE THE MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES

Often people fail to respond to those in need. Why? In addition to cog nitive and perceptual processes such as oversight and diffusion of res ponsibility, a motivational process may lead people, at times, to acti vely avoid feeling empathy for those in need, lest they be motivated t o help them. It is predicted that empathy avoidance will occur when, b efore exposure to a person in need, people are aware that (a) they wil l be asked to help this person and (b) helping will be costly. To test this prediction, Ss were given the choice of hearing 1 of 2 versions of an appeal by a homeless man for help: an empathy-inducing version o r a non-empathy-inducing version. As predicted, those aware that they soon would be given a high-cost opportunity to help the man chose to h ear the empathy-inducing version less often than did those either unaw are of the upcoming opportunity or aware but led to believe that helpi ng involved low cost.