Altruism and empathy in situations involving unpredictable pers onal cost

• Autores: Débora Alves de Amorim, Leonardo Rodrigues Sampaio, Guilherme Ribeiro
• Localización: Ciencias Psicológicas, ISSN 1688-4094, ISSN-e 1688-4221, Año 12, Nº. 1, 2018, págs. 7-15
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.22235/cp.v12i1.1589
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Altruismo y empatía en situaciones que implican costos personal es imprevisibles
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    Resumen: El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo investigar la influencia de los sentimientos empáticos sobre el comportamiento altruista de jóvenes adultos. 60 estudiantes de 18 a 35 años de edad participaron de un experimento en el que tuvieron que decidir dar o no rifas a una persona desconocida, después de participar en un juego de azar. Los biletes se obtuvieron después de ganar un concurso de memoria. 30 participantes fueron asignados a una condición experimental denominada "neutral", en la cual tomaron libremente sus decisiones distributivas, y los otros 30 fueron asignados a una condición "emocional", durante la cual se indujeron sentimientos empáticos, utilizando un video. Los resultados indicaron que el sexo de los participantes y la manipulación experimental influyó en el comportamiento del juego, dejando a los participantes en la "condición emocional" más propensos al comportamiento altruista que los participantes en la condición "neutral". Además, los hombres ayudaron más en una condición de alto costo que las mujeres. Estos resultados apuntan a que la influencia de la preocupación empática sobre el comportamiento altruista en una situación que implica riesgo, podría estar mediada por el sexo y que las relaciones entre estas variables necesitan ser mejor observadas en estudios sobre el comportamiento distributivo.

  • English

    Abstract: This current study aimed to investigate the influence of empathic feelings on a risky altruistic behavior of young adults. 60 undergraduate students, aged between 18 and 35 years old took part in an experiment in which they had to decide in rather to give or not raffle tickets to an unfamiliar person, after participating of a gambling game. The tickets were gained after a memory quiz. 30 participants were allocated to an experimental condition named “neutral” in which they freely took their distributive decisions, and the other 30 were allocated to an “emotional” condition, in which empathic feelings were induced, by using a video. Results indicated that the participants’ sex and the experimental manipulation influenced gambling behavior, allowing the participants to be in the “emotional condition”, more prone to altruistic behavior than the participants in the “neutral” condition. Also, the men helped more in a high-cost condition than the women did. These results point that the influence of empathic concern on altruistic behavior in a situation involving risks might be mediated by the sex and the relation between these variables should be better observed in studies on distributive behavior

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