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Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action
Empathy enables people to vicariously experience the other’s pain. At the same time, the focus of empathy can be narrow and reserved for a limited number of people. In sacrificial dilemmas, non-empathic people are more likely to sacrifice one person for greater good. However, no study has investigat...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2018
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30212541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203826 |
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author | Takamatsu, Reina |
author_facet | Takamatsu, Reina |
author_sort | Takamatsu, Reina |
collection | PubMed |
description | Empathy enables people to vicariously experience the other’s pain. At the same time, the focus of empathy can be narrow and reserved for a limited number of people. In sacrificial dilemmas, non-empathic people are more likely to sacrifice one person for greater good. However, no study has investigated the role of diminished empathic concern for the victim in utilitarian choices of action. In two studies, we investigated how empathy actually experienced in sacrificial dilemmas affects a decision to perform a harmful action onto the victim. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were feeling two divergent tropes of affective empathy: other-oriented empathy (empathic concern) and self-oriented empathy (personal distress). Results showed that lower levels of other-focused empathy for the victim predicted utilitarian choices of action. In Study 2 (N = 170), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they empathized with the victim and the saved. We also assessed dispositional empathy and psychopathy to test a hypothesis that psychopathy mediates the relationship between lower empathy for the victim and utilitarian choices of action. Results supported this hypothesis, whereas dispositional empathy was not significantly correlated with utilitarian choices of action. Overall, lower empathy experienced in the dilemma situation was associated with utilitarian choices of action, and this was specific to reduced empathic concern for the victim. People choose to pursue the utilitarian end that accompanies harm onto the other as a mean when the victim is out of their empathic focus. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6136766 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61367662018-09-27 Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action Takamatsu, Reina PLoS One Research Article Empathy enables people to vicariously experience the other’s pain. At the same time, the focus of empathy can be narrow and reserved for a limited number of people. In sacrificial dilemmas, non-empathic people are more likely to sacrifice one person for greater good. However, no study has investigated the role of diminished empathic concern for the victim in utilitarian choices of action. In two studies, we investigated how empathy actually experienced in sacrificial dilemmas affects a decision to perform a harmful action onto the victim. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were feeling two divergent tropes of affective empathy: other-oriented empathy (empathic concern) and self-oriented empathy (personal distress). Results showed that lower levels of other-focused empathy for the victim predicted utilitarian choices of action. In Study 2 (N = 170), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they empathized with the victim and the saved. We also assessed dispositional empathy and psychopathy to test a hypothesis that psychopathy mediates the relationship between lower empathy for the victim and utilitarian choices of action. Results supported this hypothesis, whereas dispositional empathy was not significantly correlated with utilitarian choices of action. Overall, lower empathy experienced in the dilemma situation was associated with utilitarian choices of action, and this was specific to reduced empathic concern for the victim. People choose to pursue the utilitarian end that accompanies harm onto the other as a mean when the victim is out of their empathic focus. Public Library of Science 2018-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC6136766/ /pubmed/30212541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203826 Text en © 2018 Reina Takamatsu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Takamatsu, Reina Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title | Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title_full | Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title_fullStr | Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title_full_unstemmed | Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title_short | Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
title_sort | turning off the empathy switch: lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30212541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203826 |
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