Empathy and Age Effects on Helping Behavior Essay Example
Empathy and Age Effects on Helping Behavior Essay Example

Empathy and Age Effects on Helping Behavior Essay Example

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  • Pages: 11 (2997 words)
  • Published: July 27, 2021
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The sense of altruism has become part of people’s everyday lives. Altruism is when one is motivate to increase another’s welfare without worry of their own self-interests (Myers, 2013). This sense of altruism can be very high in some people in which they are constantly helping others, but some people may lack a sense of helpfulness towards others. The issue is not only that there is a lack of altruism among society, but a lack of empathy which affects whether people want to help others who may be less fortunate than themselves. The significance of altruism is that it not only makes society better, but it can make the individuals acting altruistically feel good and more willing to help others on a regular basis. People tend to help others based the idea of the social-exchange theory which is when people interact with others as if

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it is a transaction in which they aim to benefit as much as possible without doing a lot (Myers, 2013). The social-exchange theory is inevitable, but there should be something that can be done to minimize people looking at their own self-interests when helping others. With all this in mind, we are able to see that empathy is large component that contributes to motivating people to helps others, but there is a possibility that other factors may contribute motivating people to help others.

First off, there is supporting evidence that shows that empathy encourages altruistic behavior. This experiment explores whether empathy and age affect helping behavior. Past research supports the concept of empathy triggering altruistic motives. A study conducted by Van Lange (2008) researched if empathy affected altruistic behavior. The purpos

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of the study was to examine interpersonal motivations that may be activated by empathy, focusing on the activation of altruism, selflessness, egalitarianism. It was hypothesized that participants conditioned with empathy will have enhanced altruistic motivations (Van Lange, 2008). The study consisted of 84 participants around age 21 in which empathy was manipulated by participants reading a note that another participant had written to them (Van Lange, 2008). The low-empathy condition consisted of participants being encouraged not to focus on their feelings and after the notes were read, the participants completed a self-report of empathy which included feelings of compassion, concern, and anger to evoke empathetic feelings, but also distract them (Van Lange, 2008). The last measure Van Lange (2008) used to see if participants were more willing to give to others was with the Ring measure of social values which was a game to calculate the amount of money participants allocated to themselves and to others and the predicted results were that the participants in the high empathy condition were allocate more money to others than to themselves. What was concluded for the study was that empathy triggers altruistic motives and no selfless or egalitarian motivation, but it does not reduce or enhance selfish motivation. The results of this study are what support the current conducted experiment and the idea that empathy has a significant effect on people’s willingness to help others.

In addition, in today’s society, one may see that people are beginning to be less empathetic and have their own self-interests in mind rather than the interests of others. However, one is able to see the when people feel empathy, they are more inclined

to help others. According to Persson and Kajonius (2016) people who experience empathy are more likely to act altruistically which they tested by having 193 middle age participants complete two online tasks in which the researchers examined how participants predict universal values by comparing themselves to the described portrait. The participants then completed an Interpersonal Reactivity Index which measures empathy which would have correlated with the participants responses on the portraits they compared themselves to (Persson & Kajonius, 2016). It was concluded that empathy consistently correlated positively with values relating to altruistic behavior. This study shows not only the relationship between empathy and altruism, but that when people are told to put themselves in a position in which they would help someone else, they are more likely to help them if they feel empathy.

Furthermore, although the previously mentioned studies support the idea of empathy affect helping behavior, those studies focused on the helping behavior between adults. The following study examines how empathy in children affects their generosity (Barnett, King, & Howard, 1979). The researchers had 85 children discuss happy, sad, or neutral incidents either experienced by themselves or by another child and after the children were told that they could donate their experimental earnings to kids less fortunate than them (Barnett, King, & Howard, 1979). The results showed that children who told a sad story that another child had experienced donated more than children who talked about their own misfortunes (Barnett, King, & Howard, 1979). This study presents the implication that empathy affected the generosity of children which also supports the following experiment which examines how empathy affects helping behavior (Barnett, King, & Howard, 1979).

Children who are primed with empathy are more willing to help others than those who are not, which supports the conducted experiment. Age seems to be an important aspect that affects whether people are more willing to help others or not which can be used to the advantage of society when they need more volunteers for an organization, using empathy can be beneficial.

In regard to all the previous research that has been conducted to study empathy affecting helping behavior in both adults and children, the research supports the following experiment conducted that empathy does indeed affect people’s helping behavior. However, this experiment not only looks at empathy, but looks at how the age of the people being empathetic affects participants willingness to help others. It is hypothesized that when people are primed with empathy, that will result in those people being more willing to help others. Also, age will also influence whether people are more willing to help others whether they are primed with children acting empathetic or adults acting empathetic.

Method

Design

The purpose of the present study was to examine how age and empathy affect one’s perception of helping behavior based on four different conditions which included children versus adults and empathy versus no empathy. The experimental design was a 2( age: adults/children) x2 (empathy: empathy/no empathy) factorial design. The two independent variables which were empathy and age in which empathy was divided into empathy versus no empathy. Age was divided into adults versus children. There was one dependent variable which measured the perception of helping behavior.

Participants

Seventy-nine participants (11 male, 68 women) around the ages of 18-75 participated in our research study. Majority of our participants

identified as White or Hispanic/Latino (91%). We recruited individuals by posting on social media (Facebook, Instagram), creating a flyer and posting at our workplace, and by directly contacting family and friends to take part in our experiment. Participants voluntarily took part of our research without further compensation.

Manipulation

In the experiment, age and empathy were manipulated to see how these factors influenced perceived helping behavior. Age was manipulated by having participants watch a video that had a child or an adult engaging in a specific activity. Empathy was manipulated by having participants watch a video of a child or an adult acting altruistically. Using the 2x2 factorial design, participants were randomly assigned to watch a fifty-five to sixty second video that replicated one of the four conditions (empathy in adults, empathy in children, no empathy in children, no empathy in adults). In the first video, there was a child feeling down because his lunch box was empty during lunch time. The video intended to evoke empathy when the students in his class surprised the boy and placed some of their snacks into his lunch box. In the second video, we have an adult engage in multiple altruistic behaviors such as giving up his seat on the bus, helping an old woman lift a cart, and surprising his neighbors with bananas. In the control videos, participants were asked to either watch a woman teaching a ab workout class or of a little girl attempting to solve a Rubik’s cube.

Measures

The study consisted of one dependent variable that measured the perception of helping behavior. The measurement that was used was an Adapted Self-Report Altruism Scale which was adapted by Witt

and Bolemen (2009) from Rushton, Chrisjohn, and Fekken’s (1981) original Self-Report Altruism Scale. The measure consisted of 14 statements of different helping behavior scenarios. One of the statements is “I would give money to a charity.” Participants were asked to rate how likely they were to engage in the following 14 altruistic behaviors listed( 0=never, 1=once, 2=more than once, 3=often, 4=very often). Examples of the statements includes “I would donate clothes or goods to a charity,” or “ I would make changes for someone I did not know.” Participants with a higher score will indicate greater perceptive helping behavior. The original study that included a self-report on altruistic personality (Rushton, Chrisjohn, & Fekken, 1981). The original scale had a high internal validity according to Cronbach’s alpha with alpha=0.86 (Rushton, Chrisjohn, & Fekken, 1981). There was another study that used a self-report altruism scale which was Ashwini and Indumathy (2018). Ashwini and Indumathy also used the Adapted Self-Report Altruism Scale by Witt and Bolemen (2009). There was no information regarding the validity or reliability with the adapted version of the self-report; however, the report was still used for the means of this experiment due to the questions being applicable to what was being researched. At the end of the survey, the study also measured demographic characteristics which included, age, gender, and race/ethnicity.

Results

The results for empathy and age were analyzed individually as well as together. The experiment concluded with there being 11males and 68 females. The racial breakdown was 1 African American, 3 Asians, 59 Hispanics, 1 Pacific Islander, 13 Caucasians, and 2 who associated with other. The average age was 32.86 with a standard deviation of

10.525. According to Cronbach’s alpha there was a reliability of 0.867 with measures internal consistency. As researchers, we want to be confident that our test is reliable and measures what it should. Since our value is greater than .8, we can infer that our measure has high reliability. The following data is accordance with the following hypotheses: We expect there to be a significant main effect of empathy such that overall, people who watch videos with high empathy will be more willing to help people compared to people who watch videos that do not evoke any type of empathy, we expect there to be a significant main effect of age such that overall, people who watch videos of kids be empathetic will be more willing to help others compared to watching videos of adults being empathetic, we expect there to be a significant interaction between empathy and age such that, people who watch a video of children being empathetic will be more willing to help others compared to watching a video of adults being empathetic.

The conditions were broken down with 20 participants in low empathy and children, 19 participants in low empathy and adults, 21 participants in high empathy and children, and 19 participants in high empathy and adults. For he dependent variable the mean of the responses were 3.78 with higher numbers being more willing to help others and the standard deviation was 0.65.

Multiple statistical tests were used in order to make inferences about our data. Recognizing these patterns allows researchers to determine if the data collected was caused by the experimental conditions or if it was due to chance. We used ANOVA to

analyze the differences between the means of our two independent variables. A between subject ANOVA was used because each of our respondents were randomly assigned to one of our four conditions. We also determined the calculated probability for each of our IVs and the interaction between the two. The purpose of the p-value is to define the significance of the data collected. The greater the value, the more confident we are that our data is not due to chance. According to the data there is no significant main effect such that videos that include high levels of empathy do not affect whether people are more willing to help others due to F=.085 and p= .771.There is no significant main effect such that people who watch videos of children or of adults do not affect whether people are more likely to help others due to F= .238 and p= .627. There is a marginal relationship between empathy and age such that there is an interaction on how willing people are to help others when watching a video of either children or adults being empathetic due to F= 2.825 and p= .097.

In our research, our null hypothesis would be that empathy and age has no effect on helping behavior and that observed difference would be due to random error. Based on our data that was gathered through statistical test, we failed to reject our null hypothesis since our p-values for our two independent variables and the interaction between the variables were greater than .05. Therefore, our research hypothesis which states that there will be a significant main effect of empathy and age on helping behavior is not

be supported. However, we are able to conclude that there is a marginal relationship between empathy and age due to the p-value being close to .05.

Discussion

First and foremost, the results showed interesting data. The participants of the experiment were a majority of females and Hispanics. This is possibly due to the platform in which the experiment was advertised like our jobs and Facebook in which many of the known participants are females and Hispanic. The sample size of the experiment was smaller than we were looking for which is a possible reason our results are inconclusive. Not having a large sample size or an equal amount of participants in each condition are also another reason that we were unable to see a significant relationship.

Moreover, the results showed that we were unable to obtain statistically significant data that shows a significant relationship between empathy and helping behavior as well as age and helping behavior. Although there was no significant relationship according to the results, there was a marginal relationship between the interaction of empathy and age according to the alpha value. The marginal relationship between empathy and age is supported by previous research like Persson and Kajonius (2016) and their results there there is a relationship between empathy and altruism and Barnett, King, and Howard’s (1979) study on age and altruistic behavior. We are able to see that there is a relationship between empathy and age and helping behavior; however, we do not the extent of how significant the relationship is. However, the supporting research and the results give us room to replicate this experiment, but with a larger sample size. The larger sample size may

possibly provide results that show if there is a significant relationship between empathy and age affecting helping behavior or if there is no relationship whatsoever.

An interesting result was the responses of the participants in the no empathy adult condition. Those participants were more likely to help others than participants in the high empathy adult condition. The results of the no empathy adult condition were similar to that of the participants of the high empathy children condition. The results of participants in the high empathy children condition support our predictions that people who are primed with children being empathetic will be more willing to help others compared to people being primed with adults being empathetic. However, the results of the two adult conditions, did not support our hypothesis or our predictions. Participants who were in the high empathy adult condition were less likely to help others compared to the low empathy adult condition. These results could be due to have a small sample size or possibly because of the videos chosen. However, according to these results, the participants in the low empathy adult condition are willing to help others regardless of being primed with empathy. These results for the low empathy adult condition contradict Myers (2013) social-exchange theory in which people try to benefit themselves when having to help others. The social-exchange theory and these results can help support the idea that not everyone helps others to benefit, but is genuine about helping others without the need for an incentive or without having emotion provoked. Although the results and this concept seem to contradict, research still shows that emotion does play a significant role on whether

or not people are willing to help others according to Van Lange (2008).

Although the experiment had no significant results, there are some limitations that were faced which are what could have affected the results. The sample size is the first thing that prevented us from receiving more accurate results. The conditions for age were very different and instead of focusing on children and adults being empathetic and seeing how that affects participants willingness to help, we could have looked age between young children and teens being empathetic and see that influence on participants. The interesting part of redoing the experiment with the focus on young children and teens could show if young children evoke more emotion from participants compared to adults.

Conclusion

There have been multiple studies conducted that have examined how empathy affects altruistic behavior. Empathy affecting helping behavior has been examined in kids and adults over many years; however, there is not enough information on the correlation of empathy and age affecting helping behavior. Although, the results show that there is no significant relationship between empathy and helping behavior or age and helping behavior, the results of this study show that there is a marginal relationship between empathy and age affecting one’s helping behavior. According to the results further research would need to be conducted to have supporting results towards this study’s hypothesis and predictions. With further research, we would be able to see if there is a significant relationship and apply those results to society and trying to influence people to help others genuinely rather than looking at their own self-interests.

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