Empathy and its implications for prosocial behavior and engagement with the arts

Abstract

This dissertation contains three essays examining empathy and its implications for prosocial behavior and arts engagement. Empathy here refers to both compassion and concern for others (emotional empathy) and the understanding of the feelings and needs of others (cognitive empathy). Empathy is fundamental to our social life, and this dissertation explores its implications for two essential components of social life: prosocial behavior and arts engagement. Chapter 2 examines how three dimensions of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983)—empathic concern, perspective taking, and personal distress—are associated with charitable giving, and whether these associations vary across charitable causes. Using data from a nationally representative sample of American adults, the study confirms that the three IRI dimensions are associated with charitable giving in different ways. Chapter 3 focuses on the interplay of trait empathy and people’s tendencies to diversify (spread out) their prosocial behavior. By analyzing data from two samples of American adults, this study reveals that people with higher empathic concern (emotional empathy) versus higher perspective taking (cognitive empathy) have distinct patterns in how they spread out their monetary gifts, but trait empathy is not associated with the distribution of time spent in helping others.