Exploring the Impact of Affective Empathy on Altruism
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2024-07-08
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en
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This study investigates the influence of affective empathy on altruistic behavior and the accuracy of emotional perception with the use of a dictator game.The experiment was carried out on Amazon Mechanical Turk, with a sample of 78 subjects. In the dictator game, the decision maker was endowed with 5 euros and was instructed to transfer an amount from it to the recipient, under a control condition and a treatment condition with induced affective empathy. Using a slider on a scale from 1 (extremely negative) to 5 (extremely positive), the decision makers indicated the perceived emotion of the recipient and the recipients indicated their actual emotion. The results show that affective empathy has a positive impact on altruistic behavior and enhances the accuracy of emotional perceptions; however, these effects were not statistically significant in the study. These findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences and baseline empathy levels of individuals when designing experiments and interventions that seek to promote altruism. The insights gained from understanding perceived emotions are valuable in fields such as consumer behavior, philanthropy and negotiations, where emotional engagement with the target audience influences decision making.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen