The DOI matches its Crossref record; 73 of the 73 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Empathic concern drives costly altruism
Open accessAbstract
Why do we self-sacrifice to help others in distress? Two competing theories have emerged, one suggesting that prosocial behavior is primarily motivated by feelings of empathic other-oriented concern, the other that we help mainly because we are egoistically focused on reducing our own discomfort. Here we explore the relationship between costly altruism and these two sub-processes of empathy, specifically drawing on the caregiving model to test the theory that trait empathic concern (e.g. general tendency to have sympathy for another) and trait personal distress (e.g. predisposition to experiencing aversive arousal states) may differentially drive altruistic behavior. We find that trait empathic concern--and not trait personal distress--motivates costly altruism, and this relationship is supported by activity in the ventral tegmental area, caudate and subgenual anterior cingulate, key regions for promoting social attachment and caregiving. Together, this data helps identify the behavioral and neural mechanisms motivating costly altruism, while demonstrating that individual differences in empathic concern-related brain responses can predict real prosocial choice.
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Cites
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Cited by
Decety, J., Bartal, I. B.-A., Uzefovsky, F., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2016) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0077 · Cited by 740
Positive feelings reward and promote prosocial behavior
Aknin, L. B., Van de Vondervoort, J. W., & Hamlin, J. K. (2018) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.017 · Cited by 325
Tusche, A., Böckler, A., Kanske, P., Trautwein, F.-M., & Singer, T. (2016) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3392-15.2016 · Cited by 309
Strategic regulation of empathy
Weisz, E., & Cikara, M. (2021) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2020.12.002 · Cited by 217
Intellectual humility and prosocial values: Direct and mediated effects
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Metadata
- Authors
- FeldmanHall, O., Dalgleish, T., Evans, D., & Mobbs, D.
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 105
- Pages
- 347-356
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2021636247
- Cited by
- 349
- References
- 73
- FWCI
- 6.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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