Empathy-mediated altruism in intergroup contexts: The roles of posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth.
Open accessAbstract
Exposure to war-related violence is associated with greater prosocial behavior. Although researchers point to empathy and individual differences in posttraumatic growth to explain this relationship, there is no direct empirical evidence of the psychological process by which exposure to wartime violence leads to prosociality. In this investigation, we propose and test a comprehensive model of empathy-mediated altruism that addresses both how and when exposure to violence may be associated with prosociality. Results from a large-scale survey experiment conducted in a naturalistic field setting (1,660 refugees from the wars in Syria and Iraq residing in Turkey) indicate that participants reported greater empathy and altruism toward ingroup versus outgroup targets, and that posttraumatic stress predicted less and posttraumatic growth predicted more empathy and altruism. Further, empathy mediated ingroup biases in altruism (i.e., allocation of resources to the self and others); this indirect effect was stronger for those reporting greater posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress. These results support our proposed model of empathy-mediated altruism that incorporates individual differences in response to war violence and ingroup preferences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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“Five studies investigated the association between identity or sense of belonging and PTG (Canevello et al., 2021; Ellis et al., 2015; Kira et al., 2019; Nuttman-Shwartz et al., 2011; Ryu et al., 2023).”
- Authors
- Canevello, A., Hall, J., & Walsh, J. I.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Charlotte (US)
- Uppsala University (SE)
- Venue
- Emotion
- Published
- 2022-12
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1699-1712
- ISSN
- 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1516
- OpenAlex
- W3208339215
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 11
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3
- FWCI
- 5.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Emotion (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Swedish Research Council (2015-06564)
- Army Research Office (W911NF1810089)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Keywords
- empathy, altruism, post-traumatic stress, posttraumatic growth, war-related violence, prosocial behavior, in-group favoritism, intergroup relations, refugees, resource allocation
- MeSH terms
- Posttraumatic Growth, Psychological, Altruism, Empathy, Humans, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
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