Question

1. In a study by Batson et al. (1988) participants listened to a student describe how her parents were killed in a car crash leaving her to finish her last year of college alone, and supporting two younger siblings varied one aspect of the study- either focus on how the person feels or focus on technical parts of the audio story. This result is an example of what factor as predictive of altruism?

Answer 1

This study by Batson, and which studied altruism vs. Empathy-specific rewards and punishments, sought to establish how people reacted to different aspects when told a story and whether making the participants aware of the feelings and emotions evoked by the story, or the technical parts of the audio of the story, would produce altruictic behavior or not. In the end, it was found that participants who listened to the tape and focused more on the emotions and feelings portrayed in the tape, were more prone to sign up to help the person whose story moved them, while those who focused on the technicisms, did not wish to help.

In the end, the study predicted that people are more prone to altruism and responding positively to a sad situation like Katie´s in the tape, when they are focusing on the emotions and feelings that are moved in them through the story, rather than when they are focused on specific technicalities.