Empathy Empathy

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Does Empathy Influence Helping Behaviors?
There is a correlation regarding being empathetic will result in helping others. Better interpreted, “Social cognitive skills such as empathy (matching the emotional state of another) and theory of mind (understanding others’ mental states) are crucial for everyday interactions, cooperation, and cultural learning” (Goldstein & Winner, 2012). So therefore if social cognitive skills are crucial for everyday interactions as stated by Goldstein and Winner (2012), there must be a reason for helping others which Graziano, Habashi, Tobin and Sheese (2007) mention, “First, motivation is a state with potential energy, a force within an individual, which is directed toward some goal.” The above statements profoundly suggest that one must have a motivation, theory of mind and empathy to be able to help another person but how much influence empathy has is an interesting question for one to be willing to help another.
Graziano, Habashi, Sheese, and Tobin (2007) explore links amongst motivation, empathy and helping behavior. They then tested what they called “person × situation perspective” where they hypothesized that individuals would be more willing to help someone in need by how close they are to someone: relatives/siblings more than friends, friends more than strangers, and also hypothesized by assuming that people with prosocial motives would be more willing to help all people in the relatedness categories, but it would be more prominent in an extraordinary or high cost scenario. They started by doing preliminary work in examining interrelations with mechanisms of self-reported empathy and personality, (because they tend to be self-favoring biases) then, a series of four different studies wer...

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...: Erlbaum.
Goldstein, T. R., & Winner, E. (2012). Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind. Journal Of Cognition & Development,13(1), 19-37. doi:10.1080/15248372.2011.573514
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M., Sheese, B. E., & Tobin, R. M. (2007). Agreeableness, Empathy, and Helping: A Person x Situation Perspective. Journal Of Personality & Social Psychology, 93(4), 583-599.
Paciello, M., Fida, R., Cerniglia, L., Tramontano, C., & Cole, E. (2013). High cost helping scenario: The role of empathy, prosocial reasoning and moral disengagement on helping behavior. Personality & Individual Differences, 55(1), 3-7. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.11.004
Wei, M., Liao, K., Ku, T., & Shaffer, P. A. (2011). Attachment, self‐compassion, empathy, and subjective well‐being among college students and community adults. Journal Of Personality, 79(1), 191-221. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00677.x

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