Empathic emotion regulation in prosocial behaviour and altruism

Emotions evoked in response to others’ distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tested the role of empathic emotion regulation in promoting prosocial motivation and costly donations across two studies, first in a community sample and then in a sample of altruistic kidney donors and a matched comparison sample. Participants engaged in hopeful and distancing reappraisals while viewing images of others in distress, then decided whether to help by donating to charity. Whereas hope was expected to evoke approach-based motivation indexed by increased donations, distance was expected to evoke avoidance-based motivation indexed by decreased donations, via varying effects of the two reappraisals on positive and negative affect. Across both studies, both reappraisals decreased negative affect and hopeful reappraisal increased positive affect. In the community sample, hope resulted in higher donations than distancing. Altruists were more prosocial overall, but the associations between affect and donation behaviour in this group mirrored the hopeful reappraisal in the community sample, suggesting that altruists might adopt this strategy by default. These findings clarify the role of empathic emotion regulation in prosocial behaviour and also independent effects of positive and negative affect.