The Effects of Empathy & Social Exclusion PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND Individuals’ willingness to engage in prosocial behavior is a popular topic in social psychology. Several studies have explored the various factors that can affect individuals’ willingness to engage in prosocial behavior including age, gender, empathy, and more recently, social exclusion (Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007). Past research has found that individuals who are socially excluded engage in less prosocial behaviors than individuals who feel a sense of social connectedness (Twenge et al., 2007). Twenge and colleagues found that social exclusion greatly reduced participants’ willingness to engage in helping behaviors such as donating time, volunteering, and helping the experimenter after a mishap. In contrast to Twenge and colleagues’ study, Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, and Schaller (2007) found that participants were more likely to engage in prosocial behavior if they had been excluded. Their results supported the social reconnection hypothesis, which states that the experience of social exclusion increases the motivation to forge social bonds with new sources of potential affiliation. The findings from these studies suggests that more research needs to be conducted in order to determine the effect social exclusion has on prosocial behavior. The current study combines empathy and social exclusion to determine their effect on willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. METHOD Participants: 50 undergraduate students at Mansfield University, ages (38 female, 12 male) Procedure: Participants filled out an informed consent sheet and then took a false 14 question personality test. While waiting for their results, participants filled out a demographics form. After receiving the false results from the test indicating social exclusion or social connectedness, participants read either a neutral article or an empathic dialogue, and were then asked to record their willingness to donate to the Student Emergency Fund. Participants were then debriefed. HYPOTHESIS Hypothesis 1: A main effect was predicted such that participants given the empathic dialogue would engage in more prosocial behavior regardless of social situation. Hypothesis 2: An interaction was predicted such that for participants given the neutral article, those in the exclusion treatment condition would exhibit lower levels of prosocial behavior than participants in the social cohesion treatment condition. Whereas, for participants given the empathetic dialogue, those in the exclusion treatment condition would exhibit the same level of prosocial behavior as the participants in the cohesion group. Erin Ratliff, Kylie Smith, and Gretchen Sechrist, Ph.D. on Prosocial Behavior RESULTS A 2 (Social situation: exclusion, cohesion) X 2 (Emotional manipulation: empathic, neutral) ANOVA was conducted. There was no significant main effect for the emotional manipulation, F (1, 46) = 2.6, p =.11, ns. Participants given the empathic dialogue did not engage in more prosocial behavior than participants given the neutral article. A significant interaction between emotional manipulation and social situation was found, F (1, 46) = 6.15, p <.05. Participants in the empathy/cohesion group scored significantly lower on measures of helping behavior compared to participants in all other conditions. DISCUSSION No significant main effect was found for the emotional manipulation. Regardless of their social situation, the empathic dialogue did not influence participants’ willingness to donate. Furthermore, participants in the cohesion group given the empathic dialogue helped less than participants in all other conditions. We speculate that participants in the cohesion group were less willing to donate because they already felt socially included and did not need to donate in order to feel more accepted by their peers. Participants that were excluded may have been more willing to donate because they felt the need to help others which would increase feelings of social connectedness. Conversely, the negative-state relief hypothesis suggests that participants will behave positively to relieve their bad mood. This could serve as a second alternative explanation for the significant findings. Excluded participants were more motivated to donate in order to relieve their negative state; whereas, included participants were less motivated to donate because of their positive state. The current study has implications for individuals and organizations that rely on donations in order to succeed. Charitable organizations often rely on evoking empathy to increase donations. Evoking too much or too little empathy may decrease individuals’ willingness to donate. ABSTRACT Empathy and social exclusion have been shown to be influential in determining participants’ level of prosocial behavior; however, researchers have yet to combine these two variables to determine how they interact. The current study examined how these variables interact to affect individuals’ willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. Fifty undergraduate students were given a social situation followed by an emotional manipulation and then asked to donate to a campus organization. Analysis revealed that socially included participants given the empathy manipulation helped less than all other participants. RESULTS