Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Aug 12;16(8):e0255071.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255071. eCollection 2021.

Empathy: A clue for prosocialty and driver of indirect reciprocity

Frauke von Bieberstein  1 , Andrea Essl  1 , Kathrin Friedrich  1
Affiliations

Empathy: A clue for prosocialty and driver of indirect reciprocity

Frauke von Bieberstein et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Indirect reciprocity has been proposed to explain prosocial behavior among strangers, whereby the prosocial act is returned by a third party. However, what happens if the prosocial act cannot be observed by the third party? Here, we examine whether empathy serves as a clue for prosociality and whether people are more generous toward more empathetic people. In a laboratory study, we measured prosocial behavior as the amount sent in the dictator game and empathy based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). By using an incentivized task, we find that people believe that more empathetic participants send more money in the dictator game. Thus, people see empathy as a clue for prosocial behavior. Furthermore, in a second dictator game, participants indirectly reciprocate by sending more money to more empathetic recipients. Therefore, we suggest that empathy can replace a reputation derived from observable prosocial behavior in triggering indirect reciprocity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Stages of the study.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Distribution of empathy and prosocial behavior.
Distribution of empathy (left panel) and prosocial behavior measured by the amount sent in the first stage dictator game (right panel).
Fig 3
Fig 3. Boxplot of expected prosocial behavior conditional on the empathy of the other participant.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Boxplot of prosocial behavior conditional on the empathy of the recipient.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Nowak MA, Sigmund K. Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature. 2005;437(7063):1291–1298. doi: 10.1038/nature04131 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Nowak MA, Sigmund K. Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature. 1998;393(6685):573–577. doi: 10.1038/31225 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Engel C. Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics. 2011;14(4):583–610. doi: 10.1007/s10683-011-9283-7 - DOI
    1. Kaplan H, Hill K, Cadelina RV, Hayden B, Hyndman DC, Preston RJ, et al.. Food sharing among ache foragers: Tests of explanatory hypotheses. Current Anthropology. 1985;26(2):223–246. doi: 10.1086/203251 - DOI
    1. Levine RV, Norenzayan A, Philbrick K. Cross-cultural differences in helping strangers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 2001;32(5):543–560. doi: 10.1177/0022022101032005002 - DOI