The Perils of Success in the Workplace: Comparison Target Responses to Coworkers' Upward Comparison Threat1

This field study investigated the coping behaviors utilized by award‐winning real‐estate agents who, as a consequence of their outperformance, perceived that they were the targets of threatening upward comparisons by those they had outperformed. We hypothesized that outperformers' comparison target discomfort (i.e., discomfort associated with being a target of upward comparisons) would moderate the relationships between comparison threat experienced by those outperformed and outperformers' modest self‐presentation, avoidance behaviors, and socially motivated underachievement. Our results provide partial (and counterintuitive) support for our hypotheses, confirming that comparison target discomfort plays a complex role in determining outperformers' behavioral responses to being the target (real or imagined) of upward comparisons.     

Upward and downward social comparisons can decrease prosocial behavior

This experiment addressed whether upward or downward social comparisons can affect people's prosocial behavior toward the comparison targets. Undergraduates (N = 123) completed an inkblot test and then were randomly assigned to conditions in which they were told that their performance was either inferior or superior to their peers. A control group was given no performance feedback. Participants' self‐reported prosocial behaviors were measured 2 days later. Results indicated that both the upward and downward comparison groups engaged in significantly less prosocial behavior than did the control group and that empathy toward their peers mediated this effect. Our findings suggest that upward or downward comparison can make people feel less empathic toward the targets and thus less inclined to help them.     

Associations among Life Events,Empathic Concern,and Adolescents' Prosocial and Aggressive Behaviors Toward Specific Targets

The goal of the present study was to examine the links between life events and adolescents' social behaviors (prosocial and aggressive behaviors) toward specific targets and to examine how empathic concern may play a role in these associations. The study examined two hypotheses: both the mediating role of empathic concern and the moderating role of empathic concern. The sample included 311 high school students from the Midwest (M age = 16.10 years; age range = 14–19 years; 58.7% girls; 82.7% White, 13.6% Latino). The results demonstrated support for the moderation model as well as complex links between life events and prosocial and aggressive behaviors toward specific targets. The discussion focuses on the role of empathic concern in understanding how life events are ultimately associated with adolescents' social development.     

“Principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others…”: The heritability of empathic concern for others1

The present research was conducted to explore genetic influences on empathic concern for others. First, an index of empathic concern was created by combining relevant items from Gough's Adjective Check List (ACL). This index was validated by correlating scores of 88 undergraduates on the index with their scores on a self-report measure of empathy, which has been related to prosocial behavior. Correlations were sufficiently high to accept the validity of the index. Next, previously collected ACL responses of 114 monozygotic (MZ) and 116 dizygotic (DZ) twins were reanalyzed in order to create an empathic concern score for each twin. The twins were middle-aged males initially raised together but living apart at the time they completed the ACL. Comparison of intraclass correlations for MZ and DZ twins revealed, as predicted by the genetic hypothesis, significant (p < .005) heritability in empathic concern scores. This finding suggests that there may, indeed, be a genetic influence on individual differences in empathic concern for others. Some limitations of the present data are also considered. How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him.     

I'm Embarrassed for You: The Effect of Valuing and Perspective Taking on Empathic Embarrassment and Empathic Concern

Much research has investigated the cognitive‐perceptual factors that promote empathic concern. However, little research has investigated such factors for a related emotion: empathic embarrassment. We suggest that 2 factors promote empathic embarrassment for a target in a compromising situation: liking the target, and imagining oneself in the target's situation. Results revealed that liking a socially compromised target increases both empathic concern and empathic embarrassment (Experiment 1). Furthermore, imagining the person's thoughts and feelings increases empathic concern and a desire for future exposure to the person, whereas imagining oneself in the person's situation primarily increases empathic embarrassment (Experiment 2). Implications of these results for future empathy research and applications for those who suffer from chronic embarrassability are discussed.     

Anticipatory concern: a study in autism

There has been substantial research on children's empathic responsiveness towards distressed people, and on the limited responsiveness of children with autism. To date, however, there have not been experimental studies to test how far children show concern towards someone who might be expected to feel badly, when that person has not (yet) expressed any negative feelings. We tested matched groups of children with autism and learning disability, and typically developing children of similar verbal mental age (approximately 6 years), with a novel procedure in which participants witnessed one person (E1) tearing the drawing of another (E2). In a comparison condition, a blank card was torn. In the torn‐drawing condition, as predicted, fewer participants with autism orientated towards E2 with an immediate look, and as a group, they were rated as showing less concern for, and fewer concerned looks towards, E2. We discuss possible implications for theoretical perspectives on the early development of empathy in typically as well as atypically developing children.     

Parents' Empathic Responses and Pain and Distress in Pediatric Patients

We investigated the relationship between parents' empathic responses prior to their children undergoing cancer treatment procedures and children's pain/distress during the procedures. We hypothesized: (1) parents' empathic distress would be positively associated with children's pain/distress, (2) parents' empathic concern would be negatively associated with children's pain/distress; and (3) parents' enduring dispositions and social support would be associated with their empathic responses. Parents completed: (1) measures of dispositions and perceived social support several weeks before their children underwent the procedures, and (2) state measures of empathic distress and empathic concern just before the procedures. Empathic distress was positively associated with children's pain; empathic concern was negatively associated with children's pain/distress. Predictions about dispositions and social support were also substantially confirmed.     

Relationship quality and relationship context as antecedents of person- and task-focused interpersonal citizenship behavior

A model hypothesizing relationship quality and relationship context as antecedents of two complementary forms of interpersonal citizenship behavior (ICB) was tested. Measures with coworkers as the frame of reference were used to collect data from 273 individuals working in 2 service-oriented organizations. As hypothesized, variables reflecting relationship quality were associated with person-focused ICB, as mediated by empathic concern. Also as hypothesized, a relationship context variable, network centrality, exhibited a direct relationship with task-focused ICB. Unexpectedly, network centrality was directly associated with person-focused ICB. and empathic concern was associated with task-focused ICB. The results are discussed, and implications for research and practice are offered.     

The preference for experiences over possessions: Measurement and construct validation of the Experiential Buying Tendency Scale

There is growing support that money spent on experiential items increases an individual's happiness. However, there is minimal research on the causes and long-term consequences of the tendency to make experiential purchases. Given the importance of experiential buying for improving well-being, an understanding of the preference for experiential purchasing is imperative. Thus, we developed the Experiential Buying Tendency Scale (EBTS) to measure habitual experiential purchasing. Across eight samples (n?=?9634), the EBTS was developed, and shown to be reliable, valid, and predictive of consumer behavior and psychological well-being. An experiential purchasing tendency was related to higher extraversion, openness, empathic concern, and reward seeking. Further, non-materialistic values predicted a preference for experiential purchasing, which led to increased psychological need satisfaction, and, ultimately, increased subjective well-being. The discussion proposes that experiential purchasing may be a function of one's sensitivity to rewards, emotional responsiveness to events, and appreciation of the world's beauty.     

The ups and downs of thinking about a successful other: self‐construals and the consequences of social comparisons

We hypothesized that the consequences of upward social comparisons are mediated by independent versus interdependent content of self‐construals. Independent self‐construals emphasize personal uniqueness; thus comparison to an outstanding other should undermine one's sense of uniqueness and lower current self‐evaluations. Conversely, interdependent self‐construals focus on interpersonal connectedness. Hence, interdependent individuals should be able to bask in the reflected success of a personally relevant other in an upward comparison task, thus increasing self‐evaluations. In a study involving 66 US undergraduates the latter predictions were supported. The psychological dimension of interdependence predicted differential outcomes of upward social comparisons, but this was not the case for the dimension of independence. Also, differential consequences of social comparison were more pronounced for current self‐evaluations than for participants' possible selves. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empathic Accuracy,Meta-Perspective,and Satisfaction in the Coach-Athlete Relationship

This study investigated the empathic accuracy of sixty coach-athlete dyads, its antecedents (meta-perceptions of relationship) and consequences (perceptions of satisfaction). An adaptation of Ickes's (2001) unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm was used to assess empathic accuracy whereby coach-athlete dyads were filmed during training. A selection of video clips containing the dyads' interactions during a typical training session were shown to them. The dyad members were asked to report their recollected thoughts and/or feelings while making inferences about what their partners' thought and felt at specific points of interaction. Empathic accuracy was estimated by comparing the dyads' self-reports and inferences. The results of a structural equation model analysis indicated an association between members' meta-perceptions or judgments that their partner is positive about the athletic relationship and increased empathic accuracy. Increased empathic accuracy was in turn associated with higher levels of satisfaction. These results are discussed based on issues they raise for theory and measurement.     

Development and validation of the childhood narcissism scale

In this article, we describe the development and validation of a short (10 item) but comprehensive self-report measure of childhood narcissism. The Childhood Narcissism Scale (CNS) is a 1-dimensional measure of stable individual differences in childhood narcissism with strong internal consistency reliability (Studies 1-4). The CNS is virtually unrelated to conventional measures of self-esteem but is positively related to self-appraised superiority, social evaluative concern and self-esteem contingency, agentic interpersonal goals, and emotional extremity (Study 5). Furthermore, the CNS is negatively related to empathic concern and positively related to aggression following ego threat (Study 6). These results suggest that childhood narcissism has similar psychological and interpersonal correlates as adult narcissism. The CNS provides researchers a convenient tool for measuring narcissism in children and young adolescents with strong preliminary psychometric characteristics.     

Development and Validation of the Childhood Narcissism Scale

In this article, we describe the development and validation of a short (10 item) but comprehensive self-report measure of childhood narcissism. The Childhood Narcissism Scale (CNS) is a 1-dimensional measure of stable individual differences in childhood narcissism with strong internal consistency reliability (Studies 1–4). The CNS is virtually unrelated to conventional measures of self-esteem but is positively related to self-appraised superiority, social evaluative concern and self-esteem contingency, agentic interpersonal goals, and emotional extremity (Study 5). Furthermore, the CNS is negatively related to empathic concern and positively related to aggression following ego threat (Study 6). These results suggest that childhood narcissism has similar psychological and interpersonal correlates as adult narcissism. The CNS provides researchers a convenient tool for measuring narcissism in children and young adolescents with strong preliminary psychometric characteristics.     

Antecedents and consequences of the frequency of upward and downward social comparisons at work

The current paper examines the dispositional and situational antecedents, as well as the attitudinal and behavioral consequences, of the frequency of upward and downward social comparisons. We predicted social comparison frequency would be influenced by uncertainty-related antecedents, and that social comparisons in organizations would be characterized by contrast, not assimilation, effects. A large and occupationally diverse sample of 991 employed adults was surveyed at three separate points in time over a 12–16 week period. Our results, based on structural equation modeling, indicated that (a) role ambiguity, task autonomy, and core self-evaluations were significant predictors of upward social comparison, (b) upward social comparison was significantly negatively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment, (c) downward social comparison was significantly positively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment, and (d) upward and downward social comparisons had significant positive and negative indirect effects on the frequency of job search behaviors, respectively. The findings are discussed in terms of their general implications for understanding the importance of directional social comparison processes in organizational settings.     

Empathic Accuracy

ABSTRACT People are motivated to understand each other's psychological states as well as each other's personality traits. As a consequence, the more traditional study of accuracy in trait inference can be complemented by, and potentially benefit from, the insights provided by the more recent study of empathic accuracy. Findings in this area suggest that future research should devote more attention to (a) the history of the perceiver-target relationship; (b) the perceiver's desired future relationship with the target; (c) the possibility that perceivers have little or no “metaknowledge” regarding their own empathic ability; and (d) the possibility that, under certain conditions, perceivers might be motivated to be inaccurate, rather than accurate, in their inferences about other people's dispositions.     

Altruism or psychological escape: Why does empathy promote prosocial behavior?

Why does empathy promote prosocial behavior? Previous research suggests that empathically aroused individuals help those in need, even when physical escape from the need situation is easy, and this evidence has been used to support the claim that empathy evokes an altruistic motive. However, existing research has not addressed the possibility that empathically aroused participants help because ease of physical escape fails to provide adequate psychological escape from awareness of the victim's suffering and the aversive empathic arousal such awareness produces. The two experiments reported here examined this issue by directly manipulating empathic arousal and the perceived ease of psychological escape among potential helpers. In both experiments, higher rates of helping were observed among empathically aroused participants, even under conditions of easy psychological escape. The findings of both experiments suggest that empathy evokes an altruistic motive to reduce the victim's suffering rather than an egoistic aversive‐arousal reduction motive. In addition, the results of Experiment 1 suggest that concern for psychological escape from the suffering of others may constitute an important independent prosocial motive in need of future study. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Narcissism and the Motivation to Engage in Volunteerism

Two studies investigated the extent to which narcissism was associated with volunteer motivation. Study 1 investigated a sample of United Way volunteers and Study 2 examined a sample of college student volunteers. As hypothesized, results found that narcissists tend to volunteer for self-interest rather than for humanitarian values. Results remained significant even while controlling for self-esteem (Studies 1 and 2) and empathic concern (Study 2). Discussion involves the current climate for volunteerism, which includes mandated volunteering as part of high school graduation and other requirements.     

The development of cognitive empathy and concern in preschool children: A behavioral neuroscience investigation

This developmental neuroscience study examined the electrophysiological responses (EEG and ERPs) associated with perspective taking and empathic concern in preschool children, as well as their relation to parental empathy dispositions and children's own prosocial behavior. Consistent with a body of previous studies using stimuli depicting somatic pain in both children and adults, larger early (~200 ms) ERPs were identified when perceiving painful versus neutral stimuli. In the slow wave window (~800 ms), a significant interaction of empathy condition and stimulus type was driven by a greater difference between painful and neutral images in the empathic concern condition. Across early development, children exhibited enhanced N2 to pain when engaging in empathic concern. Greater pain‐elicited N2 responses in the cognitive empathy condition also related to parent dispositional empathy. Children's own prosocial behavior was predicted by several individual differences in neural function, including larger early LPP responses during cognitive empathy and greater differentiation in late LPP and slow wave responses to empathic concern versus affective perspective taking. Left frontal activation (greater alpha suppression) while engaging in affective perspective taking was also related to higher levels of parent cognitive empathy. Together, this multilevel analysis demonstrates the important distinction between facets of empathy in children; the value of examining neurobehavioral processes in development. It provides provoking links between children's neural functioning and parental dispositions in early development.     

On the (In)Compatibility of Attitudes Toward Peace and War

Although attitudes toward peace and war are usually treated as two opposite poles of one dimension, in this article we argue that they may represent two distinct dimensions. To investigate this idea, we developed and tested a new balanced measure, the Attitudes Toward Peace and War (APW) Scale, in three studies (N = 4,742) in the United States and Denmark. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that attitudes toward peace and war formed two distinct, though negatively related, factors. Structural equation modeling showed that antecedents of attitudes toward peace included egalitarian ideological beliefs, the values of international harmony and equality, and empathic concern for others, and consequences included intentions to engage in peace‐related activities. On the other hand, antecedents of attitudes toward war included authoritarian ideological beliefs, the values of national strength and order, and less personal distress, and consequences included intentions to engage in warlike activities. Results also showed that political affiliation had an impact on the relationship between peace and war attitudes, with conservatives less likely to find the attitudes incompatible. The findings support the view that attitudes toward peace and war represent two distinct dimensions.     

Commentary on “deconstructing difference: Gender,splitting, and transitional space”;

This essay identifies Kohut's major contribution as methodological: that psychoanalytic inquiry entails the sustained empathic immersion in the patient's psychological experience. Kohut's consistent employment of this method enabled him to discover that it was not instinctual drive derivatives but selfobject needs that were central to all psychological relationships. This discovery was the basis for the transformation of analysts’ approach to the “narcissistic”; aspects of a wide variety of disorders—a transformation whose theoretical and therapeutic importance rivals the revolutionary approach taken by Freud to the vicissitudes of psychosexuality and its disturbances. The author describes the major areas of progress in self psychology—much of which centers on the growing recognition that the health and vitality of the self depend on complex relational, or intersubjective, selfobject experiences. He indicates how this recognition is changing our perspectives on transference and countertransference and is improving our ability to respond optimally to our patients. He describes how optimal responsiveness constitutes the guiding principle for therapeutic work, and how it may both constitute, and be different from, “being empathic.”;