Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
感同身受：信息中的共情
In their Shoes: Empathy Through Information
摘要
We explore the mechanics of empathy. We show that information about an outgroup can activate and magnify empathy when presented in conjunction with an experience simulating their struggles. This response increases the willingness to help the struggling group. We provide evidence for this effect in an immersive virtual reality experiment where participants (“witnesses”) experience a simulation of the struggle of unauthorized migrants (“protagonists”), then replicate these results in a series of controlled lab experiments. We show that information enhances the witnesses’ empathetic response and drives them to engage in more prosocial behavior when it increases their perceived interpersonal similarity, or relatability to the protagonist — an effect we trace to attention: eye-tracking data reveals that information provision concentrates witnesses’ gaze on the struggles of the protagonist instead of searching through peripheral elements of the scene. Conversely, only information packages that strengthen perceived relatability — an effect that can vary across subgroups with heterogeneous attributes — magnify empathy. Together, our evidence suggests that the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person or group can be enhanced by activating empathy through simple, targeted, information provision.
中文摘要
摘要 我们探讨了共情的运作机制。研究表明，当关于外群体的信息与模拟其困境的体验相结合时，能够激活并放大共情反应。这种反应会增强帮助困境群体的意愿。我们通过沉浸式虚拟现实实验为这一效应提供了证据——参与者（"见证者"）体验了未经授权移民（"主角"）的困境模拟，随后在一系列受控实验室实验中复现了这些结果。我们发现，当信息能够提升见证者感知到的人际相似性或与主角的关联性时，会增强其共情反应并促使更多亲社会行为——我们将这一效应归因于注意力机制：眼动追踪数据显示，信息提供使见证者的凝视焦点集中于主角的困境，而非搜索场景中的外围元素。反之，只有那些能强化感知关联性的信息组合（该效应可能因亚群体异质性特征而存在差异）才能放大共情。综合证据表明，通过简单、定向的信息提供激活共情，可以增强个体设身处地理解他人或群体处境的能力。