Attentional Mechanisms in the Generation of Sympathy

1. Attentional Mechanisms in the Generation of Sympathy Stephan Dickert Paul Slovic Max-Planck Institute for Decision Research Collective Goods University of Oregon

2. Affect and Deliberation in Donations and Charitable Behavior • Emotional reactions are a key ingredient in the decision to help others / donate money • Slovic (2007) • Empathy • e.g., Batson (1990) • Sympathy, Compassion, Distress • Loewenstein & Small, 2007; Kogut & Ritov, 2005a, 2005b • Anticipated Regret • e.g., Dickert (2008)

3. Affect and Deliberation in Donations and Charitable Behavior • Deliberation can interfere with emotional reactions to victims • Calculation prime reduced contributions for identified victims and predictive strength of emotions on contributions • Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 • Availability of deliberative resources reduced contributions and predictive strength of sympathy on donations • Dickert (2008)

4. Antecedants of Feelings in Pro-social Behavior Slovic (2007)

5. Imagery and Affect • Imagery: • Identified Victim Effect • Kogut & Ritov (2005a); Small & Loewenstein (2003) • Singularity Effect • Kogut & Ritov (2005b) • Entitativity • Hamilton & Sherman (1996)

6. Antecedants of Feelings in Pro-social Behavior Slovic (2007)

7. Affect and Attention • Emotions guide attentional focus • Affective stimuli attract attention • (e.g., fearful faces, Fox, 2002) • Affective stimuli can direct attention even before conscious recognition • (e.g., Vuilleumier, 2005)

8. Attention and Affect • Attention a possible ingredient in affective reactions to victims • Slovic (2007) • Distractor devaluation effect • Unattended stimuli are affectively devalued • Closer proximity to a target  more devaluation • Fenske & Raymond (2006)

9. Attentional Mechanisms in the Generation of Sympathy • Rationale and Hypotheses: • If presented together, other victims may act as distractors • Lower sympathy for victims presented with distractors • Ability to pay attention to a single victim may increase sympathy

10. Attentional Mechanisms in the Generation of Sympathy Example:

11. Method • N = 61 • 2 (distractors vs. no distractors) x 2 (cue before vs. cue after) within-subjects • 64 trials total (16 in each condition) • DV = sympathy, RT

12. A lot of sympathy No sympathy at all Cue-before, no distractors

13. A lot of sympathy No sympathy at all Cue-before, distractors

14. A lot of sympathy No sympathy at all Cue-after, no distractors

15. A lot of sympathy No sympathy at all Cue-after, distractors

16. Cue-Before: Single Picture Cue-Before: Eight Pictures 150 ms Fixation Cross 500 ms Cue Picture(s) 3000 ms Sympathy Rating ~ ms Time course per trial

17. Results No Distractors Distractors No Distractors Distractors

18. Results .08 .01 .05 No Distractors Distractors No Distractors Distractors p =

19. Summary • Single target evoked higher sympathy when presented without distractors • This effect was stronger when participants were not able to focus on the location where the target victim appeared • Sympathy ratings lowest when presenting distractor victims and participants were not able to focus on the location of the target

20. Discussion • Attention seems to be one ingredient in the generation of sympathy for victims • Inability to focus (on a single victim) lowers sympathy judgments • Attentional Evaluation Hypothesis: • Attentional focus may increase affect evaluation of target • Singularity Effect revisited: • Attentional mechanisms contribute to the singularity effect

21. Future Research • Attention and other Emotions • E.g., anticipated regret? • Attention and Donations • Does attention increase donations? • Visual vs. other forms of attention?

22. Thank you! • Collaborators: • Paul Slovic • Michael Posner • Ellen Peters • Namika Sagara • Special thanks to: • Tehila Kogut & Ilana Ritov