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Beyond Egoism and Group Identity: Empathy toward the Other and Awareness of Others in a Social Dilemma

2007; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s1138741600006636

1988-2904

Luís Oceja, Isabel Jiménez Becerra,

Social and Intergroup Psychology

In three experiments, participants were faced with a social dilemma in which they could benefit themselves, the group, or other group members as individuals. The results showed that participants who felt high empathy toward a certain individual allocated more resources to the target of empathy, but without reducing the collective good. Then, we adapted the measure of empathy developed by Batson and colleagues (Batson, Ahmad, et al., 1999; Batson, Batson, et al., 1995) to the Spanish context. The results of Experiment 3 supported the existence of a new process: awareness of other individuals present in the social dilemma. It is proposed that this process is independent of those typically studied in research of this field: self-interest, group identification, and the empathy for a specific individual.