Empathic decision-making: Is well-intentioned help effective?
Date
2020-11
Authors
Freud, Pauline R
Major Professor
Advisor
Armstrong, Patrick
Costabile, Kristi
Marsee, Monica
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Journal Issue
Series
Department
Psychology
Abstract
This study built upon past psychological literature regarding social support and helping
behaviors to investigate a new concept called “empathic decision-making”. Empathic decisionmaking refers to someone’s ability to conceptualize what supportive actions would be most
helpful to a person under distress. This study aimed to apply empathic decision-making to
vignettes as a means of validating the construct.
Three hypotheses were examined. The first hypothesis expected the established
constructs of empathic concern and accuracy to relate to empathic decision-making. However,
there was not a significant correlation between empathic decision-making and these other forms
of empathy. The second and third hypotheses proposed that empathic concern and accuracy,
demographics, and personality variables would predict empathic decision-making. There was
not significant evidence to validate these predictive relationships. Nonetheless, results showed an
interesting pattern between the effectiveness of participants’ intervention choices and the amount
of total interventions they chose. When determining a single ideal intervention, participants were
more effective if they consistently chose the same interventions. Contrastingly, when participants
were prompted to choose their top three interventions, participants were more effective when
they chose a variety of interventions.
These results indicate that empathic decision-making is a highly unique construct when
compared to empathic concern and accuracy. Results also demonstrated that predictors measured
in this study did not actually influence empathic decision-making. Lastly, the relationship
between quality of interventions and range of interventions was significant but may also
highlight how expert judge patterns characteristics influence the construct. Measurement
concerns were evaluated, and future directions were discussed.