Distress and Empathy: Two Qualitatively Distinct Vicarious Emotions with Different Motivational Consequences

Abstract

The construct of empathy may be located conceptually at several different points in the network of interpersonal cognition and emotion. We discuss one specific form of emotional empathy--other-focused feelings evoked by perceiving another person in need. First, evidence is reviewed suggesting that there are at least two distinct types of congruent emotional responses to perceiving another in need: feelings of personal distress (e.g., alarmed, upset, worried, disturbed, distressed, troubled, etc.) and feelings of empathy (e.g., sympathetic, moved, compassionate, tender, warm, softhearted, etc.). Next, evidence is reviewed suggesting that these two emotional responses have different motivational consequences. Personal distress seems to evoke egoistic motivation to reduce one's own aversive arousal, as a traditional Hullian tension-reduction model would propose. Empathy does not. The motivation evoked by empathy may instead be altruistic, for the ultimate goal seems to be reduction of the other's need, not reduction of one's own aversive arousal. Overall, the recent empirical evidence appears to support the more differentiated view of emotion and motivation proposed long ago by McDougall, not the unitary view proposed by Hull and his followers.