1. I’m So Angry I Could . . . Help!”
TheNatureofEmpathicAnger
Robert G. Bringle, Ph.D., Phil.D.
Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Philanthropic
Studies
Senior Scholar, IUPUI Center for Service & Learning
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
rbringle@iupui.edu
Collaborators: Ashley Hedgepath, Liz Wall, & Derek Stephens
2. Is helping motivated by altruistic or egoistic
concerns?
–Altruistic: Motivated by the desire to increase
another’s welfare.
–Egoistic: Motivated by the desire to increase one’s
own welfare (e.g., reduce negative feelings, avoid
guilt, receive praise).
Altruism or Egoism?
4. Four Psychological
States Called Empathy
Perspective
Taking
Imagine-Self
Perspective
Imagine-
Other
Perspective
Emotional
Response
Emotion
Matching
Empathic
Concern
Batson & Ahmed (2009)
5. • Imagine-self perspective:
Imagining how one would think and feel in
another’s situation or “shoes.”
• Imagine-other perspective:
Imagining how another person thinks or feels
given his/her situation.
Perspective Taking
• Emotion matching:
Feeling as another person feels
• Empathic concern:
Feeling for another person who is in need
Emotional Response
Batson & Ahmed (2009)
7. Empathic Anger
Trait Empathic Anger
(TEA) Scale (Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003)
•“I get angry when a friend of mine is
hurt by someone else.”
•“When someone I know gets angry at
someone else, I feel angry at that person
too.”
•“I feel angry for other people when they
have been victimized by others.”
Findings:
•Empathic anger is somewhat
unique from empathy as sadness
•Reliable effects of empathic anger
on prosocial desires
•Empathic anger predicted desires
to punish a transgressor
8. Batson, Ahmad, & Tzang, 2002
Motive Ultimate Goal Strength(s) Weakness(es)
Egoism Increasing one’s own
welfare
Many forms; easily invoked;
powerful
Increased community
involvement relates to the
motive only as an
instrumental means or
unintended consequences
Altruism Increase the welfare of one
or more other individuals
Powerful; may generalize to
group of which other is a
member
May only result from
empathy; may only occur
as an instrumental means or
unintended consequence
Collectivism Increase the welfare of a
group or collective
Powerful; directly focused
on common good
May be limited to ingroup
Principlism Uphold some moral
principle (e.g., justice)
Directed toward universal
and impartial good
Often seems weak;
vulnerable to rationalization
9. • Can we develop a new measure of
empathic anger that is not focused
on friend, those who are close?
• Can we obtain convergent and
discriminant validity evidence?
• What is the relationship between
empathic anger and helping (e.g.,
past action; behavioral intentions)?
Research Questions (2013)
10. • Participants: N = 152: College students
• Questionnaire:
– Rived Empathic Anger scale—Hedgepath, Wall, & Bringle
– Volunteer Functions Inventory: Values Subscale –Clary &
Snyder
– Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Empathy) – Davis
– Social Dominance Orientation – Pratto et al.
– Aggression questionnaire – Beck & Perry
Study 1 (2013)
11. • 8-item self-report measure
“My anger towards inequality has motivated me to take action against
it.”
“When I think about problems that will affect future generations, I have
gotten mad enough to do something about it.”
“I have involved myself in the community because I felt driven by my
anger towards inequality and injustice”
“Problems like social injustice make me mad, so I volunteer to help
resolve them.”
The Revised Empathic Anger (REA) Scale
12. Protective Motives
• a way of protecting the ego from the
difficulties of life
Values (Altruism)
• a way to express ones altruistic and
humanitarian values
Career
• a way to improve career prospects
Social
• a way to develop and strengthen
social ties
Understanding
• a way to gain knowledge, skills, and
abilities
Enhancement
• a way to help the ego grow and
develop
Volunteer Functions
Inventory (VFI; Clary
& Snyder, 1998): self-
report measure examining
the functional motives for
volunteering
13. Interpersonal
Reactivity Index
(IRI; Davis, 1983): measure
of dispositional empathy
that takes the notion that
empathy consists of a set
of separate but related
constructs.
the tendency to spontaneously adopt the
psychological point of view of others
Perspective
Taking
Tendency to transpose themselves imaginatively
into the feelings and actions of fictitious
characters in books, movies, and plays
Fantasy
"other-oriented" feelings of sympathy and
concern for unfortunate others
Empathic
Concern
"self-oriented" feelings of personal anxiety and
unease in tense interpersonal settings)
Personal
Distress
14. • measure of individual
differences in levels of
group-based
discrimination
Social Dominance
Orientation (Pratto et al., 1994)
“Some groups of people are
simply inferior to other
groups.”
“It’s OK if some groups have
more of a chance in life than
others.”
“To get ahead in life, it is
sometimes necessary to step on
other groups.”
15. Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992)
Physical Aggression
•Given enough
provocation, I
may hit another
person.
Verbal Aggression
•I often find
myself
disagreeing with
people
Angry Aggression
•I have trouble
controlling my
temper.
Hostility
•I am suspicious of
overly friendly
strangers
16. Bivariate Correlations
REA
Aggression -.25**
Social Dominance Orientation -.47**
Interpersonal Reactivity Index
Empathy-Distress .18*
Empathy-Perspective .30*
Empathy-Fantasy .33*
Empathy-Concern .45*
Motive-Values (Altruism) .52**
Community organizations .43**
* = p ≤ 0.05, ** = p ≤ 0.01
17. Stepwise Multiple Regression
* = p ≤ .05, ** = p ≤ .01
Motive-
Values
.52**
Community
Involvement
.60**
Empathy-
Distress
.64**
19. Protective Motives
• a way of protecting the ego from the
difficulties of life
Values (Altruism)
• a way to express ones altruistic and
humanitarian values
Career
• a way to improve career prospects
Social
• a way to develop and strengthen
social ties
Understanding
• a way to gain knowledge, skills, and
abilities
Enhancement
• a way to help the ego grow and
develop
Volunteer Functions
Inventory (VFI; Clary
& Snyder, 1998): self-
report measure examining
the functional motives for
volunteering
20. • 30-item self-report scale measuring knowledge, skills,
dispositions, and behavioral intentions
– Merger of civic and education
– Knowledge of civil society
– Knowledge of contemporary social issues
– Communication skills
– Diversity skills
– Self-Efficacy
21. Cultural Norms and Social
Context
Civic-Minded Graduates
Identity
Civic
Experiences
Educational
Experiences
Civic-Minded Graduate (CMG)
1
2
3
22. Morton’s Types of Service
•transfer of resources to those in need
Charity
•working together to address a problem
Project
•empowering the disenfranchised to change the system
Social Change
25. • Overall, REA scale showed good reliability
• REA Scale negatively correlated with
Aggression and SDO
• REA moderately correlated with all four
empathy subscales
Results- REA Validity Study
26. Collect further construct validity evidence
on REA and empathic anger
How is trait empathic anger related to
efficacy, social justice, political activism,
attitudes toward others?
Use a different measure of charity vs.
advocacy
Research Questions (2014)
27. • 70 college students
• Self-Efficacy Scale (Sherer et al., 1982) (α = .94, 23 items)
“When I make plans, I am certain I can make them work.”
• Social Justice Scale (Torres-Harding et al., 2012) (α =.94, 24
items)
“I believe that it is important to promote fair and equitable allocation
of bargaining powers, obligations, and resources in our society.”
• Universal Orientation Scale (Phillips & Ziller, 1997) (α = .66,
20 items)
“I tend to value similarities over differences when I meet someone.”
Study 3 (2014)
28. • Different measure of Charity (α = .84, 6 items)
“In the past 12 months, I have helped those in need.”
• Different measure of Advocacy (α = .87, 6 items)
“In the past 12 months, I have worked to change public policy
for the benefit of the people.”
[items taken from Moely et al.; Wang & Jackson]
• Single item measures of
–# of service learning courses
–Political activity
–Campus community involvement
–Service to the community
Study 3 (2014)
29. REA
Self-Efficacy .07
Social Justice .41**
Charity .28*
Advocacy .46**
SL Courses .23
Political Activity .26*
Campus Community Engagement .13
Community Service .41**
Bivariate Correlations
31. • Measurement
–Changed one aspect of Trait Empathic Anger scale:
individual group
–We composed the items with two components:
• Emotions, anger
• Action
– Langstraat & Bowdon (2011) distinguish between empathy
and compassion:
• Empathy: Others’ emotions & judgment (unjust)
• Compassion: Emotions, judgment, and action
Implications for Future Research
32. Trait Empathic Anger
• What are the origins of individual differences in trait empathic
anger?
• How can trait empathic anger be developed?
• What about the nature of those who score very high on REA vs.
moderately high?
• Are there other empathic emotions besides sadness and anger
(e.g., disgust, fear, surprise, happiness) and what are their
relationships to altruistic behaviors?
• Does trait empathic anger predispose individuals toward
particular patterns of attributions?
Implications for Future Research
33. • Presented the Fukushima nuclear disaster to 62
participants
• Measured the degree to which attributions were
made to natural cause or a potential
transgressor (e.g., plant workers, nuclear
regulators, government)
Study 4 (2014)
34. • REA was correlated with desire to help, r = .86**
• Degree of human responsibility was correlated with desire
to help, r = .71**
• Attribution to nature was negatively correlated with desire
to help, r = -.63
• REA was
–positively correlated with blaming someone (r = .62**)
–negatively correlated with blaming nature (r = -.56*)
Study 4 (2014)
35. State Empathic Anger
• What situational factors (e.g., relationship to victim, perspective-taking,
direct exposure) can heighten state empathic anger?
• What is the relationship between the intensity of anger felt and likelihood
to actual helping (e.g., giving one’s time, talents, or treasures)?
• Can state empathic anger felt on behalf of one individual generalize to the
rest of the group (and vice versa)?
• How does the nature of the transgressor influence empathic arousal?
• What aspects of attributions are key to eliciting state empathic anger?
Implications for Future Research
36. Future Research Questions
• Anger is produced when goals are threatened, but the threat
can be overcome (Mackeunetal.,2010)
–If the threat is perceived as too large to reasonably overcome, the
result is often motivational ambivalence (Cameron & Payne, 2009)
• What is the relationship between self-efficacy and the arousal of
empathic anger?
–How can we help students feel more efficacious?
37. But to be angry with
the right person to
the right degree at
the right time for
the right purpose, and in
the right way,
that is not easy.”
-Aristotle
“Anyone can become angry.
That is easy.
38. • Have you seen empathic anger in your work with students?
• Should empathic anger be an educational objective in a service
learning course?
–If so, how can it be developed?
• How should courses be designed to develop empathic anger?
• How should reflection be structured for empathic anger?
• What is the role of causal attributions in the arousal of empathic
anger on an intergroup level?
Implications for Practice
Editor's Notes
He argues that pure altruism is most likely to come into play when we experience empathy for the person in need; that is, we are able to experience events and emotions the way that person experiences them.
In recent years, the term empathy has been applied to four
different psychological states, each of which has been the subject of claims that empathy can be used to
improve intergroup relations.
Two of these four refer to forms of perspective taking: imagining how
one would think and feel in an outgroup member’s situation; imagining how an outgroup member
thinks and feels. Two refer to forms of emotional response: feeling as an outgroup member feels;
Imagine-Self Perspective: Imagining How One Would
Think and Feel in Another’s Situation
Imagine-Other Perspective: Imagining How Another is Thinking and Feeling
Emotion Matching: Feeling as Another Person Feels
Empathic Concern: Feeling for Another Person Who is in Need
Knowledge, Skills, Behavioral Intentions put in 30 items which participants assessed themselves on a 1-6.
Give a fish.
Teach to fish.
Make room at the river
In 1979, social psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner lamented that it had become possible "for a person 18 years of age to graduate from high school without ever having had to do a piece of work on which somebody else truly depended [..] Without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help” ... He concluded, "No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings."
Research shows that young people's disengagement with the social and political world has become more serious over the past several decades. The result for these youths is incivility and apathy as well as a lack of confidence that they can make a difference to others and to the world as a whole. These findings are alarming because our democratic culture and social wellbeing depend on the renewing energy of young people who have the sensitivities and vision to help create a better world. Indeed, the very fabric of our national community depends on the degree to which we care about and treat each other with respect and civility. Nurturing a democratic culture and a civil society was the central mission of public education at its inception. Although we often pay lip service to this goal today, we have not invested the necessary energy, thoughtfulness or financial support to ensure its effective implementation.
