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Dreading the pain of others? Altruistic responses to others' pain underestimate dread
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Story, Giles W., Chowdhury, Rony, Kurth‐Nelson, Zeb, Crockett, Molly, Vlaev, Ivo, Darzi, Ara and Dolan, Raymond J. (2021) Dreading the pain of others? Altruistic responses to others' pain underestimate dread. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 116 (3). pp. 359-378. doi:10.1002/jeab.721 ISSN 0022-5002.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.721
Abstract
A dislike of waiting for pain, aptly termed ‘dread’, is so great that people will increase pain to avoid delaying it. However, despite many accounts of altruistic responses to pain in others, no previous studies have tested whether people take delay into account when attempting to ameliorate others' pain. We examined the impact of delay in 2 experiments where participants (total N = 130) specified the intensity and delay of pain either for themselves or another person. Participants were willing to increase the experimental pain of another participant to avoid delaying it, indicative of dread, though did so to a lesser extent than was the case for their own pain. We observed a similar attenuation in dread when participants chose the timing of a hypothetical painful medical treatment for a close friend or relative, but no such attenuation when participants chose for a more distant acquaintance. A model in which altruism is biased to privilege pain intensity over the dread of pain parsimoniously accounts for these findings. We refer to this underestimation of others' dread as a ‘Dread Empathy Gap’.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics Q Science > QP Physiology |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Management Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
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SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Pain , Pain -- Measurement, Pain -- Physiological aspects, Pain perception, Fear , Altruism , Empathy | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc. | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 0022-5002 | ||||||||||||
Official Date: | November 2021 | ||||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 116 | ||||||||||||
Number: | 3 | ||||||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 359-378 | ||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1002/jeab.721 | ||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 3 November 2021 | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 8 November 2021 | ||||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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