Discusses the decline of sympathy and civility and the rise of self-absorption and meanness in U.S. culture, noting that even sports tutor incivility. The paper examines lowered expectations and the cult of authenticity in sport, and it investigates religion as a counterforce to help restructure sport and restore some sense of balance between…

The construct of empathy may be located conceptually at several different points in a network of social cognition and vicarious emotion. This paper discusses one specific form of emotional empathy, empathy in response to perceiving another person in need. First, evidence is reviewed suggesting that there are at least two distinct types of…

Research on altruism has found that persons experiencing either positive or negative moods are often more altruistically inclined than their counterparts experiencing neutral affective states. Prosocial behavior may become self-gratifying and altruism may be a form of hedonism. A field study investigated the effects of positive and negative moods…

To explain the role of empathy in forms of prosocial behavior, two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among different dimensions of empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior. Study one tested three models hypothesized to explain this process, an altruistic model, an egoistic model, and a dual-process model combining aspects…

Many research efforts have demonstrated relationships between the experience of mental health volunteers and their attitudes toward mental illness. Questionnaire surveys were completed by adult volunteers in psychiatric and nonpsychiatric programs in order to assess general attitudes toward mental patients and to control for the potential effects…

This paper presents the position that concern for others is fundamentally a matter of cognitive definition of one's relationship to and responsibility for other human beings. Altruism changes as a function of an individual's overall level of cognitive-moral development. There are six forms of altruism, corresponding to Kohlberg's six sequential…

While research examining altruism has relied on subject responses to written vignettes rather than actual altruism-eliciting situations, the relationship between written responses and actual behavior has not been established. To assess the degree to which some classic social/psychological behavior results could be replicated using short, written…

The reward-cost model of helping behavior in emergency situations suggests that the probability that an observer will help a victim depends, in part, on the relative strength of the rewards and costs of providing help. Factors that influence willingness to help in non-emergency situations were examined using descriptions of situations in which a…

The news media plays an important role in shaping opinions about the character of American society. Through the news, people learn about the prevalence of human benevolence or malevolence. The author conducted several tests to evaluate the effects of news on individuals of various ages and backgrounds. Experimental groups were told that they would…

This paper indicates the need for women's studies ethics courses and the examination of student concepts of morality. It proposes the ethical study of social problems not usually considered in undergraduate classes and illustrates the importance of the study of historical perspectives and situational ethics in the teaching of complex contemporary…

The document describes a field study to investigate the relationship between altruism and blood donating behavior among members of a large midwestern college community. Altruistic behavior is interpreted as combining three motivations: (1) reward-cost, also referred to in terms of behavior as social exchange; (2) social responsibility and…