Empathy affects your motivation to be helpful.
There is a lot of research suggesting that empathy increases people’s desire to help others. Empathy is the ability to share other people’s emotion. The better able you are to feel what someone else is feeling, the more likely you are to want to help them when they are in a difficult situation. This ability also extends to animals. We are able to project feelings onto animals like dogs, and that increases our need to help them.
But, what is it about empathy that promotes the need to help?
By Art Markman, Ph.D….
