Relational Mobility Strengthens Effects of Empathic Concern on Helping in the Absence of Interdependence (Study 3)

Canonical views on empathy and prosociality posit that the function of empathic concern is to selectively guide resources towards positively interdependent relationship partners, such as kin, emotionally close, similar, or reciprocating partners (Brosnan & de Waal, 2002; Cialdini et al., 1997; de Waal, 2008; Maner & Gailliot, 2007; Maner et al., 2002; Preston & de Waal, 2002). However, a review of empathy and prosociality also demonstrates that empathic concern does not predict – or has a weaker effect – on helping closer, relative to more distant, relationship partners for whom helping motivation is high to begin with (Davis, 2015). In these high-value relationships, perceptions of positive interdependence (i.e., shared fate) guide helping motivation. In contrast, empathic concern predicts helping motivation when people perceive low interdependence in their relationships because empathic concern increases the value one places on the welfare of the person in need (Guevara Beltran et al., 2024; Sznycer et al., 2019). This relationship-building perspective predicts that people default to feeling empathic concern and helping non-interdependent others because doing so may allow them to build new cooperative relationships over repeated interactions. If so, empathic concern should motivate helping non-interdependent others to a greater extent when social relationships are flexible (as opposed to fixed), and thus when such helping behaviors are more likely to result in new positive relationships. For example, when people perceive high relational mobility, they report having more opportunities for meeting new people, and greater freedom when it comes to choosing their social relationships (Choi & Oishi, 2020; Kito et al., 2017; Oishi, 2010; Thomson et al., 2018).