Escaping affect

How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering

Bibliographic Data

ID6206728
AuthorsC Daryl Cameron (0000-0003-0801-1831, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), B Keith Payne (0000-0001-9651-5903, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year2011
Volume100
Issue1
Pages1-15
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/a0021643
PMID21219076
OpenAlexW2040904209
LanguageEN
Citations received107
References cited36

As the number of people in need of help increases, the degree of compassion people feel for them ironically tends to decrease. This phenomenon is termed the collapse of compassion. Some researchers have suggested that this effect happens because emotions are not triggered by aggregates. We provide evidence for an alternative account. People expect the needs of large groups to be potentially overwhelming, and, as a result, they engage in emotion regulation to prevent themselves from experiencing overwhelming levels of emotion. Because groups are more likely than individuals to elicit emotion regulation, people feel less for groups than for individuals. In Experiment 1, participants displayed the collapse of compassion only when they expected to be asked to donate money to the victims. This suggests that the effect is motivated by self-interest. Experiment 2 showed that the collapse of compassion emerged only for people who were skilled at emotion regulation. In Experiment 3, we manipulated emotion regulation. Participants who were told to down-regulate their emotions showed the collapse of compassion, but participants who were told to experience their emotions did not. We examined the time course of these effects using a dynamic rating to measure affective responses in real time. The time course data suggested that participants regulate emotion toward groups proactively, by preventing themselves from ever experiencing as much emotion toward groups as toward individuals. These findings provide initial evidence that motivated emotion regulation drives insensitivity to mass suffering

Affect (linguistics) · Cognition · Cognitive reappraisal · Compassion · Developmental psychology · Emotional Regulation · Empathy · Expressive Suppression · Mindfulness · Self-compassion · Clinical Psychology · Cultural Differences and Values · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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