Sympathy versus empathy appeals
Whether we help depends on whether we feel for or feel with a victim.
What it means
A distinction in prosocial persuasion between appeals that evoke sympathy (feeling concern for another's plight) and those that evoke empathy (vicariously sharing another's emotional state), which can drive different helping responses. Batson's empathy-altruism hypothesis argues that empathic concern produces genuinely altruistic motivation to relieve the other's suffering, rather than merely to relieve one's own distress. Appeals that foster perspective-taking and a felt connection tend to mobilize more giving than those that merely report need. It matters for designing charitable, health, and social-cause messages that move people to act.
Examples
A campaign inviting you to 'imagine how she feels' raises donations more than one stating bare facts of hardship.
University fundraisers who spend a few minutes with a student whose scholarship their calls pay for go on to raise substantially more than colleagues handed the same figures on paper.
A blood service asking readers to picture the parent waiting on a transfusion fills more appointment slots than a poster reporting the shortfall in units collected.
First described in C. Daniel Batson (empathy-altruism, 1980s-90s).