I feel so sorry! Tapping the joint influence of empathy and personal distress on helping behavior

Observing a person in need usually provokes a compound and dynamic emotional experience made up of empathy and personal distress
which, in turn, may influence helping behavior. As the exclusive use of rating scales to measure these two emotions does not
permit the analysis of their concurrent evolution, we added the analogical emotional scale (AES) in order to measure how these
two emotions evolve throughout the emotional experience, from its onset to its conclusion. Therefore, in two studies, the
concurrence of empathy and personal distress was induced, both rating scales and AES were used, and participants were given
an unexpected opportunity to help. Two effects were found. First, the helping behavior was lower when personal distress prevailed
over empathy at the end of the experience (Studies 1 and 2). Second, this “end” effect was coherent with the nature of the
different motives evoked by personal distress and empathy—directed to increasing either one’s own welfare (egoistic) or the
victim’s welfare (altruism) (Study 2). These results support the usefulness of combining the rating scales and the AES for
gaining a better understanding of the nature and behavioral consequences of complex, compound and dynamic emotional experiences.