Abstract
GOALS. In younger adults, experiencing emotional empathy (e.g., compassion) increases prosocial behaviors (e.g., charitable donation), but this relationship has been rarely investigated in older adults. Separate lines of research have shown that a majority of older adults engage in prosocial behaviors, and there is preliminary evidence for increased emotional empathy with age. Thus, we investigated the degree to which age-related differences in emotional empathy may be associated with prosocial behavior. METHODS. Fourty-eight neurologically and psychiatrically healthy adults participated in the study, including 24 younger (age: M=19.8, SD=2 years) and 24 older (age: M=77.9, SD= 7.7 years) adults. Participants believed they were playing an economic game (Dictator Game) against a series of two opponents and read a note from each "opponent" (a pre-prepared note) prior to playing the game against them in order to induce an empathetic or neutral state. After each induction, emotional empathy was measured through self-report ratings and behavior on the Dictator Game. RESULTS. There were no age-related differences in empathy ratings. However, older adults showed greater prosocial behavior than younger adults, giving more money to their opponent after undergoing the empathy induction than the neutral induction. CONCLUSIONS. This study demonstrates that experiencing empathy may produce greater prosocial behavior in older than younger adults. Furthermore, older adults were not simply more generous at baseline, but instead only after empathy had been induced. Future research may consider factors that may mediate the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior in aging such as changes in executive function ability.