First Stage 1: Following Instructions & Evaluating a Video

The objective of this experiment is to investigate whether standard manipulations to increase/decrease empathy can succeed in generating/suppressing empathic reaction to a video. The video is one that might be used in a campaign to raise funds for children who are confronting serious illnesses.

2019-09-20

2019-10-20

Empathic State
After watching the video, all participants will fill out the Emotional Response Scale (e.g., Batson, et al., 1988, 1989, 1991, 1997, 2007). This scale includes a six-item measure of Empathic State.

Empathic Concern
Participants also fill out the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1994). This index includes a seven-item measure of Empathic Concern.

The Emotional Response Scale has been used in numerous experiments by Batson and colleagues to measure Empathic State after “Empathy/Objective” conditions to increase/decrease empathy. The scale is made up of 18 emotions (examples: sympathetic, compassionate, alarmed, sad). A participant self-rates (on a scale from 1 to 7) how much they experienced each emotion while watching the video.

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index has been extensively used to have participants self-rate their dispositional tendencies to react to situations (example: “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”) on a scale from 1 (does not describe me very well) to 5 (describes me very well). Even though the IRI is a dispositional measure, some experiments have found that self-ratings on dispositional measures can measure changes induced by manipulations. Accordingly we will use the Empathic Concern seven-item sub-scale from the IRI as a back-up measure of empathic reaction to the video, in case the Empathic State sub-scale from the Emotional Response Scale does not measure empathy change as planned. If Empathic State measures changes as planned, it is the preferred outcome measure.

Distress State and Negative State
These are eight- and four-item sub-scales from the Emotional Response Scale.

Personal Distress and Perspective Taking
These are seven-item (each) sub-scales from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index.

Principle of Care
This is an eight-item scale that measures a participant’s endorsement of a moral principle that one should help people in need (Bekkers and Ottoni-Wilhelm, 2016).

Attention-Check and Manipulation-Check Questions

Although the conditions are intended to increase/decrease empathic response to the video, the conditions may unintentionally increase/decrease other emotions, in particular the distress one might feel, and/or sadness one might feel, at seeing a video about children who are ill (i.e., Distress State and Negative State).

The conditions may also increase Perspective Taking, to the extent that they increase a cognitive (rather than emotional) empathic reaction.

Because Empathic Concern and the Principle of Care are correlated (Ottoni-Wilhelm and Bekkers, 2010; Bekkers and Ottoni-Wilhelm, 2016), we intend to check whether the conditions designed to increase/decrease empathy unintentionally increase/decrease endorsements of that moral principle.

An Attention-Check will be used to detect participants who are not reading the questions, but simply clicking through the questions to quickly get to the end of the session.

Manipulation-Check questions: All participants (even those randomized into the Control group) are asked (1) how much they concentrated on counting people and scene changes while watching the video, and (2) how much they concentrated on the feelings of the children. Participants who were randomized into one of the four conditions that received instructions prior to watching the video (see conditions 1a, 1b, 2a, or 2b below) will also be asked (a) how much they tried to follow those instructions and (b) how difficult it was to follow those instructions. These are self-report measures of how much a participant complied with the assignment to treatment.

The experimental design is between-subjects, 5 x 1.

The participants will be Amazon Mechanical Turk workers invited to complete a “Human Intelligence Task” (HIT) called “Follow Instructions and Evaluate a Video”. The inclusion criteria are: (1) U.S. citizen, (2) 18 years or older, (3) done at least one previous HIT, and (4) have completed 95% or more of their previous HITs.

Prior to watching the video, approximately one-fifth of the participants will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions. The remaining one-fifth will be randomized into the Control group. The four conditions:

1a. Empathy condition.

2a. Objective/Technical condition.

1b. Empathy condition with additional task (boost).

2b. Objective/Technical condition with additional task (boost).

And a Control group.

After watching the video, all participants fill out the Emotional Response Scale.

Here are the four conditions in more detail:

1a. Empathy condition: Participants are instructed to “take the perspective of each child that you see” and “imagine what each child is feeling”.

2a. Objective/Technical condition: Participants are instructed to “Pay attention to the technical aspects of the clip. . . . For example, how many people appear in the video? And, how many times does the scene change?”

1b. Empathy condition with additional task (boost): After watching the video, half of the participants from the Empathy condition are asked to rate (on a scale from 1 to 5) the video’s success in “inducing powerful emotions”, e.g., “Inspiring stories”, “Sympathetic subjects”.

2b. Objective/Technical condition with additional task (boost): After watching the video, half of the participants from the Objective condition are asked to rate (on a scale from 1 to 5) the video’s success in “using the following techniques”, e.g., “Number of people”, “Number of scene changes”.

The additional tasks in 1b and 2b are intended to “boost” the increase in empathic reaction (1b), or boost the decrease (2b).

The Control group will receive minimal instructions: “We would like you to watch a video.” That’s it.

After watching the video (and responding to the additional task questions for the participants randomized into 1b or 2b), all participants fill out the Emotional Response Scale.

Participants then fill out the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983). This is followed by an Attention-Check question, the Principle of Care scale, a gender question, and Manipulation-Check questions.

The randomization is by computer.

Individual

No

n.a.

N = 450 mTurk workers. Because the objective is to test how much empathy can be increased/decreased by standard manipulations, we have a plan to increase the sample size should N = 450 yield insufficient precision to meet our objective. See “Power calculation” below.

N = 90 in each of the five conditions.

Based on our projections about the standard deviation of our primary outcome Empathic State (sES = 1.25), we are powered at 80% to detect a difference between conditions of .42sES. We are also 80% powered to detect a .42s difference in our back-up primary outcome–Empathic Concern (the fact that under our projections about standard deviations we are powered to detect exactly .42s in both outcomes is a coincidence). If the standard deviation of Empathic State in the experiment turns out to be much larger than we have projected, so that with N = 90 in each of the conditions we are unable to say that we have significantly increased the difference between Empathic State between conditions 1a and 2a (or between 1b and 2b) with an F-stat >= 10, we will increase the number of observations in each condition. Again, the objective of this experiment is to investigate whether the manipulations to increase/decrease empathy can succeed, so if the manipulations appear to succeed based on the magnitude of the point estimates, but are imprecisely estimated, the objective will be to find the necessary N to achieve precision. We are monetarily budgeted to increase the number of observations to a total N = 900. In addition, Objective 6 is to investigate whether the manipulations to increase/decrease empathy can succeed among women, and also separately among men. If the mTurk workers responding to our HIT are (say) disproportionally men, we will increase the sample size of women to achieve Objective 6. See attachment “fs-Pre-reg-003-v01a-PowerAnalysis-MTurk.docx” for further details.