Relationship of Empathetic-Affective Responses with Prosocial Behaviors and Aggressive Behaviors after Controlling for Affect Experienced in Daily Life

Abstract

Undergraduate students (N=363) completed the Empathic-Affective Response Scale, and measures of affect, prosocial behaviors, and aggressive behaviors. Confirmatory factor analyses, based on the item composition of Sakurai et al. (2011), indicated that empathic affective responses toward the positive affect of others cannot be divided between sharing the positive affect of others and having good feelings about the positive affect of others. All aspects of empathic-affective responses were positively correlated with the frequency of prosocial behaviors, even after controlling the effects of positive and negative affect. Empathic affective responses toward the positive affect of others were found to have partial negative correlations with the frequency of aggressive behaviors.