Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Political behavior and emotional disposition: Empathy and the collective action problem
Abstract
This study investigates the effects of an empathetic emotional disposition in decision making. The hypothesis that empathy is a general guide to collective action decisions is proposed and tested. Evolutionary theory posits that group level selection has endowed humans with a propensity for cooperative behavior in the absence of selective incentives by equipping the human mind with pro-social emotions. Three separate studies are used to investigate the importance of empathy in collective action problems. The first study utilizes a survey methodology to understand how empathy impacts citizens' likelihood of electoral participation. The second study investigates how empathy facilitates cooperation in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Finally, an experiment using a galvanic skin response monitor is utilized in order to analyze the accuracy of empathy in predicting political in-group/out-group associations. Findings indicate that empathy is not only a significant predictor of behavior, but is a conditional characteristic that can promulgate defection as well as cooperative behavior.
Subject Area
Political science
Recommended Citation
Sautter, John A, "Political behavior and emotional disposition: Empathy and the collective action problem" (2005). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI3201779.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI3201779