Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering

Abstract

The article examines two competing explanations for humans’ tendency to show less compassion for many victims of a tragedy than for one victim: a deficient emotional response and motivated regulation of emotions. Building on recent research that suggests this phenomenon is due to the latter, it examines whether emotion regulation skills interact with the motivation to donate money to influence compassion. A series of experiments with different conditions corroborate the motivated regulation theory. The results reveal that people show the collapse of compassion when they expect to help and are good at regulating their emotions. The study adds to the understanding of the role of emotions in moral behavior and highlights the role of emotion regulation in adjusting moral emotions to desired outcomes. – AI-generated abstract.