Bringing together psychological approaches to empathy with research on public preferences for foreign development aid, we shed light on the role empathy plays in global helping behavior. We argue individuals combine their affective empathic responses with situational factors when forming foreign aid preferences. Testing our theory with two novel experiments embedded in a national survey of US citizens, we find that affective empathy not only predicts the individual variation in foreign aid preferences but also explains why Americans weigh aid effectiveness and recipient deservingness—the two important situational aspects of foreign aid—differently. We show that the ability to feel others’ pain is what facilitates global helping behavior, not simply knowing their pain. However, even though this affective ability moderates the impact of aid effectiveness, it amplifies that of recipient merit. Our results contribute to a richer understanding of when empathy facilitates public support for foreign development aid and add to the burgeoning research program on behavioral international politics.

中文翻译：

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感到痛苦：情感移情和公众偏爱外国发展援助

将移情的心理学方法与对外国发展援助的公共偏好的研究结合在一起，我们阐明了移情在全球帮助行为中的作用。我们认为，个人在形成外援偏好时会将情感移情反应与情境因素结合起来。通过对美国公民进行的一次全国性调查中嵌入的两个新颖实验对我们的理论进行了检验，我们发现情感共情不仅可以预测外援偏好的个体差异，还可以解释为什么美国人权衡援助效力和受援者应得的程度-这是外国人的两个重要情况。援助—不同。我们证明，感觉他人的痛苦的能力是促进全球帮助行为的原因，而不仅仅是知道他们的痛苦。然而，即使这种情感能力减轻了援助效力的影响，也放大了受助者的价值。我们的研究结果有助于人们更加了解移情何时会促进公众对外国发展援助的支持，并有助于迅速发展的行为国际政治研究计划。