Homoeconomicus Meets Homoempathicus

The behavior directed to benefit another has two main classes of motivation: egoistic and altruistic. We focus on context dependent behavior motivated altruistically, generated by empathic concern as outlined by the empathy based altruism hypothesis. We dissect the concept of empathy and design a model that captures the relation between its three elements and empathic concern. Using empathic concern as proxy for altruistic behavior we illustrate practically how offers made in dictator games can be estimated after a participant is exposed to an empathy evoking event. The model calls for the design of incentives that are taking into account the motivation behind behavior