Kaitlin Luna: Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology , a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association that explores the connections between Psychological Science and everyday life. I'm your host, Kaitlin Luna. Concern and care for others' feelings are virtues we seek to instill in our children, yet they are sorely lacking in many adult Americans today. Flip on the news, scroll through social media sites, or read the comments on any news article, and you realize just how unempathetic so many of us are.
There's scientific research to back up the notion that Americans are caring less and less for others. For instance, one study found a steep decline in empathy among young people from 1979 to 2009. One of the authors of that study is joining me today. Dr. Sara Konrath is an associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University, and director of an Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research.
She teaches classes on the psychology of giving, and altruism and health. Her other work has also found that narcissism is on the rise in young people. She's done some fascinating research examining narcissism's effect on social media usage. We will be exploring why empathy is declining and what we can do to create more kindness and caring in our communities. Welcome, Dr. Konrath.
Dr. Sara Konrath: Thanks for having me.
Luna: When I was researching this topic, I came across an article in The New York Times from 1989, the cited research that found that newborn babies can display empathy, which was notably by crying in response to another nearby baby. Other research from our journal developmental psychology from that same time period found that mothers have a profound influence on their child's development of empathy. From your perspective, is it nature? Is it nurture? Or is it both? Why are mothers more influential in the development of empathy?
Konrath: Based on research that I know of, it's actually both. Like most things in psychology, there's lots of research showing that empathy has a genetic component, about half of empathy that a baby is born with is a genetic component, but then the parenting, the schools, the community, the environment, the culture can have an influence on empathy as well. The context matters, along with the genetics.
I like that study actually on the crying response because even primates, other primates have that kind of response, what I call proto empathy. It's the building block of empathy, to feel what others are feeling. That emotional contagion, but obviously, we need to go a lot more further for it to be deeper, more mature empathy.
Luna: Other animals, animals other than humans, you're saying, do exhibit empathy?
Konrath: Different kinds of empathy? Yes. Not necessarily the sophisticated mental gymnastics that we can do when it comes to understanding other people's intentions and motivations, but there is some evidence by primatologists and others, finding that there are some forms of empathy, including care, concern, in different types of animals such as in primates and even rats.
Luna: It's a really fascinating thing. I could see primates, of course, because we're closely linked, but if they're seeing it in rats as well, why do you think they're seeing it in an animal that's so different from our species?
Konrath: I would guess that in many mammals, that would be why they would see it in animals that rear their young in similar ways, because of the nurturing that comes from early parenting. That links to your question about why mothers. I don't think there's something- at least in humans, that makes mothers somehow better at teaching empathy, obviously, because humans are very flexible and adaptable.
I do think that within humans, mothers are spending a lot more time with their babies and children than fathers. I think it's the person who's spending the time that will have the most influence on developing empathy.
Luna: That will be really interesting to do this study today, because the one I just mentioned that we were just talking about was from 1990. Seeing as how culture shifted with more stay-at-home-dads, more fathers being more involved than they were at that point in time, it'd be interesting to see how that would play out if fathers, if they are teaching their children more empathy. Do you think that would be the case today? It might be different?
Konrath: There's probably been a- probably more of a role. Still, if you look at current research on the time spent with children, women are still spending more time than men, even though both women and men are spending more time over time. Since the ‘60s, there's been an increase in the time we actually spend with children, taking care of them.
Luna: Really? That's probably a topic for another time, but that's really fascinating to think today people are working, we're working longer hours yet we're spending more time with our children. You're talking about that genetic component which is really fascinating. Does that mean that some people are just inherently born more empathetic than others?
Konrath: I would think that they're born more responsive. Like those infants, there's probably differences in infants and which ones are more likely to cry when they hear the other one cry. That's a building block for later, more general types of empathy that are more mature. There are genotypes that are associated with more empathy, so people's actual genetic structures, such as the oxytocin receptor gene-- Though there are some people who I think have more of a inherent potential, but all of us can learn.
Luna: I want to talk about mirror neurons, which is something that came up as I was looking into this topic. Do you think mirror neurons play a role in empathy?
Konrath: Mirror neurons are the areas of our brain that are overlapping with other people's actions, so that if we see a person pick up a cup, then the area of the brain that would light up when we pick up the cup is activated. It shows you that there's this inherent physiological connection between people. I do believe that mirror neurons help us to become more empathetic because they help us have a moment of similar experience with somebody. That can lead to deeper expressions of empathy.
Luna: Does that go along with why you think empathy even exists in the first place? You talked about mother animals nurturing their young. We're talking about mirror neurons as being a prosocial behavior among animals. Is that why you think empathy exists? Does it exist to keep us, I guess, we're pack animals, we're social animals. Does it exist to keep us together, or does it exist to keep us thriving and to keep the species alive?
Konrath: I do think that there's a biological basis for empathy. The reason it stays in our societies over time is because it helps to keep infants alive. The parental nurturing helps to keep infants alive, and then we can generalize that to relatives, and to people who are our friends, and then even to strangers.
Luna: There, obviously, is a genetic component, as you mentioned, and it can be a learned behavior as well, the nature and nurture. How can we cultivate empathy within ourselves?
Konrath: There are many, many different ways and lots of research trying to increase empathy. I don't think there's one way. The first thing I would say is that, we have to want to, it has to be important to us. The motivation really matters. Then from there, there's many ways. There's research showing that, for example, reading fiction actually helps to increase empathy, and also focusing on similarities between yourself and others.
Just imagining. Taking a moment to imagine what other people are feeling and thinking what the world is like from their perspective. There's many, many, many ways to increase empathy. There's some research on the role of the arts and how it can help us to be more empathetic. A big factor is actually just having experience, practicing with- nurturing, either animals, or vulnerable children or babies, because just the practice of interacting with another being who can't really just tell us in words what they're feeling, or what they need. It helps us to tune in, and to imagine, and to respond.
Luna: I want to touch on something you just mentioned I found really interesting was about how reading fiction can make you more empathetic. Do you have more to share about why that would be the case, because you almost think it might be nonfiction. I don't know. What is it about fiction that makes people more empathetic, or increases that trait?
Konrath: Overall, the research is finding that just reading in general is helpful, but fiction in particular because it allows us to imagine other people's lives. Oftentimes in fiction, you're getting a window into what's going on in someone's mind. You can almost see the world through their eyes and practice what it might be like to be another person. That person could be somebody really, really different.
It can be a different gender, or political affiliation, or ethnicity, or culture. You just get to live all these different lives and to stay close to people you might not encounter in your everyday life from the inside perspective.
Luna: That is incredibly fascinating. I'm going to hold on to that one to use as a good fact at some point.
Konrath: [laughs]
Luna: I want to go back to that study I mentioned in the intro here. You found that among young people empathy is declining. Can you share why you think empathy is on a decline? I know that the last study ended over ten years ago now, but from that time period, what did you find, why do you think that was the case, and where does research stand today, in terms of what's happened between 2009 and 2019?
Konrath: Just to clarify, we found that college students, American college students, self-reported that they were becoming lower in empathy over time, when we looked at different samples and studies using a meta-analysis over time. Other researchers also looked at national samples of high school seniors and college freshmen and found similar results that there had been declines over time in concern for others.
All these studies so far have only been done up to 2009, and we're now working on updates to these studies. I'm not sure what's happening since then and I know it's easy to say that- assume that things are declining, but until we have the data I don't know what's happening. It's hard to say with cultural change why that's happening, so I can only guess. After ten years of thinking about it at this point, I have some ideas.
I'm working on a book, finishing my book called, "Culture Burnout , " that tries to explain what's happening and why. Over time, I started realizing that the declines in empathy were happening at the same time as the rise in mental health problems among young people. I put two-and-two together and saw those both as symptoms of burnout. I've been thinking about that empathy is not just--
The decline in empathy is not just an excuse down on our youth and tell them that you're not kind. It's an opportunity for us to understand better the pressures that are on them right now and the expectations that are pushing them to really just try to achieve success. With a lot of challenges that earlier generations didn't face, because incredibly high tuition rates that are rising very, very fast, higher than the cost of health care, for example.
The expectations of trying to get a job with a college degree is really challenging. Rising inequality makes it very hard for average people to have a sustainable lifestyle economically and so on. All of these different pressures on young people, I think crowd out their focus on their own self-care and care for others, because they're really focused on just trying to be successful and make it.
Luna: That's a really interesting connection, one that I hadn't even thought of. I just thought maybe it's just because what's going on in the culture and in the world today, but that's absolutely fascinating. It could be because of so much pressure on people. Of course, if you're already burned out yourself, you're facing all these pressures, you're worried about your economic future, which- it's widely covered that generations today will not do better, or maybe the same as previous generations.
There's a lot of pressure on our young people today. Guess it's really no wonder why someone wouldn't be as empathetic, because they're more concerned about themselves and surviving.
Konrath: That's what I think at this point. I wasn't sure earlier and I had other ideas, but over time, this is what I see is happening. When I talk to young people about it, they are like, "Yes. You get us. You understand us. We're very stressed out." They're really good at working, work. I've talked to college students about this idea of culture burnout and one of the things I asked about is, "In an ideal life, you have an eight-hour workday, which we fight for, for workers rights to have an eight-hour workday, you have eight hours of sleep and you have eight hours of leisure," and then people start laughing. Students laugh at that.
I was like, "I didn't know that was a joke." Just listening to stories from young people and the pressures they are facing and how taking a break, even just having a night off, it makes them feel really guilty.
Luna: Absolutely. I wonder if that relates to a decline in people spending more time on hobbies and in volunteering, if you're focused on school, if you're focused on work, if you're focused on this or the other thing.
Konrath: That's what I think, yes.
Luna: I want to bring this over to a topic that keeps coming up in my mind today, the lack of empathy or the decrease in empathy that you've seen in your study. Obviously, we have a 10-year gap of which we don't know yet what's happened, but could that be the cause of why people can be so basically nasty today? You read news article comments and it's just a terrible place to go. It's where you go if you want to feel bad or- I don't know.
It's just like you get down that rabbit hole of reading all the these awful things people have to say. I think in a lot of ways, what comes to my mind is the issues going on in our southern border and this really in a lot of cases you have- some people are incredibly empathetic to the plight of people leaving oppression and violence. We have so many people who are just downright mean about it, and you don't want to don't help anyone at all- obviously there's a lot that goes into why people behave the way they do. But is this an example of people who might not feel like they have what they need, they cannot be empathetic to others?
Konrath: Yes. I think if people are saying cruel things to others who are oppressed, or victimized, or in deep trouble that is a signal of low empathy. Because empathy is- we didn't even define it but I'll define it. Empathy is both imagining other people's perspectives and their world's cognitive type of empathy, and it's also caring, compassion and concern for others, that emotional empathy.
Luna: Yes.
Konrath: If you're not showing that for somebody then you are showing low empathy, and I think if I just say whether those expressions online are a sign that empathy is really declined even more, or whether people used to say those things in the privacy of their home and now they just say them online. I don't know.
Luna: Yes. [laughs]
Konrath: But it is obviously upsetting and concerning to see that groups who are in need are not getting the help that they need.
Luna: Yes. You kept it to yourself and now you feel emboldened perhaps because you can be anonymous online.
Konrath: Yes.
Luna: That could be another thing too. This leads me to my next question about- are there times in history you've noticed where- even during that period time 1979 and 2009, where people were more empathetic. An example came to mind after 9/11 where it seemed like America came together in a lot of ways. Albeit briefly perhaps, but it seemed like people came together, I'm not sure that's necessarily empathy, but are there times where you've seen where people are more empathetic and times where you've seen people are less empathetic?
Konrath: Well, just looking at the data looks like it's just- it was just declining over time and especially accelerating since 2000. I actually looked at that the graphs from my study to see if there was a blip [chuckles] in 2001 and there wasn't. As somebody who was- I had just-- I'm a Canadian and I had just moved to the States in fall of 2001, a couple of weeks before 9/11, and I as a somebody who is not a citizen living in the States at that time I can't say that I was feeling empathy from Americans.
Luna: Yes.
Konrath: [laughs] I was feeling very nervous at the anti-immigrant sentiment.
Luna: Yes.
Konrath: I don't know that Americans coming together, it would sort of to affirm patriotism and sort of like American amazingness or something [laughs] but I don't know, but empathy I think would have been broader and would have been like empathy for other people too, and people who were being treated badly and experiencing hate crimes because they happen to be a member of an ethnic group that was part of the 9/11 events, but obviously those individuals were not implicated. In fact, people from Middle Eastern countries, my research has found, actually scored the highest in the world in empathy.
Luna: Yes. There was one thing I want to touch on. Are there certain people in the world who are more empathetic cultures, countries, as you said Middle Eastern people, do you see specific countries on that?
Konrath: Yes. I always like to talk about the study limitations, because I think people should make up their own mind about whether they think it's something they want to believe. We did a study, it was just an accidental study where we had posted online a link to an empathy measure and people from all over the world for some reason wanted to take this measure.
We had over 104,000 people in the study from 63 different countries. Because it was just kind of an accident, the study was not intended to be a cross-cultural study it was all in English. That's important to keep in mind. We then were able to compare the different countries and see which ones were highest in empathy and lowest in empathy and we were able to correlate empathy scores at the cultural level with behaviors like volunteering, and helping, and traits like individualism.
We're trying to validate this as a potential measure and currently, it's the best available study, but I still think we need to work on really understanding cultural differences and empathy.
Luna: When you do a study like that can you talk about how you measure empathy?
Konrath: Yes. We measure empathy using just a self-report trait measure. The one we used and that we've used a lot is called the interpersonal reactivity index. It's just about responding to others. It's pretty widely used and many scientists appreciate the validity of it. It includes statements such as, "I often have tender concern feelings for those who are less fortunate," or, "I try to imagine what other people's- or other people's side of a disagreement," for example.
Those are just off the top of my head. Those aren't exact, but just so you get a sense of them. We correlated them in that cross-cultural study with rates of volunteering behaviors which obviously that's not empathy, that's a behavior. Empathy is either a trait or a feeling.
Luna: You've talked about the countries that you found that were most empathetic. What were countries you found they're least empathetic?
Konrath: We found that individualistic countries were more likely to be low in empathy. Also, countries that were more accepting of emotions were higher in empathy. We also found that higher empathy countries had higher rates of volunteering and helping strangers, but it wasn't related to charitable giving, which is interesting. Finally, this like little fun fact, and I don't know if we actually published this, but I definitely looked because I was curious. We found that higher empathy countries had higher temperatures on average. They were warmer.
Luna: Interesting. You kind of think, like a cold person, cold climate.
Konrath: Like Canadians?
Luna: I'm from- not too far away from Canada. I'm Rochester, New York. Just across Lake Ontario. I think I'm an empathetic person from a cold area. That's really interesting though, about some of the cultures. Maybe cultures where- you find that people keep to themselves, don't make small talk might be different than a culture that's more like outgoing and that sort of thing. It's really, really fascinating.
There's a lot to there. I appreciate you sharing the limitations so that to- just how obviously it was only limited to English speakers, to a certain extent. This got me all thinking about how empathy or the lack thereof might relate to people who are more prejudiced or people who commit crimes. Are there connections between empathy and criminal behavior? Are less empathetic people more likely to commit a crime?
Konrath: Well I'm not sure if they're more likely to commit a crime, but research does find that on average people who are in jail for crimes, so if they've been caught, that those people score lower on empathy, both kinds of empathy, both emotional and cognitive. I don't think it means that if someone has low empathy, they're predisposed to criminal activity. I just think that people who have high empathy would find it difficult to hurt others because they're very aware of the consequences of their actions. I think that's going to mitigate harm to others.
Luna: Earlier you defined empathy, but can you talk about the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy? We didn't touch on that.
Konrath: Cognitive empathy, I see it more at this point- I've been studying this for a while. I see it more as a skill, so it's something-- It takes time and practice and effort and imagination. It's when we can think about what the world is like from someone else's perspective, and really from their point of view, not our own necessarily. To support that kind of imagination, we can use like our observation. We can listen carefully.
We can pay attention to body language, voice, facial expressions of emotion and other things like that. To me, I see that as more of a skill type process. Emotional empathy, I think it can start with that emotional contagion, so just that moment of sort of feeling what the other person is feeling, but the more mature form is feeling like extending into passions for care for others. Usually, the two of them go together. The research shows that people who are good at cognitive empathy tend to be also compassionate, show more compassion for others. You can imagine there are people out there who are good at cognitive empathy, but don't care. Those are psychopaths, and we need both together.
Luna: That's a possible other topic for our podcast, psychopaths. That's a very interesting topic as well we have not yet explored. Wrapping up our section about the study you did and bringing it full circle. You're showing declining rates. You're doing a new study to see what's happened over the past 10 years. Do you have any suggestions as a psychologist about what can be done to increase empathy? If it was on the downward trajectory for 30 years, what can be done to make people more empathetic to increase our cultural empathy? What do you think can be done?
Konrath: I've been thinking about what we can do to increase empathy at a broader level. Not just for individuals, because individually we already talked about some things that people can do that sounds more empathetic. As a culture, we have to actually decide it's important. As parents, thinking about prioritizing, teaching our children to care for others who are different than them. That means exposing them to people who are different.
Actually making an effort to get involved in some ways. Also, sometimes it might mean that we have to assess what kinds of messages our children are getting from us, because oftentimes children are internalizing the need to succeed and thinking that's the only thing that we care about for our children. When in fact maybe parents do want their children to be caring and empathetic.
Moving outside of parents then school systems are also giving messages to children about what's important. The school is an important socializing force and unfortunately, there's a lot of pressure on them right now to focus on testing and specific quantitative outcomes for kids. If schools decide to focus more on the whole child, including social and emotional skills, that will make a huge difference.
Community interactions are important to build up because when we're interacting with our neighbors, interacting with our co-workers, or attending either religious services or groups of various kinds that are community-based, we're interacting with people who we might not see at our tighter circles. That can challenge us and help us to grow and expand our circles of empathy.
Luna: In your research you did earlier and you were talking about the countries that are more empathetic, did you see a difference in the countries where depending on what was happening in the society, if it was a country that was at war, were you seeing less empathy? Less rates of empathy, because people were more focused on surviving. Are you seeing higher rates of empathy in countries that are doing well, that have more resources, that were- the economy is good. What differences did you see in that area?
Konrath: We didn't look at specifically war, whether countries were at war or not, but we did look at well-being rates across the- based on national surveys, and we did find that empathy was higher in countries that were happier, so it could be that happier countries lead to more empathy or that more empathy leads to more happiness or some other reason, but in any case that link is there, and it wasn't- if I remember right and I have to check. I don't think we found a connection to average income in the country.
Luna: Interesting. Yes, so it might just depend more on other factors. Interesting. Okay.
Konrath: It does seem to be linked to well-being, both- so within individuals empathy is associated with more happiness and well-being, but also across cultures, we found the same thing.
Luna: Also, you did a lot of work, you've done work on narcissism and found that rates of narcissism among young people are increasing, is that related to what we talked about, just a little while ago, when you're talking about the pressures on young people, because they have so much outward pressure is it making people more narcissistic? Is that the right way to describe what you're seeing?
Konrath: Yes, I see that rising narcissism [inaudible 00:28:29] similar as the declining empathy because people who are narcissistic are more focused on themselves and less focused on others so it's negatively correlated with empathy, and those two trends were happening around the same time and again, we're still working on the update for the narcissism paper as well.
Yes, I think that just generally all those pressures on young people can make them kind of shrink their scope of self, rather than expanding it to include a lot of other people and concerns. It's just about more like survival and making it, and I think, and I don't have any casual evidence of this but this is what I think is happening.
Luna: Yes, that's really- you think is it because of social media? That's my next thing I want to touch on. Is some of your research you did and you presented this at the APA's convention in San Francisco in 2018, and your study you presented found that compassionate people spend less time on social media than people who are more self-centered and narcissistic.
You also found that people of lower emotional intelligence or those who have difficulty identifying, describing and processing their emotions, they use social media more often than those who are more in touch with their feelings. Can you talk a little bit about that and how these traits interact with in the digital age and with social media?
Konrath: Yes, and there's a lot of research, including our own that finds a correlation between narcissism and social media usage, but I don't necessarily think that means that social media use causes increased narcissism. The studies that have tracked people over time find if anything, it's the other way around, that narcissistic people are just attracted to use social media because it really fits kind of--
It can be used to fit their aims, which is to get a lot of attention. I did present that work, it's still unpublished, but finding that empathy is correlated with less social media use. Since then, a mini meta-analysis came out with five different studies examining that link between empathy and social media. Interestingly, it actually found that there's a small positive correlation. More empathetic people are using social media on average, a little bit more.
Luna: Could that be because-- Social media can be a source for good and it can be an opportunity for people to do good things. I'm thinking about when people talk about their personal battles with depression, and then others chime in and sharing their stories, their family stories, or people who share posts about a dog at a high kill shelter, wanting to be adopted.
There's obviously a lot of good things going on on social media. I think a lot of times you hear a lot about the negative aspects of it. Is that one of those examples you're talking about, where you're seeing more empathetic people using social media to connect with others, to be forces for good out there?
Konrath: Yes, I think that people might, after looking at the research on this and understanding there's mixed effects both with narcissism and empathy in social media, I think the big picture takeaway that I have at this point is that people are online who they are offline. Empathetic people when they're online, they're using the technology for different purposes and in different ways than somebody who's narcissistic.
Luna: That's really interesting. That's a good way to kind of put a fine point on that.
Konrath: It's like to connect. Empathetic people are trying to-- If they're using it a little more, it's because they're trying to connect with others. There's many empathetic ways to engage with people. Sometimes I think that not engaging can be empathetic. If there's somebody who's saying something really, that's really getting under your skin and making you angry, and maybe the reaction would be to say something mean back, maybe inhibiting a mean response is an empathetic response nowadays.
Luna: Yes, and also, your lab from when I was reading, you're using mobile phones. I'm thinking social media making that connection to mobile phones. You developed an app and you've done research about using mobile phones to implement empathy building programs. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what offerings you have, in terms of harnessing this technology to build empathy in communities?
Konrath: That's exactly what we're trying to do because, I think a lot of the response to my declining empathy study was saying, "Well, empathy is declining because of social media, because of smartphones." I'm like, "Well, wait, let's look a little further back. It's been declining before then, and face to face social connections were declining before then, so what's going on here?"
We responded by saying, "Well, we don't think that's the cause necessarily but this is something that young people really use a lot, actually very attracted to using phones and social media, so why wouldn't we design programs it's from their perspective speaking their own language." It's an empathic design response actually, and we designed two programs. One is called Text to Connect and that's a daily text message reminders designed for obviously teenagers and older- and young adults, so older young people.
It's just a little reminder to do things that I think everyone knows to do, but just like next time you talk to a person, make sure you pay attention to their body language and, look them in the eye, like some really basic stuff. Or like next time you're talking to somebody, imagine what it feels like from their perspective. These are really obvious little reminders, but we have a published paper finding that this did help to increase empathy in college students.
We have unpublished data on teenagers we're working on writing up, but also finding that it works. We also designed and tested a smartphone app design for children age 10 to 17. This one is called Random Act of Kindness. We had children come into our lab, we would be- and then they receive either random act of kindness or a different app with for two months. Then we tested what happened to their empathy.
We found again that this app can increase empathy in children. Within that age range, the younger kids preferred it. It was cartoonish, and they seem to like that, compared to the older kids, but we still found effects overall.
Luna: Yes. You mentioned before about- I think that's really an interesting point, that I've just been thinking about my own life, about how sometimes you just need to be reminded of these basic things. We all know that we should be good to other people. I think it's- we all know it, we know these things, but I think someone bringing it to the forefront through these apps, whatever it's through on a regular basis, if not daily basis is really helpful, in terms of living a better life and being better to people and to yourself.
Konrath: Yes, that's what we were thinking. Part of it is if we see that there are gaps in our culture and what's surrounding ourselves and our children and these reminders, then why not use the thing that's with us at all times to remind us. Phones are really a lot of potential to change our habits.
Luna: Yes, just touching on your program that you run. It sounds pretty amazing. Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism. Is it unique in the field of psychology, and what other disciplines do you have as part of it?
Konrath: We're just a lab group. Most psychology researchers have a group of collaborators and other people they write with and do research with, so that's pretty much what we are. It includes occasion studies, philosophy. I'm just thinking about the different journals. Marketing. [chuckles] Just various bit-- It's been mostly quantitative at this point, but-- Sociology.
Just a bunch of different collaborators on the topics of interest related to empathy and altruism. This topic is not just a psychology topic, it's actually a topic that many people from various scholarly backgrounds are interested in. That's part of why I like working at the School of Philanthropy, because they're people from all different backgrounds including humanities. We're all studying questions related to giving and other processional behaviors.
Luna: That's an excellent segue into- the next session I want to get into, about philanthropy, another area you study. You're in the School of Philanthropy in Indiana University. During the research for this topic, I was reading about how much Americans donate every year. Before we started recording, you and I were talking about this a little bit more and really pursing this information out.
When you look at the stats, they say that $427 billion was donated to charity last year, but as you told me, that number is, in terms of how that's divided up, that money is from mostly wealthy donors and not from individual donors. Can you talk a little bit more about that with these trends you're seeing in terms of wealthy donors giving larger chunks to that $427 billion and individual people giving less?
Konrath: Wealthy donors are individual donors, say as compared to corporations which are part of that number too. When you just look at the percentage of individuals who are giving, overall, if you look at generational changes, my colleague Patrick Rooney at the School of Philanthropy wrote a paper on this recently, and found that there are generational declines in the percentage of people who are giving to charity and then also how much giving on average.
The reason why we don't see that there are declines in the overall amount of giving is because there are larger donors who are giving more over time. It makes it look like there isn't an overall decline in giving, but for a lot of the givers, there is a decline over time. That means that nonprofits have to-- They are in a difficult position where they have to think about what the wealthy donors want [laughs] and how to receive gifts from those people, or that you don't have to get younger generations to be more involved in giving.
Luna: How does the new tax law play into all that, because in the past an individual donor would receive more of a tax benefit for giving, but for many Americans I know, myself included, I found out last year the money I gave to charity in the clothes and whatever I donated I got nothing back for. That's a bummer. You definitely want to feel your contribution- you want to help others and be altruistic, but you're also the same time it's, why not get a tax break? How do you think that might impact individual giving in the future?
Konrath: Again, my colleagues at the School of Philanthropy actually are studying this and are economists and they can answer much better than I can, but I can speak to work I've done on motivations for giving. I've designed a scale, a personality scale that measures why people give fairly on average. Actually, on average, people are not saying at least self-reporting that taxes are the most important motivation.
They're actually saying that they give because they care, so altruism. I still think that it would be obviously [unintelligible 00:40:09] a tax law when you're [inaudible 00:40:11] because you want a tax break. If you're used to getting a tax break and then suddenly you don't that might influence how you respond next year.
Luna: Yes, of course, and I can only speak from my own experience. I want to give to these causes, but it's certainly nice, "Hey, I cleared out the closet of some clothes shoes, gently used items and maybe get a little bit of money back." That was always a nice added bonus. I was thinking last year or earlier this year I was doing taxes. That is probably all frightening for some even non-profits, if people aren't getting that tax break it might impact how much they give. Something to monitor.
Konrath: I think that is the case and it's just that I'm not the one doing that research, a lot of people are looking at that question. Also all of us have a constellation of motives. It's not like the only thing we care about when giving to charity is altruism. We all have mixed- different reasons. Some of it is about [unintelligible 00:41:06] or because of taxes, or because it makes us feel good. Taxes are in the mix. It came out as one of the motivations out of all the options we had, it's just that it's not necessarily the main one.
Luna: You co-authored a recent study that found people who volunteered had a lower mortality rate than those who gave money. It is really interesting. Why do you think that was the case?
Konrath: Well, first I want just to talk a little bit about what we did and then why we think we found the results. We used a dataset available from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that follows older adults. They've been following people since 1957, when they graduated high school. We compared different kinds of giving behaviors and also giving related traits.
See how they were associated with the risk of dying, several years later. What we found was that giving time in various ways, whether it's volunteering or caregiving, or helping friends, giving time is associated with a lower risk of mortality, but giving money was not. It was not associated with a lower risk of mortality. Also, people who spot that they were paying people, so for social traits, was also associated with a lower risk of mortality. Just seeing yourself that way, actually, what seems to be associated with better health.
Luna: Why do you think giving to others, and particularly giving time as you mentioned, benefits mental and physical health?
Konrath: We think it has to do with how much people are giving of themselves. You can easily write a check and walk away without thinking about it, but it's hard to do that when you're volunteering. You're actually engaging, interacting with people. I think that there's a biological system that helps us to regulate stress, that when we are in a state where we're focusing on others and what they need and caring for others, that's- the system helps to increase our oxytocin and reduce our cortisol, so a bonding hormone, oxytocin and then cortisol, it's a stress hormone.
Doing that over and over again, whether because you just are naturally thinking of others and see yourself as pro-social, or whether because you're actually out there helping regularly, doing that can, I think, over time, be associated with better health, but I'm just guessing based on our results, we don't quite have evidence yet.
Luna: This is a really good conversation to be having at this time of year. This podcast will be running in December. Obviously, people can listen to it at any point, but at this time of year, people are giving a lot, whether they're giving time or money and it's obviously a time where people are focusing on other people, you hope. So that will be a time to express empathy to others, so this is a very timely conversation.
I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I think our listeners will really take a lot away from this. I'm really excited to see what happens with that research you will be publishing someday soon about what happened between 2009 and 2019 with rates of empathy.
Konrath: I'm really curious too. Thank you so much for your amazing questions. It was a really interesting conversation.
Luna: Thank you. I really appreciate that. Before we go, I want to tell our listeners we want to hear from you. You can email your comments and ideas to speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That's speaking of psychology, all one word, @apa.org. Also, please consider giving us a rating in iTunes, it really helps. You can find all episodes of Speaking of Psychology on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and also on our website, SpeakingofPsychology.org. I'm Kaitlin Luna with the American Psychological Association.
Sara Konrath, PhD, is an associate professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. She received her PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan. Konrath is the director of the 
