Empathy-Mediated Altruism in Intergroup Contexts : The Roles of Posttraumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth

Exposure to war-related violence is associated with greater pro-social behavior. Although researchers point to empathy and individual differences in posttraumatic growth to explain this relationship, there is no direct empirical evidence of the psychological process by which exposure to wartime violence leads to pro-sociality. In this investigation, we propose and test a comprehensive model of empathy-mediated altruism that addresses both how and when exposure to violence may be associated with pro-sociality. Results from a large-scale survey experiment conducted in a naturalistic field setting (1660 refugees from the wars in Syria and Iraq residing in Turkey) indicate that participants reported greater empathy and altruism toward ingroup versus outgroup targets, and that posttraumatic stress predicted less and posttraumatic growth predicted more empathy and altruism. Further, empathy mediated ingroup biases in altruism (i.e., allocation of resources to the self and others); this indirect effect was stronger for those reporting greater posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress. These results support our proposed model of empathy-mediated altruism that incorporates individual differences in response to war violence and ingroup preferences.