Title: Haptic Roughness Promotes Empathy and Helping Behaviors

Speaker: Rui Zhu,Associate Professor, University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business

Time: 4:30-6:00pm, Nov.2, 2011

Location: Room 217, New Building of GSM, Peking University

Abstract:

Eliciting help has important social impacts. However, little is known about how incidental, contextual cues can encourage helping behaviors. Using both laboratory and field studies, we find that haptic sensation of roughness (vs. smoothness) promotes empathy and consequently enhances helping towards unfamiliar targets. Direct measures of brain activity provide important insight to the process by suggesting that haptic roughness primes individuals’ past hardship, and therefore leads to enhanced empathy only at later, evaluative (vs. earlier, automatic response) stages.

Welcome to attend!