Greater Relational Mobility is Associated with Stronger Empathic Concern: An Adaptationist Perspective

Previous cross-cultural research has found that empathic concern towards unfortunate others tends to be generally stronger in, interestingly, independent than interdependent cultures. The aim of this research is to provide an adaptationist account of this paradox from a socio-ecological perspective. We propose that differences in relational mobility, the degree of freedom in selecting one’s relational partners in the given society, explains the difference. Having strong empathic concern, which leads to readily prosocial behavior toward the others in need, is particularly useful in a high relational mobility environment where achievement and retention of desirable relationships is a major adaptive task, since such a behavior impresses the recipient as well as observers with the actor’s prosocial tendency. In low mobility societies where relationships are stable and hard to change, on the other hand, such a behavior is not so necessary or sometimes even undesirable because it can lead to relational competition. Our two cross-societal surveys between Japan and the US (Study 1: 133 Japanese and 133 Americans; Study 2: 107 Japanese and 137 Americans) showed that, as predicted, greater perceived relational mobility of one’s local environment was positively associated with stronger empathic concern, and the level of empathic concern was positively related to social support provision toward the others in need.