Clicking for change: the role of empathy and negative affect on engagement with a charitable social media campaign^*

* Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at doi:10.1080/0144929X.2019.1578827

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of a campaign video designed to promote prosocial behaviour by eliciting negative emotions on social network site (SNS) users’ willingness to engage with the content in ways that require little effort (e.g. ‘liking,’ commenting, and sharing). Negative affect was examined as a mediator of the effect of state empathy and content engagement, and trait empathic concern and trait personal distress were examined as potential moderators of this indirect effect. Results demonstrate that state empathy with the subject of the campaign video elicited negative affect, which in turn encouraged engagement. This indirect effect was moderated by empathic concern, such that those with greater empathic concern expressed less willingness to engage with the SNS campaign.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• negative emotional appeal
• social sharing
• social network sites

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Julia K. Weiss http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1336-0465

Notes

* Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at doi:10.1080/0144929X.2019.1578827

1 Typically, empathy research has relied on human experiences to elicit empathy, however there is evidence animals can serve can stimulate empathy and compassion just as well. Taylor and Signal (2005) found a positive correlation between pro-welfare attitudes towards animals and trait empathic concern, although only among female participants. Further, empathic concern was found to be a significant predictor of scores on the Animal Attitudes Scale. Further, Angantyr, Eklund, and Hansen (2011) conducted three experiments demonstrating that both men and women exhibited similar degrees of empathy for children and animals, and women actually reported greater empathy towards animals than people. These findings demonstrate that empathy experienced in response to animal subjects can be at least comparable if not more intense than the experience of empathy elicited by human scenarios.