... own personal distress. Batson et al (1981) asked female university students to watch up to ten trials while a confederate (posing as a student) received random electric shocks. In order to produce emotional reactions, participants were told that were either very alike to the person receiving the electric shock - the high empathy condition or very different - the low empathy condition. Half of the participants in both the low and high empathy condition were told that they could leave after watching two trials. Then, after the two trials the confederate pretended to become distressed and told the students about a childhood fear of electric shocks. The participants then had to chose whether to take the students which would show empathetic concern position or walk away from the experiment showing a relief in personal distress. The results showed that the students who were free to leave the experiment after two ...

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