Individual Differences in Sympathy and Empathy Responses to Media and Drama Advertisements

This research examines differences in individuals’ sympathy/empathy responses to media artifacts, such as books and movies, in relation to sympathy/empathy responses to drama commercials. We begin with clarification of the sympathy/empathy constructs and their application to media and advertising contexts. A convoluted history has led to a semantic muddle in which the terms “sympathy” and “empathy” have become so intertwined that no two researchers necessarily define them in the same way (Langfeld 1920 [1967]). Unstable usage is traceable to a varied research heritage from fields as disparate as psychology, aesthetics, theology, literary criticism, and moral philosophy or ethics (Morrison 1988). The consequence is a lack of threaded discourse not only among fields, but also within consumer behavior research.

Citation:

Jennifer Edson Escalas and Barbara B. Stern (2006) ,"Individual Differences in Sympathy and Empathy Responses to Media and Drama Advertisements", in LA - Latin American Advances in Consumer Research Volume 1, eds. Silvia Gonzalez and David Luna, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 26-28.