Batson, C. D., Sager, K., Garst, E., Kang, M., Rubchinsky, K. & Dawson, K. (1997). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 495–509.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The counter-evidence to Cialdini et al. (LIT-1728) and so to the owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491); cited by the counter CLAIM-494, which grounds on the SEP’s report of it (LIT-1729).
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
The SEP entry (NOTE-1274, §5.3) gives the paper’s three merging measures in its own words: Cialdini’s IOS scale, a 1–9 perceived-similarity item (p. 500), and the mean absolute difference between self- and target-ratings on personal attributes (p. 498). It reports that the paper identified methodological problems in Cialdini et al. and, in “a pair of experiments” that avoided them, found empathy’s role in helping “clearly evident”. The entry argues that none of these measures tests perceived numerical identity. Missing still: the designs, how merging was controlled, whether merging mediated helping, any statistic, and the methodological problems themselves. The number of experiments also needs checking: this record says four and the SEP says a pair.
The paper gives only that Batson et al. “conducted experiments that cast doubt on SMH” and raised methodological problems with Cialdini’s studies, and points to Batson 2018, chapter 10, for them (p. 4). It sets the empirical dispute aside. Missing still: everything about the experiments, their measures and their results.