Cialdini, R. B., Brown, S. L., Lewis, B. P., Luce, C. & Neuberg, S. L. (1997). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 481–494.
Read in full on 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1444). The reading confirms the summary as standardly cited, with three corrections: the oneness index is the IOS scale plus a “we” item (p. 484), as the SEP had it; the helping is a hypothetical choice among seven costed options, not an act; and the authors call oneness-based helping “nonaltruistic”, not egoistic (pp. 490–491).
Why this is here
The empirical form of the owner’s thesis that no action is selfless, only aimed at a larger self (CLAIM-491). Its rival is Batson et al. (LIT-1700), in the same issue.
Read in its place, before the reading
Superseded by NOTE-1444 and kept as the record of what the second-hand accounts gave. Both are borne out on the points they report.
The SEP entry (NOTE-1274, §5.3) quotes the paper’s oneness index (p. 484): the IOS scale of seven increasingly overlapping circle pairs, combined with a 7-point item on how far one would use “we” to describe the relationship. It reports the paper’s claim, from three studies, that empathy played no causal role once oneness was accounted for. It calls “merging” there “a label for whatever the IOS scale and the use-of-we test measure”.
Miyazono and Inarimori (NOTE-1277, pp. 3–4) report the paper’s first study: students imagined a near-stranger, an acquaintance, a good friend or their closest family member facing eviction, and chose among seven levels of help. With oneness controlled, empathic concern no longer predicted helping; oneness still did with empathy controlled. They quote the paper’s conclusion that empathy signals oneness (p. 491), that merging is “conceptual, not physical” (p. 482), and that it undermines “the distinction between selflessness and selfishness” (p. 482; the abstract on p. 481 says the same in other words). Their “seven-point scale” of “oneness” is the paper’s “we” item; the SEP’s description is the exact one.