Does Empathy Pay? Evidence on Empathy and Salaries of Recent College Graduates
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Does Empathy Pay? Evidence on Empathy and Salaries of Recent College Graduates Linda Kamas 1 & Anne Preston 2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper examines linkages between empathy and salaries of recent college graduates. While it has been suggested that greater empathy enhances performance because empathic individuals work well with others and are good leaders, it is also possible that they will be less productive due to lower motivation to compete for pecuniary rewards or because they are considered to be too accommodating. Also, more empathic individuals may choose occupations that are more socially oriented and less well paid. We find a large, significant negative relationship between empathy and earnings for both men and women. While we cannot pinpoint the cause for this strong correlation or reach conclusions about causation, we find that empathic individuals choose college majors and sectors of employment that pay less. However, gender, major, and sector together do not account for the full negative relationship between empathy and salaries. While it seems likely that preferences lead more empathic people to choose lower paying occupations, we cannot eliminate the possibility that greater empathy has a negative effect on productivity. Keywords Empathy . Earnings . Personality . Prosocial
Introduction Empathy has been identified as an important personality characteristic that leads to successful job performance and positive labor market outcomes. Empathic Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-02009298-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Linda Kamas [email protected] Anne Preston [email protected]
1
Department of Economics, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA
2
Department of Economics, Haverford College, 370 Lancaster Ave, Haverford, PA 19041, USA
Journal of Labor Research
people may work well with others, building and maintaining relationships in diverse organizations, and empathy may be a key component of effective managerial leadership. This position has recently been adapted as part of the conventional wisdom and is found in the business press and postings on the web. Some examples include: Wilson in Fortune (Wilson 2015) cites empathy as one of five essential talents senior executives say they need (the other four are intellectual curiosity, 360-degree thinking, cultural competence, and adaptability); Boyers in Forbes (Boyers 2013) says, “behind every successful business, you are likely to find a leader who has mastered the skill of empathy.” and Greenfield in Bloomberg (Greenfield 2016) states, “The future of American labor lies in jobs that require empathy and critical thinking.” These statements imply that greater empathy may “pay” and lead to higher earnings. However, it could be that more empathy has a negative impact on salaries if more empathic people are less driven to succeed or are so agreeable that
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