This page contains all the collected study materials and instructions from authors that we have compiled. We also include any comments from other contributors or follow up instructions that we have learned since the beginning of the project. Click "read more" below or choose the "Wiki" option above for further information. For technical problems, please contact OSF help desk (support@osf.io). For questions or information about the study contact either either Kiersten Baughman (kierstenbaughman7@gmail.com) or Becka O'Neil (becka.plitt@gmail.com) so that the materials can be made available on this website. **Abstract from original paper** Empathy is considered a virtue, yet it fails in many situations, leading to a basic question: When given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? Whereas past work has focused on material and emotional costs of empathy, here, we examined whether people experience empathy as cognitively taxing and costly, leading them to avoid it. We developed the empathy selection task, which uses free choices to assess the desire to empathize. Participants make a series of binary choices, selecting situations that lead them to engage in empathy or an alternative course of action. In each of 11 studies (N = 1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as more effortful and aversive and less efficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting that cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others’ feelings, people act as if it is not worth the effort. **Materials** The original paper is here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-20830-001 This project will only be replicating Study 1 as described in the paper. The authors have made their materials, code, and data open here: https://osf.io/j8dws/. Study 1's survey materials can be found as a qsf (Qualtrics file) [here][1]. If you do not have access to Qualtrics, here are some helpful materials: 1. [PDF of the Qualtrics survey][2] 2. [Survey flow from Qualtrics, showing the order of each question][3] 3. [Microsoft Word file with images from original study][4] **Sample** To obtain a CREP completion certificate the minimum N for this project is 56. **Notes from Original Author** - In terms of other factors to consider, this study and others in the paper were run on Mechanical Turk several years ago, with typical methodological provisions about being in the US, over 18, 95% HITs completed, over 1000 HITs approved. As such, the majority of our participants were of typical MTurk age (e.g., tending to average in their 30’s). If you are planning to run on MTurk now, then given the rise in the time since in new concerns about data quality online, we might suggest including attention control checks, working through CloudResearch, etc. A second consideration is choice context: as we noted in the paper, the contrast choice to empathy will likely matter for the opportunity costs and whether empathy is avoided. Finally, you might consider stimulus modality — we do have one supplemental study in that paper which used vignettes and showed empathy approach, rather than avoidance. However, these last two considerations may be less relevant if the aim is to directly replicate Study 1. - Additionally, as we noted in the supplement to the original paper, there are minor typos in four of the EST questions in Study 1, namely questions 2, 26, 38, and 39, where there is a typo in the trial-level instruction that should be amended from “hand” to “person”. - With respect to college vs. crowdsourced samples, Ferguson & Inzlicht (2022, Behavior Research Methods) did publish a slightly smaller effect with a college sample compared to an online sample. [1]: https://osf.io/p3wu5 [2]: https://osf.io/4xadq [3]: https://osf.io/c6x2p [4]: https://osf.io/4kbgy