Ricerc@Sapienza

Italy is one of the first European epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic. In attempts to hinder the spread of the novel coronavirus disease, Italian government hardened protective measures, from quarantine to lockdown, impacting millions of lives dramatically. Amongst the enacted restrictions, all non-essential activities were prohibited as well as all outdoor activities banned. However, at the first spur of the outbreak, for about a dozen of days, physical and sports activities were permitted, while maintaining social distancing.

Allogeneic umbilical cord blood (UCB) donation is a pro-social behaviour directed to strangers that has a certain cost for the donor. Although the promotion of such behaviour is an important goal for many countries' health systems, little is known about the reasons that would lead to it. With this study, we explored how the impact of social closeness on altruism and trust could be related to UCB donation in a sample of new-mothers (N = 167). Participants played hypothetical Dictator and Trust games with socially close (e.g., parents) or distant (e.g., strangers) others.

The aim of this paper is to present an experiment in which we compare the degree of empathy that a convenience sample of students expressed with humans, animals, robots and objects. The present study broadens the spectrum of the elements eliciting empathy that previous research has so far explored separately. Our research questions are: does the continuum represented by this set of elements elicit empathy? Is it possible to observe a linear decrease of empathy according to different features of the selected elements?