Anastassia Vivanco Carlevari

Suffering is an inherent part of human life. Experiences of hardship range from large-scale disasters that shape entire societies to private and silent struggles that unfold within individual lives. In an era of constant media exposure, reports of war, catastrophe, injustice, and crisis seem omnipresent, yet acknowledging the scope of such suffering frequently exceeds emotional and cognitive capacities. At the same time, misfortunes are not limited to distant and large-scale events; through conversations and everyday exchanges, people hear about accidents, illness, financial difficulties, or interpersonal conflict affecting people we do not personally know. Similarly, we voluntarily immerse ourselves in fictional narratives centered on drama, loss, violence, and death. In other words, we encounter stories of hardship everywhere—online, in the news, in the arts, and in everyday conversations—because suffering is an unavoidable part of life.

Given that engaging with others’ suffering can be taxing and overwhelming, it might seem reasonable to expect that people would avoid such content, particularly when no personal relationship involves the individual suffering. Yet people consistently choose to read, watch, discuss, and even organize around the hardships of strangers. Although engaging with negative situations carries emotional and cognitive costs, people would weigh these costs against anticipated benefits (Niehoff & Oosterwijk, 2020). Through a series of empirical studies, this work examines the motives that drive voluntary engagement with strangers’ suffering and the outcomes that follow such exposure, arguing that this decision reflects an evaluation of the perceived value of engaging with suffering.

Across three empirical chapters, the work integrates theoretical perspectives from curiosity research, information seeking, motivated empathy, and emotion regulation to investigate why people voluntarily engage with negative social information through different modalities. The dissertation proposes a framework in which engagement with others’ suffering is understood as a goal-oriented behavior. The results of each empirical chapters investigated the value of engaging with suffering from a different angle. Therefore, we initiated by investigating people’s reflections on their experiences of engaging with strangers’ suffering and elaborated a taxonomy of motives (Chapter 2). The taxonomy derived in a choice paradigm, to test the motives’ that increase the likelihood of engaging with emotionally evocative images and stories (Chapter 3). Finally, we investigated the value of engaging with suffering by comparing the experienced outcomes of viewing images of suffering to positive and neutral social images (Chapter 4).

In Chapter 2, we build a taxonomy of how people make sense of the value of engaging with strangers’ suffering. Using a mixed-methods approach, one fully qualitative study and one mixed methods study, we asked participants to recall an instance when they voluntarily engaged with a stranger’s hardship and to explain why they chose to do so. In Study 2.1, we conducted a thematic analysis focusing on four questions: who the stranger was, what the situation about, how participants engaged, and why they engaged. The findings revealed a wide variation in the situations suffering, characterized the stranger, the source of information, and the value participants saw in engaging. In Study 2.2, we turned the qualitative themes into items and examined how they clustered statistically. The results demonstrated that people engage with the suffering of strangers due to epistemic value, referring to the information and knowledge acquired from the situation. Furthermore, people reflected on the eudaimonic value, as stories of suffering can hold meaning and provide insight on human’s vulnerabilities and struggles. Results also reflected the social value, as people mentioned engaging to sympathize with situations of suffering and show support. Finally, situations of suffering hold affective value, as people experienced relevant positive and negative emotions while engaging with these situations. Together, these studies laid the groundwork for understanding both the range of instances of suffering people engage with and the diverse motives that drive these choices.

In Chapter 3, we examined whether the motives identified in Chapter 2 predict people’s choices to engage with emotionally evocative content in a controlled setting. Drawing on the previously identified range of reasons to engage, we measured these motives and tested which ones were related to the decision to choose to view or read about scenes of suffering. The studies included both negative and positive social situations to assess whether emotional valence shaped the salience of different motives. We also included different modalities of the stimuli by presenting images and written stories. Across exploratory and confirmatory studies, we first identified the most relevant motives and then tested their robustness. The results demonstrate that the choice to engage with emotionally evocative content increased if the content would be perceived as offering relevant knowledge, considered self-relevant, if it would evoke positive emotions, and as sense of thrill. Choices to engage decreased if the content would expect to evoke negative emotions. These results hold regardless of the stimuli valence. One motive was consistently interacted with valence, being a stronger predictor for choosing scenes of suffering: uncertainty reduction. This chapter allowed us to refine and strengthen a model of the key motives that drive engagement with emotionally evocative social situations.

In Chapter 4, we shifted the focus to experienced outcomes of engaging with suffering. Using a set of emotionally evocative images similar to those in Chapter 3, we asked participants to report the epistemic, social, and affective outcomes of viewing positive, negative, and neutral social situations. We also tested whether the type of engagement —through passive exposure or active choice—shaped the experienced outcomes reported. Results demonstrated that images of suffering hold salient epistemic value, as people reported experiencing higher levels of acquired knowledge, meaning of the human condition, and moral reflection from negative compared to positive and neutral social scenes. Interestingly, people reported higher levels of reduced uncertainty from positive and neutral images compared to negative. This finding contrasted with the results of Chapter 3, as reducing uncertainty was a stronger predictor for choosing negative content. Furthermore, people experienced higher levels of remaining uncertainty from viewing negative images compared to positive and neutral social images. This suggest a potentially paradoxical effect in which people are motivated to reduce uncertainty when they choose to engage with negative content, but possibly realize once engagement has occurred that the content raises new questions. The dynamics between motives to engage (anticipated impact) and experienced outcomes (actual impact), and how comparing these may drive subsequent engagement, is an important direction for future research.

Across these chapters, the findings investigate the value people reflect, anticipate and experience by engaging with the suffering of strangers. Although attending to suffering can be emotionally demanding, it can offer epistemic, social, and affective value. Engaging with the suffering of strangers can deepen understanding of complex or uncertain situations, expand knowledge about the world, and prompt reflection on vulnerability, fragility, and meaning in life. It can feel personally relevant, strengthen a sense of moral identity, and foster compassion, solidarity, and connection with distant others. At the same time, it stirs emotions that are not always comfortable and may raise new questions or uncertainties. Overall, this dissertation shows that the costs of engaging with suffering are, in some cases, outweighed by its perceived benefits. My goal was to advance in the understanding of how engaging with others’ hardship can serve as a meaningful way to learn, to reflect and to connect to others.