 These are impressive findings. Over and over again, in well designed and carefully conducted experiments, Batson and his associates have produced results which are clearly compatible with the predictions of the empathy-altruism hypothesis, as set out in  Table 5,  and clearly incompatible with the predictions of the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, as set out in  Table 4.  Even the “clearly painful shock” experiment, which produced results in the pattern of Table 4, are comfortably compatible with the empathy-altruism hypothesis; as noted earlier, the empathy-altruism hypothesis allows that high empathy subjects may have desires that are stronger than their ultimate desire to help the target, and the desire to avoid a painful electric shock is a very plausible candidate.