 Batson’s work on the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, buttressed by the Stocks et al. finding, is a major advance in the egoism vs. altruism debate. The aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis has been one of the most popular egoistic strategies for explaining helping behavior. But the experimental findings strongly suggest that in situations like those that Batson and his associates have studied, the empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a much better explanation of the subjects’ behavior than the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis.