 There is, however, a problem to be overcome before one concludes that the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis cannot explain the findings that Batson and his associates have reported. In arguing that  Table 4  reflects the predictions made by the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, Batson must assume that escape will alleviate the aversive affect in both low &amp; high empathy situations, and that subjects believe this (although the belief may not be readily available to introspection). One might call this the out of sight, out of mind assumption. Elaborating on an idea suggested by Hoffman (1991) and Hornstein (1991), an advocate of egoism might propose that although subjects do believe this when they have little empathy for the target, they do not believe it when they have high empathy for the target. Perhaps high empathy subjects believe that if they escape they will continue to be troubled by the thought or memory of the distressed target and thus that physical escape will not lead to psychological escape. Indeed, in cases where empathy is strong and is evoked by attachment, this is just what common sense would lead us to expect. Do you really believe that if your mother was in grave distress and you left without helping her you would not continue to be troubled by the knowledge that she was still in distress? We’re guessing that you don’t. But if the high-empathy subjects in Batson’s experiments believe that they will continue to be plagued by distressing thoughts about the target even after they depart, then the egoistic aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis predicts that these subjects will be inclined to help in both the easy physical escape and the difficult physical escape conditions, since helping is the only strategy they believe will be effective for reducing the aversive arousal. So neither the results reported in  Table 6  nor the results of any of Batson’s other experiments would give us a reason to prefer the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, because both hypotheses make the same prediction.