Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. ›› Issue (4): 870-875.

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The effects and mechanism of dispositional empathy and victim identifiability on college students’ pro-social behavior

  

  • Received:2015-01-25 Revised:2015-04-13 Online:2015-07-20 Published:2015-07-20

共情倾向与受害者可识别性对大学生捐款意愿的影响:共情反应的中介作用

邢淑芬1,袁萌1,孙琳1,林崇德2   

  1. 1. 首都师范大学教育学院心理系
    2. 北京师范大学
  • 通讯作者: 林崇德

Abstract: Pro-social behaviors are the important contents for college students to cultivate and practice the socialist core values. Previous studies have found that identified victims will increase people’s pro-social behaviors,researchers named this phenomenon as the identifiable victim effect. In other words,the identifiability of victim is an important factor affecting people’s pro-social behaviors,while previous research on the effects of the victims on pro-social behaviors were taken mainly in the western individualistic culture background,but in our more collectivist and interdependent cultural background,the existence of this phenomenon has not confirmed through the empirical research. Based upon,this study explored whether there’re still exists identifiable victim effect and potential psychological mechanism in China,which donations behaviors of college students was the indicators of pro-social behavior. Our study randomly chosen 83 college students from 2 universities in Beijing,adopting Dispositional Empathy Scale and Empathy Response Adjective Scale to measure subject’s dispositional empathy and empathy response,and also using audio and picture materials to operate the level of identifiability of victim,to investigate the interactive effects of the college student’s dispositional empathy and victim’s identifiability on their willingness of donation and the potential psychological mechanism. Specific research procedures included:firstly,a professionally trained graduate student of psychology instructed participants completed Dispositional Empathy Scale. Secondly,after the completion of Dispositional Empathy Scale,the college students would be randomly divided into two groups,and then respectively listened to and read the materials of the identifiable and unidentifiable victim conditions. Once again,after listening to and reading the materials,the college students were asked to evaluate their emotional reactions. Finally, the experimenter let the participants to assess their willingness of donation on a 7-point score. The results shows that:(1)the identifiability of victims affected pro-social behaviors of college students,that is,under our collectivist cultural backgrounds,identifiable victim effect still existed;(2) for the students with low level of empathic tendency,the victim’s identifiability could not influence their willingness of donation,while for those students with high level of empathic tendency,the willingness of donation under the identifiable victim conditions was significantly higher than that under the unidentifiable victim conditions. (3) Mediating effect analysis showed that the identifiability of victim can increase the level of sympathy the college students with high level of empathic tendency,which could predict their willingness of donation. The innovation of our study had mainly two points. Firstly,culture is an important factor affecting the social behaviors of individuals,previous research on identifiable victim effect mainly concentrated in the western cultural context,but in our more collectivist and interdependent cultural background,few studies have examined this issue. Secondly,previous studies investigated the effect of victim’s identifiability on individual empathic response,but have not directly investigated its mediating effects,this study directly discussed the empathic response as the mediating process between dispositional empathy and pro-social behaviors.

Key words: victim identifiability, dispositional empathy, empathy response, pro-social behaviors

摘要: 以83名大学生为研究对象,探讨共情倾向和受害者可识别性对大学生亲社会行为的交互效应及内在机制。结果表明:(1)我国文化背景下依然存在可识别受害者效应,即受害者可识别性影响大学生亲社会行为;(2)对于低共情倾向大学生,受害者可识别性对其捐款行为不存在显著影响,对高共情倾向的大学生,受害者可识别条件下的捐款意愿显著高于不可识别条件;(3)受害者可识别性通过增加高共情倾向大学生的共情反应,进而增加其捐款意愿。

关键词: 可识别受害者效应, 共情倾向, 共情反应, 亲社会行为