The Influence Of Emotion And Victim 's Recognition On Prosocial Behavior: Mediating Role Of Emotion

Prosocial behavior brings benefits to others. It is affected by many factors from individuals and situations. Studies have found that empathy is an important individual factor that influences prosocial behavior. And the identifiable victim effect is a very important situational factor that influences prosocial behavior. Therefore, this article attempts to study prosocial behavior from a person*situation perspective. There are three studies in this article:study1explored the identifiable victim effect in China; study2introduced empathy in the study through measuring dispositional empathy and manipulating empathy, and discussed if there was a interaction between empathy and the identifiable victim effect; study3explored emotion to study the the internal mechanism of the interaction between empathy and the identifiable victim effect. Results showed that:(1) Individuals showed more donations willingness to the identified victim than unidentified ones;(2) Dispositional empathy and the identifiable victim effect interacted with each other in prosocial behavior. Individuals with high dispositional empathy showed more donations willingness to the identified victim than unidentified ones. But individuals with low dispositional empathy didn’t show any difference.(3)Empathy manipulation and the identifiable victim effect interacted with each other in prosocial behavior. Individuals who focused on empathy showed more donations willingness to the identified victim than unidentified ones. But individuals who didn’t focus on empathy didn’t show any difference.(4) Emotion had a significant mediating effect in the relation between the interaction of empathy and the identifiable victim effect and prosocial behavior.