The Relationship Among Empathy And Social Distance And Interpersonal Cooperation

With the continuous development of social economy,interpersonal interaction is growing,and prosocial behavior among individuals is also increasing Although humans are known as ’super-cooperators ’ and have a special ability to cooperate with non-relatives,we all know that some people are generally more willing to cooperate than others,that is,there are obvious individual differences in interpersonal cooperation,such as: for local epidemic prevention regulations,most young people can cooperate and understand,while some older people show difficulty in cooperating and not understanding.Thus,age difference is an important factor affecting cooperation or not.So what other mechanisms are affecting cooperation? As an important variable affecting interpersonal communication,empathy is regarded as an important factor affecting individual interpersonal relationships.It can be inferred that people may affect the willingness of interpersonal cooperation due to differences in the level of empathy.Researchers usually divide empathy into trait empathy and state empathy.In addition,there have been differences in intimacy in Chinese society since ancient times,which means that individuals will consider the difficulty of maintaining long-term interaction with groups with different social distances and the possibility of obtaining long-term benefits when they cooperate(Lamba,2016).Therefore,this study explores the causal relationship between trait empathy,state empathy,social distance and interpersonal cooperation by manipulating social distance and age differences of partners.The subjects of this study are the elderly and college students.A large number of studies have produced contradictory results on the age differences of empathy,and their empathy and interpersonal adaptation should be taken seriously.These two groups have many scenes that need cooperation in life.It is of great research value to select the two typical groups of the elderly and college students as subjects with age differences.In the theoretical sense,it is conducive to enriching the relevant theories in the field of empathy development.In a certain sense,it broadens the research scope of empathy,social distance and pro-society.In the practical sense,this study is divided into four parts.Study 1: Interpersonal response indicator questionnaire and Chicken Game interpersonal cooperation paradigm were used to explore the relationship between individual trait empathy and cooperative behavior while exploring the age difference of empathy.The results showed that there were significant differences in the level of trait empathy between college students and the elderly,and subjects with high trait empathy were more inclined to choose interpersonal cooperation.And college students are more likely to choose interpersonal cooperation than older people.Study 2: To explore the influence of state empathy on interpersonal cooperation by experimental manipulation.Study 2 examines the influence of state empathy on interpersonal cooperation through situational induction from situational factors.The processing level includes(empathy: high,low;age: elderly,college students),the dependent variable is the proportion of interpersonal cooperation.The results showed that: after inducing state empathy,the study found that both the old and the college students,the high state empathy group was more inclined to choose interpersonal cooperation,similarly,in the high and low state empathy group,the college students were more inclined to interpersonal cooperation than the old people.Study 3:Individuals with high state empathy were added to the social distance of intimate and unfamiliar partners,and the age effect of social distance on interpersonal cooperation in the context of state empathy activation was investigated.The processing level included(social distance: intimate,unfamiliar;age: elderly,college students),the dependent variable is the proportion of interpersonal cooperation.The results show that the smaller the social distance is,the higher the cooperative tendency is.However,from the longitudinal comparison of each social distance,it is not always the case that college students are more inclined to interpersonal cooperation than the elderly.When the social distance is intimate,the elderly are significantly more inclined to cooperate with the close person than the college students,but when the social distance is distant,there is no significant difference between the cooperation intention of college students and the elderly.Study 4: We add the variable of age difference of cooperators.To study the interpersonal cooperation of alienated social distance on different age groups under state empathy;the processing level includes(age : the elderly,college students;the age of the subjects : the same age,the difference age),the dependent variable is the proportion of the subjects to choose interpersonal cooperation.Based on the above research,the following four conclusions are obtained,The results show that both the elderly and college students have a higher tendency to cooperate with peer groups.Strictly speaking,the significant differences in cooperation tendency existed only in the elderly subjects;Similarly,college students are more inclined to cooperate with people of different ages than older people.