The Effects Of Perspective Taking And Empathic Concern On Helping Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Group Membership

Helping behavior is one of the most prominent prosocial behavior. It is the embodiment of relationship between the individual and others. It's also an important aspect of social interaction activities. Perspective taking and empathic concern are two important factors that influnce helping behavior. Their relationship with helping behavior and their effects on it are different because of two different group memberships which are in-group and out-group. Besides, perspective taking contains cognitive perspective taking and affective perspective taking. And the relationship of these two types of perspective taking with helping behavior and their effects on it are also different.In this research, college students were tested using the experimental method. It mainly exployes the relationship between the two different types of perspective taking and empathic concern with helping behavior and their effects on it in the in-group and out-group membership. The Research is divided into two parts: the first part tries to explore the relationship between perspective taking and empathic concern with helping behavior in the in-group membership, as well as their impacts; the second part tries to explore the relationship between perspective taking and empathic concern with helping behavior in the out-group membership, as well as their impacts.In this study, the main results obtained are as follows:(1) For college students, the cognitive perspective taking and helping behavior are related in the in-group membership; For college students, the empathic concern which underlies the cognitive perspective taking and helping behavior are significantly relevant in the in-group membership; For college students, the affective perspective taking and helping behavior are not related in the in-group membership; For college students, the empathic concern which underlies the affective perspective taking and helping behavior are not relevant in the in-group membership; (2) For college students, the cognitive perspective taking and the empathy concern which underlies the cognitive perspective taking can predict helping behavior together in the in-group membership; (3) For college students, the cognitive perspective taking and helping behavior are not related in the out-group membership; For college students, the empathic concern which underlies the cognitive perspective taking and helping behavior are positively relevant in the out-group membership; For college students, the affective perspective taking and helping behavior are not related in the out-group membership; For college students, the empathic concern which underlies the affective perspective taking and helping behavior are not relevant in the out-group membership; (4) For college students, the empathic concern which underlies the cognitive perspective taking can predict helping behavior together in the in-group membership.The innovation of this study are as follows: (1) It exployes the relationship between the the two types of perspective taking which are cognitive perspective taking and affective perspective taking with helping behavior, as well as the impact of them; (2) It exployes the different group membership that are in-group and out-group effect on helping behavior; (3) It combinates the social background of the Sichuan earthquake which is with practical significance.