The Effecting Factors And Overcoming Stratages Of Partiality For High School Students: Different Functions Of Trait Empathy And State Empathy

The relationship among empathy, altruistic behavior and moral is the important issue that the moral psychologists all concern. Most research before stated that empathy will promote altruistic behavior, but altruistic behavior and moral principle conflict in some special context. This issue is important to construct a fair and harmonious society. The purpose of the paper is to explore the influence of trait empathy and state empathy on partiality, and the rules to overcome the partiality, which is conduced to develop the mental health education and the moral education. In Exp 1, with 60 senior high school students as subjects, simulating an actual situation in the laboratory, arousing students'state empathy by recording material, single variable between-subject factorial design was adopted to compare the partiality. In Exp 2, Questionnair Measure of Emotional Empathy and Empathic Response Scale as instruments were used to explore the functions of trait empathy and state empathy in influencing partiality. In Exp 3, with 90 senior high school students as subjects, arousing students'state empathy by recording material, single variable between-subject factorial design was adopted to explore whether salience of principles of justice and salience of others in need can overcome the partiality from empathy. The following results were shown:(1) There were significant differences between the high state empathy and the low state empathy in partiality. The partiality of the high state empathy group was significantly higher than the low state empathy group. State empathy induced senior high school students' partiality. (2) State empathy could full mediate the relation between trait empathy and partiality.(3) Perspective taking could partly mediate the relation between perceived need and empathy.(4) Salience of principles of justice overcame senior high school students' partiality from empathy.(5) Salience of others in need didn't overcome senior high school students' partiality from empathy.The innovation of this research lies in:(1) explore empathy from trait and state perspectives, and construct a mechanism model between empathy and partiality; (2) choose a special phenomenon of altruistic behavior, partiality, which triger the reflection of the relationship between altruism and justice; (3) the subjects of the research are senior high school students who are in the critical period of moral and personality development, the result of the research will supply advise for moral education, and it is theoretical implication and practise implication.