The Study Of Relationship Between Subjective Social Economic Status, Empathy And Helping Behavior In College Students

China is moving from the traditional acquaintances society to strangers’ society. The high speed development of economy, people’s mania for material, cause the decrease of interpersonal trust, the people in the society are indifferent to each other, society degenerated into a single individual, it is hard to see harmony scene. Helping behavior is the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation thousands of years, therefore, given the current social situation, it is necessary to cultivate and arouse people’s helping behavior.Some scholars think that lower socioeconomic status would have less helping behavior and less generous behavior. Whereas, some scholars held the opposite view: although lower socioeconomic status suffers more stress, they seem more willing to help others. What kind of relationship between socioeconomic status and helping behavior? Whether the people who have less material wealth has more helping behavior or not? How empathy play a role between socioeconomic status and helping behavior? These questions are to be solved. Thus, using the questionnaire method, in study1, 300 participants complete socioeconomic status scale 、Mehrabian trait empathy scale(internal consistency reliability is 0.78, test-retest reliability is 0.60)to check the relationship among individual’s socioeconomic status, empathy and helping behavior. Adopting situational experiment method, in study 2, 291 participants participate in this experiment to explore the effect of individual’s socioeconomic status and state empathy on helping behavior. First, all participants complete ten ladders picture to test their socioeconomic status. We present empathy material and pictures to half of them, inducing their emotion through imaging role, then ask them to complete dictator game to test helping behavior. After a period, we present neutral stimulus material, and then complete another helping task. The other participates complete this experiment in converse order. During this experiment, control the effect of extra variable. After the experiment, all participants complete consciousness investigation.The results are as follows:(1)Compared with the higher socioeconomic status, the level of trait empathy of the individuals with lower socioeconomic status is higher, and shows more helping behavior,the trait empathy does not play a role in the socioeconomic status and helping behavior.(2) Under the state empathy condition, the higher socioeconomic status show more helping behavior.