Study On Junior Middle School Orphan Empathy And Prosocial Behavior Relationship

Orphans as a special group in society, their mental and behavior characteristics capture increasing attention from society. Some studies have found that emotional indifference of orphans, apparent bad behavior and whether they can be step in society in healthy mental states when they grow up are essential for educators of orphans. Current study attempts by comparing orphan schools and normal schools to understand orphan empathy ability and pro-social behavior development inclination characteristics and their relationship and aims to base on investigating differences in situations of both schools to provide theory evidence for educators who improve orphan good behaviors.The study retrieved one orphan school and normal middle school students as participants, including 457 students(295 boys and 162 girls, 231 students from seventh grade and 226 students from eighth grade) from orphan schools and 388 students from normal schools(206 boys and 1982 girls, 224 from seventh grade and 164 from eighth grade). By using questionnaires and statistical analysis, empathy ability and pro-social behavior inclination development have been compared and their relationship has been deeply analyzed.The results indicates that(1) students from orphan are significantly different from students in grade, gender in terms of empathy ability and pro-social behavior. Girls show better empathy ability than boys and eighth grade students obtain higher score in empathy ability than seventh grade students.(2) normal school students receive remarkably higher score in empathy ability than orphan school students except self sorrow dimension.(3)normal school students receive remarkably higher score in pro-social behavior than orphan school students.(4) empathy ability significantly relates with pro-social behaviors for both orphan school students and normal school students, and more specifically, correlation ratio is higher for orphan school students.(5) empathy ability positively predicts pro-social behaviors. Perspective-taking of orphan students distinctively predicts pro-social behaviors. In order to improve pro-social behaviors for orphans, emphasis should be paid for breeding empathy ability of male orphans.