Effects Of Trait Empathy And State Empathy On Altruisc Behavior In Different Situations

Acting altruistically means intending to benefit another with one's behavior (Schwartz, Quaranto, & Gray,2013).As the development of positive psychology, altruism has attracted widespread attention. Since altruistic behavior among individuals are of great importance to promote the development of the society, the factors that influence altruism have been one of the important problems that researchers in the field of positive psychology focused on. The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that empathy elicits altruistic motivation.Broad conceptualizations of empathy refer to a multitude of related, yet distinct phenomena including emotion contagion, affect matching,empathic concern (also called sympathy) as well as cognitive aspects such as understanding what another person is thinking or feeling.Most current approaches agree that empathy comprises both trait empathy and state empathy.Trait empathy refers to a stable disposition, and state empathy is emotional responses to situations.According to previous studies, few research on the relation between empathy and altruism has focus on both trait empathy and state empathy. Furtermore,the results are not consistent.Altruism is not only under the influence of individual factors, also under the influence of individual situational factors.Empathy may have different effect on behaviors in different situations.Research have found that helping behaviors in in emergency situation are less than in general situation.But both the trait empathy and state empathy can predict an individual's helping behavior.Altruism includes donating property to charity, provide help to others, emotional comfort to others, who made unfair punishment, and volunteer activities.These altruism behaviors among individuals are of great importance to promote the harmonious relationship among social members.As an important part of manpower resources in the society of vocational college students and the level of altruistic behaviors have important implications for nation-building and development.Thus it is of great significance for us to research the factors that influence vocational college students' altruistic level.This research examines the relationship of empathy(trait empathy and state empathy) and altruism in different situtaions(danger and safe).Study 1 examines the effect of priming and the relationship of state empathy and altruism.Study 2 took the same design to test the relationship of trait empathy,state empathy and altruisc behavior in the different situation.The main results were as following:(1) Text material can effectively induce subjects state empathy. State empthy can predict individual's altruisc behavior.(2) Subjects both in high and low empathy group were in the security context of altruistic behavior were significantly higher than in dangerous situations of altruistic behavior.(3) In the security situation,both trait empathy and state empathy can pridict altruisc behavior.But in the dangerous situation,only state empathy have influence on altruism.