The Impact Of Power On Helping Behavior In College Students:Analysis Of Moderating Effect And Mediating Effect

Helping behavior means that can give others the help or promote the well-being of others regardless of the behavioral motive of the individual,it is an important form of prosocial behavior.Helping behavior makes people develop a positive social relations with others and it is an important area of behavioral system throughout the individual life.Helping behavior not only has a positive effect on the development of the individual,but also plays an important role in the whole social civilization,harmony and prosperity.Whereas power is seen as the central factor of social relations,it can shape the individual behavior in the daily life.Power usually makes the individual more focus on their own and more attention to the relevant behavior of self-interest,and then reduce the behavior of helping.But at the same time the power will activate the expression of the inherent characteristics of the individual,the impact of power on helping behavior may be moderated by individual intrinsic trait.Agreeableness as a typical altruistic character may moderate the influence of power on helping behavior.Empathy is often considered as the direct factors that influence the helping behavior,and therefore the agreeableness may moderate the effect of power on help behavior through empathy.There are few studies about power and helping behavior in China,and the questionnaires are used to explore the relationship between the two,there is lack of empirical study.There are few studies to test the effects of trait power and state power on helping behavior at the same time;Then the researches' results about power on helping behavior are inconsistent,in order to integrate the inconsistency of the results of power on the helping behavior,this study adds the moderator variable of the agreeableness,and explores the mediating mechanism of the influence of power on helping behavior.In the study 1,the questionnaire survey method was used to explore initial the effect of the trait power on the helping behavior and the moderating effect of agreeableness.In order to improve the internal validity of research results,Study 2 tests the effect of state power on helping behavior and the moderating role of the agreeableness by priming the power of the subjects;On the basis of Study 2,Study 3 attempts to probe the mediated effect of empathy between power and helping behavior and explore if agreeableness may moderate the effect of power on empathy.The results show that:(1)Power is the negative predictive factor of helping behavior,individual's helping behavior is showing a downward trend with the increasing of power;(2)Agreeableness can affect the helping behavior,that is,individuals with high agreeableness behave more helping behavior than the lowers.(3)Agreeableness can moderate the effect about power on helping behavior.Specifically,individuals with low agreeableness rather than high agreeableness show less helping behavior among powerful than powerless condition.(4)Agreeableness moderate the effect of power on helping behavior by moderating the empathy;...