The Influence Of Positive Empathy On Prosocial Behavior

Empathy as a complex concept,both refers the dynamic response to others' emotion state(state empathy),but also a stable tendency of trait(trait empathy).State empathy refers to the feel into other people's feelings,including emotional empathy and cognitive empathy two components.Emotional empathy is(1)an emotional state;(2)caused by perception,imagination or speculation of the emotional state of others;(3)similar or consistent with the emotional state of others;(4)other oriented;(5)contains a certain cognitive process,such as the distinction between self and other,perspective taking and other cognitive processing.Cognitive empathy refers to the understanding of others emotions,reasoning,need to include emotional identification,analysis,reasoning and other cognitive process of participation,does not necessarily have emotional response,similar to the mind theory or emotional perspective taking.Trait empathy means that empathy as a stable tendency and ability,associated with other personality traits with a stable brain functional structure.Self-report method is usually used to measure trait empathy.Prosocial behavior refers to all acts contrary to the antisocial behavior of attacks,violations,etc.,including sharing,comfort,help,donation,altruism,cooperation and so on.Although the study of empathy and pro-social behavior has been rich,but a lot of research based on negative empathy(pain,sadness and other negative emotions of others).However,in daily life,to share the happiness of others,happy positive emotions is also a very common phenomenon of life.understanding and sharing positive emotions of others,known as positive empathy,current positive research is still a newer,the relationship between positive empathy and social behavior is also rarely studied.In view of this,this study from state and trait positive empathy two levels,discussed the relationship between positive empathy and pro-social behavior initially.Among them,the first two study based on the revision of the Positive and Negative Empathy scale discussed the relationship between empathy and pro-social behavior;study three further use experimental method to examin the influence of positive emaphy on subsequent pro-social sharing behavior.In study one,a total of 450 undergraduates in Datong University of Shanxi Province were examined.The results showed that the scale of translation had a good reliability and a confirmatory factor analysis showed that two factors model(positive.empathy and negative empathy)can be better fitted to the data,consistent with the model assumptions presented in the original scale.It can be used as an effective tool for further research.In study two,Positive and Negative Empathy scale and Pro-social Tendency scale(PTM)were measured in 600 undergraduates.The relationship between positive / negative empathy and pro-social behavior was analyzed by correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.Correlation analysis showed that the trait positive empathy are positively correlated with the dimensions of pro-social tendencies,and further hierarchical regression analysis showed that the positive empathy can be significant Predicting the tendency of pro-social behavior.Study three use of 2 * 2 mixed experiment design,recruiting 102 Datong University undergraduates as subjects,to all subjects presented positive and neutral scenes descripted events happened on a student,manipulation the empathy degree by ask the subjects either put themselves in the mood of protagonist in the scene(high empathy)or observe the information of protagonis provided by the scene objectivly(low empathy)and then let subjects decide how much money they would share between self and the protagonist in the scene to explore the impact of positive affection on subsequent post-social sharing behavior.The results showed that(1)the main effect of the degree of empathy was significant,both for the positive and the neutral scene,the high empathy group share more to the protagonist than the low empathy group;(2)the emotional valence of the scene type had no significant main effect;(3)the degree of empathy and emotional valence of the scene type interaction effect is obvious,further analyzed simple interaction effect found that(4)high empathy particpants share more with the protagonist in positive emotions than with characters in neutral emotions;(5)on the contrary,low empathy particpants share less with the protagonist in positive mood than characters under neutral mood.The results showed that positive empathy can promote the subsequent pro-social sharing behavior,however,can not share the pleasure of others(low positive empathy)can reduce the subsequent pro-social sharing behavior.This study enriches the previous research on the relationship between empathy and pro-social behavior from the perspective of positive empathy.First of all,the introduction of the trait Positive and Negative Empathy scale in the Chinese college students of Datong University revealed a good reliability and validity,can be used as an effective tool for the next research.Secondly,we use the relevant and empirical research to find the positive influence of positive empathy on pro-social behavior,expand previous researches on relationship between negative empathy and pro-social behavior.This study also has important application value.First of all,to promote interpersonal intimacy with a new perspective,secondly,provides a new way of thinking for cultivating happy and dignified attitude to life.In short,positive empathy in the promotion of pro-social behavior involved in complex motives,cognitive,emotional,cultural and other factors,this study only made a preliminary exploration of the relationship between positive empathy and pro-social behavior.Future study need further discussion on many issues.