Influence Of Moral Identity,Empathy And The Types Of Recipients' Responsibility For Their Plight On Altruistic Behavior

Altruistic behavior,a kind of helping behavior,does not go after any external outward reward.Altruistic behavior is a noble conduct which is today's society encouraged.Altruistic behavior has many forms,such as helping strangers,giving money to charitable organizations,and so on.Many factors stemming from altruist,recipients and the characteristics of situation can influence altruistic behavior.For example,the lack of moral awareness of the potential helper,the potential danger of the recipients,all these factors have resulted in what we called “Chinese can not be afforded ”.Exploring the altruistic behavior and its influence factors further will offer positive significance in the academic researching and the progress of social civilization.This thesis aims at the disadvantage that there were a little studies involving the interaction between altruism and recipients.This thesis explores the influence factors on altruism behavior,from the perspectives of altruism's moral identity,empathy and the types of responsibility of recipients in the domestic cultural background.We focus on the effect of interaction between the type of recipients' responsibility and the characteristics of altruist on altruistic behavior.This thesis takes college students from diverse majors as participants,and including three studies.The first study explores the influence of the students' moral identity,empathy and the types of responsibility of recipients on charitable behavior by questionnaire survey.The second study explores the influence of the primed moral identity,empathy and the types of responsibility of recipients on charitable behavior by priming paradigm manipulating the level of participants moral identity.The last study also explores the influence of them on charitable behavior by priming paradigm manipulating the level of participants empathy.The results demonstrate that:(1)There studies show that college students generally have the sense of charitable donation.The percentages of donation rate in our three studies all have been over 78%,no matter how recipients responsibility types.(2)The first study demonstrate that all this factors such as moral identity,empathy and the types of responsibility of recipients affect participants' charitable contributions.Empathy increase donation wills.Participant show higher charitable wills to recipients with low plight responsibility rather than recipients with high plight responsibility.(3)Moral identity/empathy have no effect on donations to recipients with high plight responsibility,but moral identity/empathy increases donations for recipients with low plight responsibility.(4)The second study shows that moral identity can be activated successfully in certain circumstances,and activated moral identity will influence participants' charitable contributions,but this influence is affected by the types of responsibility of recipients.Activated moral identity can significantly increase donations for recipients with low plight responsibility,while activated moral identity has on influence on charitable donations for recipients with high plight responsibility.(5)The third study shows that empathy can be activated successfully in certain circumstances,and activated empathy will influence participants' charitable contributions.Activated empathy can promote participants' charitable contributions no matter the type of responsibility recipients,But activated empathy can significantly increase donations for recipients with low plight responsibility,while activated empathy has little influence on charitable donations for recipients with high plight responsibility.