| In recent years,helping behavior has aroused widespread concern in society.Helping behavior refers to voluntary acts performed with the intent to provide some benefit to another person and society,accompanied by one's personal intention and the inclination to one's interest.Personality is one of the important but easily overlooked factors of influencing helping behavior.In previous studies,it may have been inappropriate for Chinese people to explore the personality factors which were based on Western culture.Interpersonal responsibility was derived from the indigenous Chinese personality traits——the self-supporting personality.We explore the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior.Based on the strong situation hypothesis,we put forward the moderating model of situation factor which influences the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior.That is,in the different perspective taking conditions,the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior is different.We conducted three experiments to attempt to resolve the aforementioned issues.Study 1 explored the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior which obtained a sample of 149 undergraduate students.The results indicating that interpersonal responsibility was positively correlated with helping willingness(r=0.31,p<0.001)and helping frequency(r=0.27,p<0.001),suggesting that persons high in the interpersonal responsibility were more willing to help others.Study 2 introduced the perspective taking situation to examine whether it could moderate the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior.196 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions(experimental group: perspective taking condition;control group: no perspective taking condition).The results showed that: For helping willingness,the interaction between interpersonal responsibility and perspective taking situation was significant(b=-1.00,SE=0.26,t=-3.90,p < 0.01).In the no perspective taking condition,interpersonal responsibility was related positively to helping degree(b=1.11,SE=0.19,t=5.78,p<0.001).In the perspective taking condition,it was unrelated to helping degree(b=0.11,SE=0.17,t=0.64,p>0.05).For helping time,the interaction between interpersonal responsibility and perspective taking situation was significant(b=-0.89,SE=0.39,t=-2.31,p<0.05).In the no perspective taking condition,interpersonal responsibility was related positively to helping time(b=0.95,SE=0.29,t=3.30,p<0.01).In the perspective taking condition,it was unrelated to helping time(b=0.06,SE=0.26,t=0.24,p>0.05).These results suggest that,in the no perspective taking condition,interpersonal responsibility was related positively to helping behavior and in the perspective taking condition,interpersonal responsibility was unrelated to helping behavior.Study 3 examined whether perspective taking categories could moderate the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and helping behavior.Firstly,we conducted a questionnaire survey,obtaining 319 undergraduate students.Per the scores of interpersonal responsibility,the first 27% of the scores were high in interpersonal responsibility and the last 27% were low in interpersonal responsibility.These two groups were invited to our experiment.196 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions(technical perspective taking condition,cognitive perspective taking condition,affective perspective taking condition).The results showed that: For helping willingness,the interaction between interpersonal responsibility and perspective taking categories was significant,F(2,190)=5.06,?2=0.05.In the technical perspective taking condition,higher interpersonal responsibility predicted higher helping willingness,F(1,190)=21.16,p<0.001,?2=0.10.In the cognitive perspective taking condition,higher interpersonal responsibility predicted higher helping willingness,F(1,190)=5.22,p<0.05,?2=0.03.In the affective perspective taking condition,the effect of interpersonal responsibility on helping willingness was nonsignificant,F(1,190)=0.05,p=0.83,?2=.00.For helping frequency,the interaction between interpersonal responsibility and perspective taking categories was significant,F(2,190)=4.51,p<0.05,?2=0.05.In the technical perspective taking condition,higher interpersonal responsibility predicted higher helping frequency,F(1,190)=22.25,p<0.001,?2=0.11.In the cognitive perspective taking condition,higher interpersonal responsibility predicted higher helping frequency,F(1,190)=6.70,p=0.01,?2=0.03.In the affective perspective taking condition,the effect of interpersonal responsibility on helping frequency was nonsignificant,F(1,190)=0.36,p=0.55,?2=0.002.These results suggest that,in the technical and cognitive perspective taking conditions,interpersonal responsibility was related positively to helping behavior and in the affective perspective taking condition,interpersonal responsibility was unrelated to helping behavior.These results suggest that,interpersonal responsibility is closely related to helping behavior(helping degree and helping time)and the relationship is moderated by perspective taking situation,especially the affective perspective taking situation.Our research may provide a new way for cultivating interpersonal responsibility.These findings are worthy of further attention and empirical researches. |
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