The Influence Of Interpersonal Distance Perception On Altruistic Behavior

Altruism is an important scientific and practical problem. The more altruistic behavior is necessary for social running normally. People have different ways of thinking when they face the situation where the altruistic behaviors happen or not.Social mindfulness is one of the patterns of manifestation of altruism. Social mindfulness is being thoughtful needs and wishes of others,and making other-regarding choice. We explore the effect of emotional expression and interpersonal distance on the altruistic option. In experiment 1, 60 university students participated in the experiment. We investigate the different influences of far and close interpersonal distance perception on the altruistic option through social mindfulness paradigm. In experiment 2,70 university students participated in the experiment. we use the method stop-distance measurement and social mindfulness paradigm to study mediate effect of interpersonal distance at emotional face and altruistic option. Based on the explicit behavior test, in experiment 3, 36 university students participated in the experiment. We combined implicit test by implicit association test to study the role of interpersonal distance perception on the altruistic choice.Results:(1) Social mindfulness was greater in the friends' condition than in the strangers'condition. Although the mean score for participants in the parents condition seemed notable lower than participants in the friends condition, this difference was not statistically significant.(2) Displaying anger emotions were kept away at the furthest distance, followed by those displaying sadness, leaving those displaying happiness closest to the participant. Social mindfulness was greater in the happiness emotions condition than in the sadness emotions condition or anger emotions condition.(3) Interpersonal distance acted as the mediate effect in the facial expression and altruistic choice.(4) Participants had faster response when altruistic was paired with close relationship and non-altruistic was paired with distant relationship than when pairings were reversed. The current experiment examined that the association mechanism presumed to close or distant may affect implicit altruistic behavior.Through these studies, we address the question: whether the interpersonal distance perception affects significantly altruistic option and we found that interpersonal distance was percept far may elicit altruistic choice of social mindfulness to reduced,and interpersonal distance was percept close may elicit altruistic choice to increase.And, emotional face could impact the perception of interpersonal distance and can lead to different altruistic option. The results suggest interpersonal distance perception is one of the influences on altruistic option. Besides, the studies reveal the tendency on the implicit altruistic, and it shows that people tend to someone who has close relationship with oneself on implicit altruistic attitude.