The Influence Of Middle School Students' Empathy On Pro-social Behavior

As one of the important contents of primary and middle school students' socialization,pro-social behavior has been extensively studied in aspects of the development and influencing factors.As a kind of pro-social behavior and tendency that people can realize,explicit pro-social behavior is easily influenced by social approval effect in the process of research.With the development of research on implicit social cognition and research methods,more and more researchers begin to pay attention to the implicit pro-social behavior of individuals.So in this study,the pro-social behavior is divided into explicit pro-social behavior and implicit pro-social behavior.Empathy,as a kind of pro-social emotion,is an important motivation to promote pro-social behavior.Vitaglione(1999)divided empathy into trait empathy,which is the ability to empathize as a relatively stable personality trait,and state empathy,which is the immediate emotional response of an individual to a situation.On the basis of existing theories and researches,this study aims to explore the development status of explicit pro-social behavior and trait empathy of primary and middle school students,the influence of empathy(trait empathy,state empathy)on students' explicit pro-social behavior of middle school students,and the influence of empathy(trait empathy,state empathy)on implicit pro-social behavior of middle school students.This study includes the following three studies:In Study 1,185 primary and middle school students in grade 4,grade 6 and grade 8 were selected to participate the survey.The Pro-social Tendencies Measure(PTM)was used to measure their level of explicit pro-social behavior and Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI)was used to measure their trait empathy ability.The results showed that :(1)the level of explicit pro-social behavior and trait empathy of primary and middle school students improved significantly with the increase of grade;(2)the level of explicit pro-social behavior and trait empathy of female students are significantly higher than that of male students;(3)the total score of explicit pro-social behavior and trait empathy of students in grades 4,6 and 8 were significantly positively correlated,and the correlation between dimensions of grade 8 students was the highest.Therefore,middle school students of grade 8 were studied in study 2 and 3.In Study 2,a 2(trait empathy: high,low)× 2(state empathy: controlling,priming)between-subjects design was applied,with explicit pro-social behavior as the dependent variable.Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI)was used to measure trait empathy;state empathy priming materials and empathy response scale were used to start state empathy and measure its level;and Pro-social Tendencies Measure(PTM)was used to measure the level of explicit pro-social behavior.The results showed that:(1)the level of explicit pro-social behavior of high-trait empathy middle school students was significantly higher than that of low-trait empathy middle school students;(2)the priming of state empathy significantly improved the level of explicit pro-social behavior of low-trait empathy middle school students,but had no significant effect on high-trait empathy middle school students.In study 3,a 2(trait empathy: high,low)× 2(state empathy: controlling,priming)between-subjects design was applied,with the implicit pro-social behavior as the dependent variable.Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI)was used to measure trait empathy;state empathy priming materials and empathy response scale were used to start state empathy and measure its level;and Pro-social Implicit Association Test(IAT)was used to measure the level of implicit pro-social behavior.The results showed that:(1)there were significant IAT effects in both low-trait empathy and high-trait empathy middle school students;(2)the level of implicit pro-social behavior of middle school students under the primed condition of state empathy was significantly higher than that of middle school students under controlled condition of state empathy;(3)to low-trait empathy middle school students,the priming of state empathy significantly improved the level of their implicit pro-social behavior,while to high-trait empathy students,the improvement is not significant.Based on the above researches,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The level of explicit pro-social behavior and trait empathy of primary and middle school students improves with the increase of grade;there's gender difference in both of them;there is a positive correlation between the two.(2)Trait empathy is the main factor that affects middle school students' explicit pro-social behavior,and state empathy plays a moderating role in the relationship between middle school students' trait empathy and explicit pro-social behavior.(3)State empathy is the main factor that affects middle school students' implicit pro-social behavior,and trait empathy plays a moderating role in the relationship between middle school students' state empathy and implicit pro-social behavior.