Relationship Among Empathy,Interpersonal Relationship And Depression In Junior Middle School Students And Intervention Of Empathy

At present,empathy has been identified as a core component of the individual’s social and emotional functioning throughout their development.In China,the research on empathy has become a hot topic.Many papers suggest that,empathic training can not only directly improve perspective-taking and empathy concern of the trainees,but also indirectly affect the individual’s interpersonal relationship and depression.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to intervene with perspective-taking,empathy concern,fantasy and personal distress in empathy researches of junior middle school students and to explore the relationship among empathy ability,interpersonal relationship and depression.There are two studies in this paper.In the first research,questionnaires were issued to explore current situations of empathy,interpersonal communication and depression of junior middle school students and their relationships.On the basis of the relationship of the three factors and their current situations,the second research designed a set of intervention courses according to features of all empathy factors.98 students from two classes of Grade 1,including 48 students from the intervention class and 50 students from the control class,were selected as testes.A comparative study on the pretest and the posttest was conducted.Students of intervention class received psychology education with the course contents of empathy so as to test intervention effects of the course.The main results of this paper are as follows:(1)Junior high school students’ empathy ability and interpersonal relationship are generally above the average level,and their depression level is also relatively low.(2)Junior high school students have differences in empathy ability in grade,student origin,gender,student cadre,but there is no difference in whether the only child.(3)Middle school students empathic ability and interpersonal relationship is significantly positive correlation;Interpersonal relationship was negatively correlated with depression.Empathy concern and perspective-taking had a negative predictability to depression;personal distress had a positive predictability to depression;The interpersonal relationship had a suppression effect between empathy and depression.(4)Compared with students of the control group,perspective-taking,empathy concern and fantasy of intervention group students were significantly improved after the intervention,personal distress did not change significantly.(5)Interpersonal relationships improved significantly in the intervention group,but depression did not change significantly before and after the intervention.Conclusion:(1)Junior high school students are generally better in empathy,interpersonal relationship and depression,among which empathy is different in some demographic dimensions(grade,student origin,gender,student cadre or not);(2)The empathy ability,interpersonal relationship and depression are pairwise related,the interpersonal relationship had a suppression effect between empathy and depression;(3)The empathic course improves not only perspective-taking,empathy concern,fantasy,but also interpersonal relationships.