Research On The Relationships Between Empathic Response And Helping Behaviors To Valuing The Welfare Of The Person

Psychologists have been concerned factors of empathic response. The researchers found that a lot of factors on empathic response, such as the perceived need, perceived similarity, perspective taking and value the welfare of the person in need and so on. Valuing the welfare of the person in need is an important situational antecedent, meanwhile it is a consequence of empathic response. The purpose of this paper is to explore the functions of valuing the welfare of the person in need in influencing empathic response and which is not only develop the Davis's organizational model but also conduced to develop the moral education of the school.In Exp 1, with 117 college students as subjects, and Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Empathic Response Scale as instruments, and perceived similarity and value the welfare of the person in need as independent variables, and empathic response and helping behaviors as dependent variables,2×2 double variable between-subject factorial design was adopted to explore the clear relationships between perceived similarity, valuing the welfare of the person in need, empathic response and helping behaviors and test valuing the welfare of the person in need is an antecedent of empathy. In Exp 2, with 79 college students as subjects, and Empathic Response Scale as instrument, and empathic response as independent variable, and valuing the welfare of the person in need and helping behaviors as dependent variables, single variable between-subject factorial design was adopted to explore the functions of empathic response in influencing valuing the welfare of the person in need and helping behaviors and test valuing the welfare of the person in need is a consequence of empathy. Following results were shown:(1) Perceived similarity and valuing the welfare of the person in need were all important factors of empathic response, valuing the welfare of the person in need and empathic responses were all important factors of helping behaviors.(2) Empathic response could full mediate the relation between valuing the welfare of the person in need and helping behaviors, empathic response could full mediate the relation between perceived need and helping behaviors.(3) Empathic response was an important factor of valuing the welfare of the person in need and helping behaviors.(4) There was significant difference between the before and after helping behaviors in empathic response, but there was no significant difference between the before and after helping behaviors in valuing the welfare of the person in need.