Perspective Taking as a Moderator of the Relation between Social Rejection and Altruism

Zheng Li
2011 International Journal of Psychological Studies  
This paper measures rejected people's willingness to help and empathic concern towards the target person need help under four scenarios after the manipulation of social rejection by essay task and perspective taking by instruction before reading the descriptions of the scenarios. Participants in rejection condition with a high level of perspective taking showed a higher level of willingness to help than participants with a low level of perspective taking. Rejected participants indicated equal
more » ... gree of willingness to help another rejected person no matter they adopt perspective taking or not. When the helping behavior can be considered as a future interaction, rejected participants with a high level of perspective taking did not show a higher level of intention to help when compared with control participants with a high level of perspective taking. The willingness to help did not drop significantly when the altruistic behavior is under a risk of negative evaluation. The manipulation of rejection and perspective taking did not show an influence on the participants' empathic concern towards the target person. The results were not induced by mood or rejection sensitivity.
doi:10.5539/ijps.v3n2p64 fatcat:p6bybkirozdbfgvrri7cb2uc4a