Bridging Personality and Online Prosocial Behavior: The Roles of Empathy, Moral Identity, and Social Self-Efficacy

Frontiers in Psychology

Shuyue Zhang¹  Peng Sun²  Bingqing Ma³  Qingke Guo³  Jie Leng³ 

[1] Department of Psychology, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, China;Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China;

关键词: personality;    online prosocial behavior;    empathy;    moral identity;    social self-efficacy;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575053

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Personality has been considered as important influential factors of prosocial behavior (PB). This study aims to investigate whether the personality-PB association revealed in the real world is applicable to cyberspace. Researchers further considered moral identity (MI), empathy, and social self-efficacy as mediators accounting for the association of personality and online prosocial behavior (OPB). Self-reported measures were administrated to 1398 participants from eastern China. Results showed (1) extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were positively related to OPB, while neuroticism was negatively related to OPB; (2) perspective taking could serve as a mediator between all big five traits and OPB, social self-efficacy did the same job unless the predictor was agreeableness. Empathic concern and MI were less important mediators partly because OPB involves no face-to-face interaction. These findings show that personality has a significant effect on OPB through its influence on moral development.

【 授权许可】

Unknown