共情能减少中国人的差别信任

Empathy Can Reduce Chinese Disparate Trust

只信任亲近的人,不信任陌生人,即差别信任是中国社会存在的严重问题。由于共情能拉近人与人之间的距离,本研究通过3个涉及信任游戏的实验来考察共情与差别信任的关系。在实验1中,对虚拟人物表现更高共情水平的被试更少受到关系距离的影响。在实验2、3中,被试的共情水平通过文章、图片记忆任务来操纵,两个实验都发现共情组比控制组表现更低的差别信任。实验结果表明,诱发共情能增强个体对陌生人的信任,进而减少差别信任。

Disparate trust,which means exclusive trust in intimates and mistrust in strangers,is a serious issue in Chinese society.Given that empathy can make people closer to each other,three experiments involving the Trust Game were conducted to examine the relationship between empathy and disparate trust.In Experiment 1,the participants who showed greater empathy with the virtual character were less likely to be influenced by the relationship between them.In Experiment 2 and 3,participants’empathy levels were manipulated by the article memory and picture memory tasks.Both experiments found that the empathy group presented less disparate trust than the control group.The results demonstrated that the induction of empathy helped strengthen the individuals’trust in strangers as well as reduce their disparate trust.