The Cues of COVID-19: Negative Emotions and Empathy Guide Prosocial Behavior
- DOI
- 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.336How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- COVID-19; pro-social behavior; emotion; empathy
- Abstract
The COVID-19 research literature reveals that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people faced with unemployment risks, community blockades, and various negative information on the Internet, people will have fear, disgust, sadness, and other emotions in the short term, and will lead to anxiety and depression in a long time symptom, and cues about the COVID-19 can also cause emotional changes in people. Research on pro-social behaviors suggests that the influence of negative emotions on pro-social behavior tendencies is complex, and empathy will increase pro-social behavior. Study 1 is a measurement of people’s pro-social behavior tendency under two different conditions. Compared with the controlled subjects, the subjects assigned to watch the cues of COVID-19 in Chinese reported more pro-social behavioral tendencies. In Study 2, we find that cues related to the epidemic did affect people’s emotional changes, and the sum of these emotions also has a significant impact on pro-social behavioral tendencies. To understand which emotional mediator has the greatest influence on pro-social behavioral tendencies, study 2 also finds the complete mediating effect of empathy. Our results indicate that the cues of COVID-19 increased people’s negative emotions and empathy, and empathy led to an increase in pro-social behavior, this reaction even crosses race and country. The result also has important implications for initiating people’s pro-social behavior in major crisis events in the future.
- Copyright
- © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Dongfang Li PY - 2021 DA - 2021/12/24 TI - The Cues of COVID-19: Negative Emotions and Empathy Guide Prosocial Behavior BT - Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 1968 EP - 1975 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211220.336 DO - 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.336 ID - Li2021 ER -