Are Empathy and Prosocial Behavior Consistently Positively Correlated? Effects of Mediator or Moderator Variables based on Emotional and Cognitive Perspectives
Empathy is the ability of an individual to understand and appreciate the psychological feelings
of others in interpersonal interactions, and has an impact on the individual’s psychological and behavioral
development. Empathy is positively correlated with prosocial behavior and has a predictive effect on
prosocial behavior. However, the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior is also affected
by a third variable, which is mainly mediating or moderating. The dual-path model theory of empathy
provides a rationale for the rationale that third variables affect prosocial behavior from both affective
and cognitive perspectives. Future research should pay more attention to the exploration of the influence
mechanism of empathy and pro-social behavior from the third variable from this perspective, so that it
has practical application value.