A structural equation modeling study of helping behaviour from the perspective of person-by-situation design and feelings

The existing literature has identified that empathic concern for another person who is in need can induce helping behaviour. However, as people may experience more than one feeling in a given helping situation, it is possible that other feelings (e.g., pride or guilt) may also elicit helping behaviour. From the perspective of person-by-situation design, the present study shows that empathic concern, which predicted helping behaviour, was positively correlated with both the cost of the situation and dispositional empathy. In addition, the analysis of structural equation modeling (SEM) shows that negative feeling anticipated as a result of not helping (i.e., guilt) and positive feeling anticipated as a result of helping (i.e., pride) also played a mediating role in forming helping behaviour. In the total sample, negative feeling anticipated as a result of no helping was correlated with both the cost situations and dispositional empathy while positive feeling anticipated as a result of helping was only correlated with dispositional empathy. In addition, both types of feelings were correlated with dispositional empathy in the sub-sample for low-cost situation but not in the high-cost counterpart. -- empathic concern ; positive feelings as a result of helping ; negative feelings as a result of not helping ; empathy ; latent-variable modeling