作为情境变量的移情对暴力态度的影响

本研究将移情作为影响个体暴力态度的情境变量，通过对移情的启动来考察状态移情对暴力态度的影响。实验1在启动被试的移情感后，采用暴力IAT的方法考察被试内隐暴力态度的变化；实验2则在移情启动之后，用FMMU变态人格危险性评估问卷中的冲动倾向（VIO）考察被试的外显暴力的变化。实验结果显示，在启动被试的移情感后，我们没有发现被试的内隐和外显暴力态度发生显著变化，但经移情和性别的交互作用检验后发现，移情的启动减弱了男性被试的外显暴力态度，而对女性被试没有影响。研究结果表明，移情与暴力态度之间不存在内隐联结关系。根据以往的研究结果，移情对暴力态度的影响一是取决于意识层面的认知加工过程，二是与个体的特质性移情水平的高低有关。

The Effects of Empathy as Contextual Variable on Violence Attitude

Empathy refers to the degree to which a person subjectively identifies and commiserates with a victim and feels emotional distress. Past research has demonstrated the close relationship between empathy and violent attitudes or behaviors. Past findings also suggested that empathy was negatively associated with violence and aggression, and positively associated with prosocial behaviors. In most studies, however, empathy measures were almost always based on self-report scales in which participants indicated the extent to which they empathized with, felt sympathy for, or felt sorry for a particular person or a group of people. In our research, we experimentally manipulated empathy as a contextual variable. We hypothesized that when people were primed with empathy, their attitudes toward violence would be reduced. Specifically, we expected that unconsciously primed feelings of empathy would decrease people's approval of violence. Two experiments examined the impact of priming empathy on people's implicit and explicit attitudes toward violence. In experiment 1, 131 undergraduates (76 female) were randomly assigned into either the empathy prime condition or the neutral/control condition. Participants were given a word search task that served as the prime. For participants in the empathy prime condition, the word search task contained 13 words related to the concept of empathy (e.g., concern, sensitive, share, care, etc.) and 5 neutral words. For participants in the neutral prime condition, the word search task only contained 18 neutral words. Participants then completed the violence Implicit Association Test (violence IAT). In Experiment 2, 206 students (108 female) followed the same procedure as experiment 1. After the empathy priming, the participants fulfilled a violent attitude scale, which served as an explicit measure for attitude toward violence. The results indicate that participants in the empathy prime and neutral prime conditions did not differ significantly in their implicit or explicit attitudes toward violence. However, an interaction effect between empathy and sex emerged with regard to explicit attitudes, such that explicit attitudes toward violence significantly reduced after the empathy prime for male participants, but not for female participants. These results suggest that the activating feelings of empathy do not weaken the linking of violence and negative cognition. The effects of empathy on reducing violence depend on the cognitive processing of self-awareness and individuals' dispositional empathy.