Bridging Personality and Online Prosocial Behavior: The Roles of Empathy, Moral Identity, and Social Self-Efficacy.

Jie Leng,Bingqing Ma,Peng Sun,Shuyue Zhang,Qingke Guo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575053

Abstract

Personality has been considered as important influential factors of prosocial behavior (PB). This study aims to investigate whether the personality-PB association revealed in the real world is applicable to cyberspace. Researchers further considered moral identity (MI), empathy, and social self-efficacy as mediators accounting for the association of personality and online prosocial behavior (OPB). Self-reported measures were administrated to 1398 participants from eastern China. Results showed (1) extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were positively related to OPB, while neuroticism was negatively related to OPB; (2) perspective taking could serve as a mediator between all big five traits and OPB, social self-efficacy did the same job unless the predictor was agreeableness. Empathic concern and MI were less important mediators partly because OPB involves no face-to-face interaction. These findings show that personality has a significant effect on OPB through its influence on moral development.

Highlights

The association of personality and prosocial behavior (PB) has been examined extensively
The second aim of this study is to investigate whether the personality-online prosocial behavior (OPB) link can be accounted for by moral cognition (i.e., moral identity (MI)), moral emotion, and interpersonal self-efficacy beliefs
We propose that the effect of personality on PB can be extended to OPB

Summary

Introduction

The association of personality and prosocial behavior (PB) has been examined extensively. Popularization of the Internet facilitated the emergence of a new form of PB, namely online prosocial behavior (OPB). OPB refers to behavior performed voluntarily to help others online without expectation of any reward. The unique characteristics of OPB (e.g., less costly, anonymous, and less social pressured) are noteworthy (Lee and Lee, 2010; Zheng et al, 2018). Personality is an influential factor of online social behaviors (Amichai-Hamburger and Vinitzky, 2010). The personality-OPB association has not been well established. The first aim of this study is to investigate whether the personality-PB association persists in online settings

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Conclusion