Abstract
This paper measures rejected people’s willingness to help and empathic concern towards the target person need help under four scenarios after the manipulation of social rejection by essay task and perspective taking by instruction before reading the descriptions of the scenarios. Participants in rejection condition with a high level of perspective taking showed a higher level of willingness to help than participants with a low level of perspective taking. Rejected participants indicated equal degree of willingness to help another rejected person no matter they adopt perspective taking or not. When the helping behavior can be considered as a future interaction, rejected participants with a high level of perspective taking did not show a higher level of intention to help when compared with control participants with a high level of perspective taking. The willingness to help did not drop significantly when the altruistic behavior is under a risk of negative evaluation. The manipulation of rejection and perspective taking did not show an influence on the participants’ empathic concern towards the target person. The results were not induced by mood or rejection sensitivity.
Highlights
This paper measures rejected people’s willingness to help and empathic concern towards the target person need help under four scenarios after the manipulation of social rejection by essay task and perspective taking by instruction before reading the descriptions of the scenarios
Results of Scenario 1 indicating that perspective taking had a significant effect on participants in the rejection condition when considering an altruistic behavior in general
Participants in the rejection condition with a high level of perspective taking were slightly more willing to help than participants from the other two high-perspective taking groups
Summary
This paper measures rejected people’s willingness to help and empathic concern towards the target person need help under four scenarios after the manipulation of social rejection by essay task and perspective taking by instruction before reading the descriptions of the scenarios. The prosocial reactions to rejection range from being more apt to observe and mimic others (Lakin & Chartrand, 2003), to working harder in group settings (Williams & Sommer, 1997), to donating more money and performing other sorts of prosocial behavior (Maner et al, 2007). These sorts of responses make intuitive sense: If individuals have been rejected, they want to regain the attachment that they have lost. Like Baumeister and Leary (1995) stated: “The general argument is that deprivation of belongingness should lead to a variety of affiliative behaviors...” (p. 508)
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