The Relationship Between Crying Proneness and Willingness to Help: The Moderating Role of Psychopathy
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2022-07-01
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en
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Abstract
The question of who helps when and why has been in the focus of social psychologists for a long time now. One factor that influences the willingness to help is the empathic ability to feel and respond to the distress of others. This ability is also important in crying proneness, which is the individual tendency to cry in response to an emotionally charged situation. However, personality constructs such as psychopathy, whose core feature is the lack of empathy and a disability to feel and respond to the distress of others, might negatively affect the willingness to help. Therefore, this present study sought to increase the insight into the individual differences in helping behavior by examining the relationship between crying proneness and the willingness to help and the moderating role of psychopathic traits in this relationship. A total of 214 participants (age ranging from 19 to 76 years, 130 females, 84 males) participated in the online survey consisting of questionnaires measuring crying proneness, psychopathy and the willingness to help. The findings of this study contribute to the current state of knowledge by demonstrating that there is a positive relationship between crying proneness and the willingness to help, but psychopathy does not, however, moderate this relationship. This study provides a basis for future research to focus on other possibly important factors that might determine helping behavior.
Keywords: crying proneness, psychopathy, willingness to help, prosocial behavior
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen