AUTHOR=Leng Jie , Guo Qingke , Ma Bingqing , Zhang Shuyue , Sun Peng TITLE=Bridging Personality and Online Prosocial Behavior: The Roles of Empathy, Moral Identity, and Social Self-Efficacy JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575053 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575053 ISSN=1664-1078 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.