ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicAffective and Behavioral Dynamics in Human-Technology Interactions of Industry 5.0View all 10 articles
Effect of AI Empathy Perception on Employees' Prosocial Behavior: Mediating Role of Warmth and Moderating Role of AI anthropomorphism
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, China
- 2Qingdao Institute of Technology, Qingdao, China
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With the rapid advancement of AI technology, an increasing number of organizations are introducing AI as formal employees in the workplace. By conducting hypothesis testing on 400 sample data from eight highly digitalized companies in China, the findings show that the perception of AI empathy can enhance employees’ prosocial behavior, with warmth serving as a mediating factor. Furthermore, AI anthropomorphism moderates the effect of AI empathy perception on employees’ prosocial behavior through warmth: the higher the degree of AI anthropomorphism, the greater the positive impact of AI empathy perception on warmth, which in turn positively moderates the effect of AI empathy perception on human employees’ prosocial behavior. This paper constructs a pathway of “technological environment-emotional cognition-behavioral activation,” expanding the research perspective on behavior and emotional cognition within the domain of human-computer interaction. It elevates AI’s emotional interaction to the level of organizational behavior management, promoting a shift from human-machine collaboration to human-to-human collaboration.
Keywords: AI, AI anthropomorphism, empathy perception, Prosocial Behavior, Warmth
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 12 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xue, Liu, Ren and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zengfang Ren
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