School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; Centre for Brain Research, School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Cognition. 2024 Mar;244:105718. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105718. Epub 2024 Jan 13.
Previous research has found that episodic simulation of events of helping others can effectively enhance intentions to help the same person involved and the identical situational context as the imagined scenarios. This 'prosocial simulation effect' is argued to reflect, at least in part, associative memory mechanisms whereby the simulation is reactivated when in the same situation as that imagined. However, to date, no study has examined systematically whether this 'prosocial simulation effect' can be transferred to response scenarios involving different people and/or situational contexts to the imagined scenarios, and if so, whether the degree of overlap with the imagined helping episode modulated the transfer effect. Across two experiments, we systematically varied the overlap of the simulated and response scenarios, both in terms of the persons in need and/or the situational contexts, and whether would influence the magnitude of prosocial simulation effect. Results from both experiments showed that the prosocial simulation effect can be transferred to response scenarios involving different people and situational contexts to the simulated scenarios. However, this finding was primarily driven by response scenarios that had a high degree of overlap to the simulated scenarios. The application of our findings to the practical implementation of simulation to promote prosociality in the real world is discussed.
先前的研究发现，对帮助他人事件的情景模拟可以有效地增强对相同情境中涉及的相同个体的帮助意愿。这种“亲社会模拟效应”被认为至少部分反映了联想记忆机制，即当处于与想象情境相同的情境时，模拟会被重新激活。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究系统地检验这种“亲社会模拟效应”是否可以转移到与想象情景不同的人或情境的反应情景中，如果可以，模拟帮助情景的重叠程度是否会调节转移效应。在两项实验中，我们系统地改变了模拟和反应情景之间的重叠程度，无论是在需要帮助的人方面还是在情境方面，以及是否会影响亲社会模拟效应的大小。两项实验的结果都表明，亲社会模拟效应可以转移到与模拟情景不同的人或情境的反应情景中。然而，这一发现主要是由与模拟情景高度重叠的反应情景驱动的。讨论了将我们的发现应用于模拟在现实世界中促进亲社会行为的实际实施。
