The effect of reading narratives : how does perspective taking influence prosocial behavior?

Prosocial behavior plays a large role in today’s society; helping behavior can be found in many different situations. The reasons why people help can be different. The goal of this research was to explore the influence of reading narratives on prosocial behavior and acceptance of antisocial behavior. To study this, it was tested if the style of a text could have an influence on participants (N=103) behavior. In the experimental group, participants have read a personal narrative about the experience with depression. The control group also received a text about depression, but a more factual text without any personal context. After reading the text, the constructs empathy, perspective taking, acceptance of antisocial behavior and prosocial behavior were measured. Prosocial behavior was measured by three Pay what you want questions. It was expected, that participants in de personal narrative condition will show more prosocial behavior than in the factual text condition. Further, less acceptance of antisocial behavior in the person narrative condition was expected. However, this was not the case. The results show that there was no difference between the two conditions, although participants with a higher score of empathy show less acceptance of antisocial behavior. A possible reason for this is that the manipulation of the text might have no effect.