[The effects of the viewpoints and observers' traits on the observational learning of altruistic behavior]

This study was to examine the changes of altruistic responses through observational learning (OL) in elementary school children (4th graders) with the conditions of the different viewpoints and observers' traits. The OL was the symbolic modeling of altruistic behavior by presentation of pictures with narration. All the stories had the same situation, but differed whether the actor behaved himself in an altruistic fashion to the object, or not. Observers' viewpoints were determined by the instruction: they were told to observe the story as if they were one of the characters and to pay attention to emotional responses or behavior of the character. The emphasis of each story corresponded to the viewpoint. Out of these eight combined experimental conditions six were performed. Traits were concerned with observers' impression, empathy, and evaluation of the story. The response measure was the change of rating between pre- and post-questionnaires through observation. The effect of OL was higher significantly when the viewpoint directed to the characters' emotion. Observers who reacted strongly to empathy and impression items showed higher altruistic changes.