{"title":"The immediate and delayed effects of group activities on Chinese college students' empathy: a longitudinal tracking study.","authors":"Chuang Xu, Wenting Gong, Jian-Hong Ye, Fangyu Fu","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1505333","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although the role of empathy in reducing campus bullying has been receiving increasing attention, empirical research on the development of empathy and its delayed effects among college students is lacking. To examine the immediate and delayed effects of group activities on increases in empathy among college students, this study randomly assigned 90 first-year students from a Chinese university into control, intervention, and delayed intervention groups. The groups with interventions participated in multiple sessions of counselling activities, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C scale was used as a pre-test, post-test, and re-test measure to assess empathy levels in each group. Additionally, interview transcripts were employed to verify the effectiveness of the study. The results showed that group activities were significantly effective in enhancing the level of empathy among college students. Furthermore, the effect of group activities in enhancing empathy levels among college students tended to diminish over time but was maintained at a relatively high level for a certain period. This finding reveals that the development of empathy requires ongoing attention and support. Future studies could further explore the effects of different types of interventions on empathy levels, and the durability and stability of delayed intervention effects can be investigated in long-term follow-up studies. These findings will contribute to the development of more effective strategies for preventing and intervening in campus bullying, thereby providing theoretical and practical support for more harmonious campus environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"16 ","pages":"1505333"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12149139/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1505333","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Although the role of empathy in reducing campus bullying has been receiving increasing attention, empirical research on the development of empathy and its delayed effects among college students is lacking. To examine the immediate and delayed effects of group activities on increases in empathy among college students, this study randomly assigned 90 first-year students from a Chinese university into control, intervention, and delayed intervention groups. The groups with interventions participated in multiple sessions of counselling activities, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C scale was used as a pre-test, post-test, and re-test measure to assess empathy levels in each group. Additionally, interview transcripts were employed to verify the effectiveness of the study. The results showed that group activities were significantly effective in enhancing the level of empathy among college students. Furthermore, the effect of group activities in enhancing empathy levels among college students tended to diminish over time but was maintained at a relatively high level for a certain period. This finding reveals that the development of empathy requires ongoing attention and support. Future studies could further explore the effects of different types of interventions on empathy levels, and the durability and stability of delayed intervention effects can be investigated in long-term follow-up studies. These findings will contribute to the development of more effective strategies for preventing and intervening in campus bullying, thereby providing theoretical and practical support for more harmonious campus environments.
期刊介绍：
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.
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