Psychodrama's Impact on College Students' Empathy and Interpersonal Trust: An Examination Based on Role-Playing Mechanism

Abstract

Psychodrama, as an experiential group intervention method, holds unique applicative value in college mental health education. From the interdisciplinary perspective of educational psychology and social psychology, this paper systematically explores the impact of psychodrama on college students' empathy and interpersonal trust, as well as its underlying mechanisms. The research finds that psychodrama, with role-playing as its core technique, promotes participants' cognitive perspective transformation and emotional experience deepening through specific means such as role reversal, mirror technique, and doubling. The role-playing mechanism functions primarily through three pathways: role reversal enhances perspective-taking ability, mirror technique deepens self-awareness, and doubling reinforces emotional resonance. Empirical studies show that psychodrama intervention can significantly improve college students' empathy tendency and interpersonal trust level, and also positively affect social development dimensions such as forgiveness ability and mental health. This study provides a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanism of psychodrama and offers empirical evidence for college mental health education practice.