Abstract:Disparate trust, which means exclusive trust in intimates and mistrust in strangers, is a serious issue in Chinese society. Given that empathy can make people closer to each other, three experiments involving Trust Game were conducted to examine the relationship between empathy and disparate trust. In experiment 1, the participants who showed greater empathy with the virtual character were less likely to be influenced by the relationship between them. In experiment 2 and 3, participants' empathy levels were manipulated by the article memory and picture memory tasks. Both experiments found that the empathy group presented less disparate trust than the control group. The results demonstrated that the induction of empathy helped to strengthen the individual' trust in strangers as well as reduce his disparate trust.