Peer-reviewed article

An empirical study on the impact of aesthetic education activities on primary school students' moral emotions and behaviors: Based on a quasi-experimental design.

Pengkai Chen, Chaofang Zhong · 10 Jun 2026

Abstract

This study adopts a quasi-experimental design to systematically examine the relationship between aesthetic education activities and primary school students' moral emotions and prosocial behaviors, and to provide a preliminary analysis of possible emotion-behavior links. Based on the theory of emotional cognition, social learning theory, and a cautious quasi-experimental evaluation perspective, an analytical model of "aesthetic education intervention-moral emotions-prosocial behaviors" is constructed, and a multi-model quasi-experimental analysis framework consisting of multiple regression, moderation analysis, and difference-in-differences (DID) is proposed. Propensity score matching is also employed for robustness checks. The study selected 200 students from grades 3 to 6 in two public primary schools in a provincial capital city in eastern China, who were evenly divided into experimental and control groups. A 12-week systematic aesthetic education activity was implemented, focusing on core outcome variables such as empathy ability, moral identity, helping behavior, and cooperative behavior. The results indicate that, after controlling for baseline differences and family socioeconomic background, students in the experimental group showed higher post-test scores in empathy and helping behavior, and a relatively stable positive pattern in cooperative behavior. The delayed measurement three months after the intervention further suggested that these intervention-related differences showed a certain degree of continuity. Moderation analysis indicated that gender and grade were associated with heterogeneous intervention-related patterns, with girls showing more pronounced gains in empathy and higher-grade students showing smaller gains in helping behavior. The main contribution of this paper lies in proposing a replicable multi-model quasi-experimental analysis framework and providing cautious empirical evidence for understanding the relationship between aesthetic education activities and the development of primary school students' moral emotions and prosocial behaviors.