Promoting prosocial behavior toward those who are dissimilar from oneself is an urgent contemporary issue. Because children spend much time in same-gender relationships, promoting other-gender prosociality could help them develop more inclusive relationships. Our goal in the present research was to better understand the extent to which…

In this two-wave longitudinal study, concurrent and longitudinal relations among teacher-reported shyness, peer acceptance, and academic achievement were examined (Ns = 162 and 155; and Ms[subscript age] = 6.09 and 7.07 years). Concurrently, at both times, shyness was negatively related to peer acceptance and academic achievement, and peer…

Third and sixth graders were induced to experience sympathy and distress with procedures to examine: possibility that facial and heart-rate markers and self-report indices could differentiate sympathetic and distress reactions; age and sex differences in markers of response modes; relations of empathy, parental attitudes toward expression of…

Examined the relationship of kindergartners' to second graders' dispositional sympathy to individual differences in emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Found that sympathy was associated with relatively high levels of regulation, teacher-reported positive emotionality, and general emotional intensity; and, especially for boys, high…

Examined the reactions of 201 elementary school children to direct and indirect help and the moderating effects of grade, understanding of personality, and sex on children's reaction to aid. Results indicated that children high in the understanding of consistency of personality were more autonomous in the indirect than the direct help condition.…

Used a longitudinal sample to examine the relation of 8- to 10-year olds' teacher-reported dispositional sympathy to regulation and emotionality. Found that sympathy correlated with adults' reports of regulation and low negative emotionality contemporaneously and, to some degree, two and four years prior. The pattern of correlations changed little…

Kindergarten through college students heard stories or observed peer interactions in which the protagonist or the peer expressed or did not express emotion when encountering events that caused (relevant-inhibitory) or did not cause (irrelevant) inhibition of an emotion. Kindergartners judged that relevant-inhibitory causes decreased peers'…

Examined behavioral consistency pressures of 146 children in preschool through fifth grade. Results indicated that cognitive understanding of traits and intrapersonal preference for consistency moderate immediate effects of the foot-in-the-door procedure. (RJC)

Involving 82 preschool children and grade 2 students, a study was conducted to (1) determine whether heart rate, facial, and self-report indices could be used to differentiate between different vicariously induced negative emotional states; (2) examine developmental differences in the degree of differentiation; and (3) assess the pattern of…

A group of 125 elementary and high-school students were interviewed to assess their levels of moral judgment regarding prosocial behavior and the discriminations they make when thinking about helping various individuals (e.g., family and friends, disliked others, someone from a different country). (Author/MP)

Examined relations of parents' reactions to first- through fourth-graders' negative emotions with children's social and emotional competence at school and the moderating role of children's dispositional emotionality. Found that problem-focused parental reactions related positively to socioemotional competence for boys but negatively for girls.…

Assessed the moral reasoning of Israeli third and sixth graders living in a city or a kibbutz. Kibbutz children's direct reciprocity reasoning increased, while pragmatic reasoning increased with age only for kibbutz children. (Author/BB)

Assessed parental characteristics; children's physiological and self-reported reactions to a sympathy-inducing film; and children's dispositional traits. Parental sympathy was related to low distress in same-sex children, and to sons' sympathy. Same-sex parental restrictiveness of hurtful emotional displays was related to children's sympathy. (BC)

Mothers and their kindergarten and third grade children watched a sympathy-inducing film. During the film, there were correspondences between mothers' and children's heart rate and facial expressions. Maternal distress was associated with children's distress, but maternal sympathy was associated only with girls' sympathy. (BC)