Crucial skills for early adolescents to develop include respecting people from different backgrounds, showing empathy and compassion, and making ethical decisions in challenging situations. This exploratory study aims to understand the extent to which "students' perceptions of teacher caring and belonging related to changes in their…

This empirical study investigated the manifestation of prosocial sharing behaviours and how this interplayed with preschool-aged children's Theory of Mind (ToM), described in cognitive science as one's ability to ascribe mental states to others and how the ascribed states are used to explain and predict the actions f others, when using media and…

This paper attempts to tie empathy to the individual's development of a cognitive sense of the other, and thus to lay the groundwork for a stage analysis of the development of altruistic motivation. The first stage proposed in this scheme is empathic distress, the involuntary experiencing of another person's painful emotional state. Empathic…

Theories about helping behavior have branched into two basic areas: egoistic and altruistic. Egoistic theories describe helping as being induced by sadness or distress; the Empathy-Altruism hypothesis contends that people help when they feel empathy for another in need. Fultz, Schaller, and Cialdini (1988) looked at the possibility that three…

The construct of empathy may be located conceptually at several different points in a network of social cognition and vicarious emotion. This paper discusses one specific form of emotional empathy, empathy in response to perceiving another person in need. First, evidence is reviewed suggesting that there are at least two distinct types of…

The differential effects of self- and other-directed negative affect on subsequent generosity are explored in two studies, both using a modified version of the direct mood inducement procedure (Moore, 1973). Subjects (N=85) in the first experiment were children aged 7-12. Subjects (N=48) in the second experiment were college undergraduates.…

Empathy has been hypothesized as a mediator facilitating prosocial behaviors such as altruism. Definitions and measures of empathy disagree as to the extent to which the observer's response is affective and the necessity for the observer to understand the other's point of view. A conceptualization of empathy which includes these considerations has…

Hoffman's (1975) theory holds that altruism is based on cognitive development and mechanisms for empathic distress present from birth, with the individual going through stages of personal distress, empathic concern, and perspective taking. The Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a measure of empathy, contains four subscales: personal…

This study examined the theoretically related constructs of children's empathy, affective responsiveness, and altruistic helping. Subjects were 80 nine-year-olds. Empathy was assessed using interviews with children regarding their understanding of the emotion portrayed in, and their own emotional-cognitive responses to, a set of seven videotaped…

A study was conducted to determine the frequency of three types of prosocial interactions--empathy, helping, and altruism--which nonhandicapped preschool children could exhibit toward their handicapped peers. Subjects were 32 nonhandicapped 4- to 5-year-olds and 13 developmentally disabled 3- to 5-year-olds attending a mainstreamed preschool…

When assessing the influence of empathy on prosocial motivation, analyzing empathy alone would lead to a misunderstanding. We must also assess other elements of the situation, such as the altruist's coping skills and situational constraints. In a similar manner empathy itself should be conceptualized as a process with many elements. One way to…

A developmental model for an empathy-based prosocial motive is presented. The framework of the model is presented in terms of three components of empathy. The first component, empathic affective arousal, is discussed and six involuntary psychological mechanisms which underlie it are described briefly. These mechanisms, in the order in which they…

This 9-month naturalistic study investigated maternal influence on the responses of 1 1/2- to 2-year-old infants to emotional distress events occurring in the family environment. Mothers were trained to report details of distress incidents, of the child's reactions to the person in distress, and of the mother's own response to the child and to the…

This paper describes a one-year longitudinal follow up study of the long term effects of role taking training procedures (in which children assumed a number of perspectives) on children's social and cognitive behaviors. Longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects were also analyzed. In an earlier study the effect of two types of role-taking…

For educators, a thorough understanding of adolescents' concepts of caring is critical. This paper reports on how early adolescents themselves view the concept of caring. A fundamental issue relating to caring is whether it is primarily innate or learned. This study, which involved observing and interviewing students, was conducted in two middle…