Empathy in children: theory and assessment

Abstract

Empathy is the ability to perceive, share, and understand the emotional states of others, and it is crucial to succeeding in society. This social and emotional competence underlies some of the most significant human interactions from the first bonds between mother and child all the way to more complex forms of prosocial behavior (Batson, 2009), all of which may even be essential for survival. Empathy is critical to social bonds, especially mother and child (Plutchik, 1987). The field of child mental health is especially focused on emotional development (Shore, 2001). Therefore, the neuropsychological understanding of attachment and empathy may create a more accurate and comprehensive model of the normal development of the human body, brain, and mind in the early stages of development and, consequently, lead to more accurate definitions of the adaptive basis for mental health of children (Shore, 2001). Most models of empathy emphasize that helping behavior is motivated by emotional states activated by the emotional states of others, a capacity which develops in the context of parental care and other social bonds (Hrdy, 2009). The resulting sense of security that leads children to adopt a more empathic attitude not only in intimate relationships but also toward others with whom they do not have such close relationships. Despite the importance of empathy as a basic socioemotional development process, it has been difficult to develop a theory that integrates its emotional and cognitive aspects as well as to create adequate operational definitions in order to test theories more empirically. This challenge is especially evident when trying to assess empathy in children through self-reports that provide a multidimensional measurement.This chapter will discuss the different theoretical perspectives of empathy and its manifestation in children, and will introduce a multidimensional empathy questionnaire developed for children between 9 and 12 years of age, that is based on models proposed by social cognitive neuroscience. This questionnaire integrates four aspects of empathy: a) emotional contagion, which is an affective reaction to another person that typically involves sharing the emotional state of that person; b) self-consciousness, which protects the boundary between self and other despite a transient identification with that person; c) perspective taking, which implies the cognitive ability to put oneself in the place of the other; and d) emotional self-regulation, which occurs through self-regulatory and control mechanisms that regulate and modulate personal emotional states.