Contemporary theories have generally focused on either the behavioral, cognitive or emotional dimensions of prosocial moral development. In this volume, these three dimensions are brought together while providing the first comprehensive account of prosocial moral development in children. The main concept is empathy - one feels what is appropriate for another person's situation, not one's own. Hoffman discusses empathy's role in five moral situations. The book's focus is empathy's contribution to altruism and compassion for others in physical, psychological, or economic distress. Also highlighted are the psychological processes involved in empathy's interaction with certain parental behaviors that foster moral internalization in children and the psychological processes involved in empathy's relation to abstract moral principles such as caring and distributive justice. This important book is the culmination of three decades of study and research by a leading figure in the area of child and developmental psychology.
According to the prevailing cultural stereotype as well as various psychological theories, empathy, defined as the vicarious affective response to another person's feelings, is more prevalent in females than in males. A review of the research indicates that females do indeed appear to be more empathic than males. They do not appear to be more adept at assessing another person's affective, cognitive, or spatial perspective, however. There is also evidence to suggest that empathy in females may be part of a prosocial affective orientation that includes the tendency to experience guilt over harming others, but it does not, at least in early childhood, appear to be part of a larger interpersonal sensitivity that includes egocentric concerns about the feelings of others toward the self. It is suggested that females may have a greater tendency to imagine themselves in the other's place, whereas males have more of a set toward instrumental ameliorative action.Given the current interest and debate about the extent to which the sexes differ, it becomes important to see what light empirical research can throw on the issue. This paper is concerned with the prevailing sex role stereotype that females are more empathic than males. It is interesting to note that the relevant theorizing in the literature is in essential agreement with this stereotype. Included are theorists as diverse as Freud and Parsons, one heavily biological, and the other social structural in emphasis. According to Parsons and Bales (1955) and Johnson (1963), the family, like any other social unit, requires someone to perform (a) the expressive role-being responsive to the needs and feelings of others, so as to maintain the family as an intact, harmonious entity and (b) the instrumental roleacting as liaison between the family and other social institutions, especially those related to the occupational sphere. Females have traditionally been socialized to acquire expressive traits such as empathy, compassion, and giving and receiving affect. Males are initially socialized expressively, but with age are increasingly encouraged to acquire instrumental traits, such as mastery and problem solving.
This article gathers together evidence from biology and psychology bearing on the issue of whether altruism is part of human nature. The traditional views of both evolutionary biology and psychology left little room for altruism. Current variants of the Darwinian model-group selection, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and the concept of inclusive fitness-however, point to the acquisition of altruistic as well as egoistic structures in humans. Psychological research is also compatible with this view. There may be a general human tendency to help others in distress that has properties analogous to egoistic motivation and yet comes into play independently of egoistic motivation. The theory of inclusive fitness also requires that mediators of altruistic action were selected (rather than altruistic action itself), because this would provide the necessary flexibility. Finally, evidence is presented suggesting that empathy may fit the evolutionary requirements of such a mediator: It is reliably aroused in humans in response to misfortune in others, it predisposes the individual toward helping action and yet is amenable to perceptual and cognitive control, and it appears to have a neural base that may have been present early in human evolution.
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