Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Abstract

Across the lifespan, empathic and counter-empathic emotions are shaped by social relationships. Here we test the hypothesis that this connection is encoded in children’s intuitive theory of psychology, allowing them to predict when others will feel empathy versus counter-empathy and to use vicarious emotion information to infer relationships. We asked 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 79) to make emotion predictions or relationship inferences in response to stories featuring two characters, an experiencer and an observer, and either a positive or negative outcome for the experiencer. In the context of positive outcomes, we found that children engaged in robust joint reasoning about relationships and vicarious emotions. When given information about the characters’ relationship, children predicted empathy from a friendly observer and counter-empathy from a rival observer. When given information about the observer’s response to the experiencer, children inferred positive and negative relationships from empathic and counter-empathic responses, respectively. In the context of negative outcomes, children predicted that both friendly and rival observers would feel empathy toward the experiencer, but they still used information about empathic versus counter-empathic responses to infer relationship status. Our results suggest that young children in the US have a blanket expectation of empathic concern in response to negative outcomes, but otherwise expect and infer that vicarious emotions are connected to social relationships. Future research should investigate if children use this understanding to select social partners, evaluate their own relationships, or decide when to express empathy toward others.

Children expect people to accurately represent the minds of their close social partners

“…Afshordi and Liberman (2020) reviewed this literature and identified three cues that children use to infer friendship: the amount of time spent together; whether people are prosocial to each other (e.g., sharing, comforting); and whether people share preferences. Recent research suggests that 4-to 7-year-old children also recognize empathy as a cue to friendship (Smith-Flores et al, 2023). These studies demonstrate that children can infer friendship from observing others' social behaviors.…”

“…Participants indicated which pair best represented a mother and a baby, two strangers, and two friends. Smith-Flores et al (2023) have used a similar scale to ask children about how much people like each other.…”

“…Based on whether people are friends, kin, rivals, or strangers, children also make predictions about whether people will share (Olson & Spelke, 2008), be comfortable eating food that may have contacted someone else's saliva (Thomas et al, 2022), and feel empathy towards each other (Smith-Flores et al, 2023). Thus, children infer how people will behave based on their relationships.…”

Children's evaluations of empathizers

“…Other research finds that children, and also infants in some circumstances, can use information about social relationships to guide expectations about vicarious emotions. Infants and young children expect friends or ingroup members, but not rivals or outgroup members, to be happy for one another's success or good fortune (Smith-Flores, Bonamy, et al, 2023;Smith-Flores, Herrera-Guevara, et al, 2023;Tompkins et al, 2023). Older children, like adults, also expect less empathic concern from a rival or outgroup member than from a friend or ingroup member, though younger children expect empathic concern from all observers regardless of affiliation (Smith-Flores, Bonamy, et al, 2023;Tompkins et al, 2023).…”

“…Infants and young children expect friends or ingroup members, but not rivals or outgroup members, to be happy for one another's success or good fortune (Smith-Flores, Bonamy, et al, 2023;Smith-Flores, Herrera-Guevara, et al, 2023;Tompkins et al, 2023). Older children, like adults, also expect less empathic concern from a rival or outgroup member than from a friend or ingroup member, though younger children expect empathic concern from all observers regardless of affiliation (Smith-Flores, Bonamy, et al, 2023;Tompkins et al, 2023). Across the ages tested (4 to 7 years), children also used observations of empathy and counter-empathy to infer positive and negative social relationships, respectively (Smith-Flores, Bonamy, et al, 2023).…”