Prediction of Children's Empathy-Related Responding From Their Effortful Control and Parents' Expressivity.

Abstract

In this study, the linear and interactive relations of children's effortful control and parents' emotional expressivity to children's empathy-related responses were examined. Participants were 214 children, 4.5 to 8 years old. Children's effortful control was negatively related to their personal distress and was positively related to their sympathy. Parents' positive expressivity was marginally negatively related to children's personal distress and was marginally positively related to children's dispositional sympathy. Parents' negative expressivity was positively related to children's personal distress, but primarily at high levels of children's effortful control. Moreover, parents' negative expressivity was negatively related to children's situational sympathy at low levels of effortful control but was positively related to children's dispositional sympathy at high levels of effortful control. There were also quadratic relations between the measures of parents' expressivity and children's empathy-related responses.Empathy is believed to play an important role in fostering prosocial behavior and social competence Hoffman, 2000;Staub, 1979). Although a number of definitions of empathy exist, a representative definition is "an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition, and that is identical or very similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel" (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998, p. 702). For example, if a person witnesses a child feeling sad and consequently feels sad, that person is experiencing empathy. In addition, empathy is viewed as frequently associated with two related responses Eisenberg, Shea, Carlo, & Knight, 1991): sympathy and personal distress. Sympathy has been defined as an emotional response stemming from the apprehension of another's emotional state or condition, that is not the same as the other's state or condition but consists of feelings of sorrow or concern for the other . Sympathy is believed to frequently stem from empathy, although it may often be engendered by cognitive processes such as perspective taking. In contrast, personal distress is defined as a self-focused, aversive affective reaction to the apprehension of another's emotion (e.g., discomfort, anxiety; Batson, 1991)-a response that frequently may reflect empathic overarousal .Distinguishing between personal distress and sympathy is important because they are expected to relate differently to prosocial and social behaviors and may have different precursors. In fact, sympathy has been positively related to prosocial behavior whereas personal distress has been unrelated or negatively related (Batson, 1991;Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990. Moreover, sympathy has been linked to higher level moral reasoning whereas personal distress has been NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript negatively related or unrelated (e.g., Carlo, Eisenberg, & Knight, 1992;Eisenberg, Carlo, Murphy, & Van Court, 1995).Because of the ass...

The relations of effortful control and impulsivity to children's sympathy: A longitudinal study

“…Participants were initially recruited through newspaper ads, letters sent to parents through schools, and flyers posted at local schools (as part of an eight-year longitudinal study of socioemotional development; e.g., Eisenberg et al, 2004;Valiente et al, 2004). The primary caregiving parent in families that initially expressed interest in participating was administered the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991) over the phone, and this information was used to obtain a diverse sample, including some with borderline and clinical problem behaviors (see Eisenberg, Gershoff et al, 2001;Valiente et al, 2004).…”

“…The primary caregiving parent in families that initially expressed interest in participating was administered the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991) over the phone, and this information was used to obtain a diverse sample, including some with borderline and clinical problem behaviors (see Eisenberg, Gershoff et al, 2001;Valiente et al, 2004). Thus, children who scored at least 60-borderline level-on internalizing or externalizing were selected from the larger pool and then children who scored below 60 on both scales were matched (whenever possible) with regard to sex, race, age, and social class (identified by self-reports of parent education and occupation) to children.…”

“…Alphas for parents from T1 to T5 were .82, .77, .83, .87, and .86; alphas for teachers from T2 to T5 were .89, .88, .85, and .86. Children completed five items from a version of Eisenberg, Fabes, Murphy, et al's (1996) sympathy scale (e.g., "I feel sorry for other people who don't have the things I have"; 1 = really like you; 3 = not like you; see Valiente et al, 2004). Alphas from T1 to T5 were .76, .75, .79, .82, and .86.…”

“…Individual differences in adult-reported EC also have been correlated with high sympathy and low personal distress in childhood and adolescence (e.g., Murphy et al, 1999;Valiente et al, 2004). During early adolescence, sympathy has been related with personality conscientiousness (Del Barrio, Aluja, & Garcia, 2004), which is believed to partly reflect EC (Rothbart & Bates, 2006), as well as constructive modes of coping (McWhirter, Besett-Alesch, Horibata, & Gat, 2002) and self-reported efficacy in regard to behavioral self-regulation and managing negative emotions (Bandura et al, 2003).…”

You and me: Investigating the role of self-evaluative emotion in preschool prosociality

“…Researchers have also reported a positive relationship between children's selfcontrol and sympathetic dispositions, suggesting that the move from personal distress to other-focused response may be effortful (e.g. Eisenberg et al, 2007;Valiente et al, 2004).…”