Preschoolers' Empathy Profiles and Their Social Adjustment

Abstract

Preschoolers face new challenges in their social life: the development of social and emotional abilities in order to have positive relationships with peers and adults. Empathy, the ability to share and understand the emotions of others, contributes to this socio-emotional adjustment. This exploratory study examines mothers and fathers' perceptions of their child's empathy and individual factors, such as age, gender, and personality, which are related to cognitive and affective empathy in 63 typically developing preschoolers. Links between children's individual characteristics (empathy and personality) and their social adjustment on the one hand and risk of developing internalized vs. externalized behaviors on the other were also investigated. Parents completed four questionnaires about their child's empathy, personality, and social (mal)adjustment. The results showed that mothers and fathers perceived their children's cognitive and affective empathy, attention to others' feelings, and social actions (such as helping), in the same way, except for emotion contagion. Gender differences appeared specifically for some components of empathy: girls were said to pay more attention to others' emotions while boys had better cognitive empathy. Moreover, children's empathy as perceived by mothers or fathers was positively linked with their age, and with personality factors (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness to experience). Cognitive empathy and personality were found to be partly related to higher social skills and lower externalized and internalized behaviors. The results nuanced specific links between cognitive and affective empathy and social adjustment as well as behavior problems at preschool age. These results may have some implications for future research and prevention in childhood.

Adaptation and validation of the French version of empathy questionnaire in preschoolers

“…Regarding construct validity, the three subscales of EmQue‐vf were significantly and positively related to affective empathy. However, only the PA subscale was positively linked with cognitive empathy, as has also been demonstrated by other studies assessing the relation between cognitive empathy and social skills, including prosocial behaviors (Čavojová, 2012; Simon & Nader‐Grosbois, 2021). According to Hoffman's (1987) developmental model and the theoretical conception of empathy, emotion contagion and attention to others’ feelings appear earlier than cognitive empathy.…”

“…of the Portuguese version of EmQue and prosocial behaviors. This had also been demonstrated in earlier studies: empathic children use more prosocial behaviors, have more appropriate social skills (e.g., Belacchi & Farina, 2012;Findlay et al, 2006;Simon & Nader-Grosbois, 2021), and are more sensitive to injustice and inequity (Gevaux et al, 2020). A negative link between the Prosocial Actions subscale and aggression was also reported in this study (da Silva et al, 2022).…”

“…A negative link between the Prosocial Actions subscale and aggression was also reported in this study (da Silva et al., 2022). Beyond prosocial actions, some past studies have concluded that empathy seems to be negatively related to externalized behavior problems, including aggressiveness (Simon & Nader‐Grosbois, 2021).…”

Examining links between affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and peer relationships at the transition to school

“…For example, as peer relationships become more complex with age the proclivity to engage in cognitive empathy may become more important than affective empathy for children's social preference and social maturity. Furthermore, it will be important for future research to understand those child and contextual factors that may moderate the association between empathy and children's social behaviour with peers, such as attachment style or temperament (Simon & Nader‐Grosbois, 2021; Stern & Cassidy, 2018).…”

“…Research that has examined the role of cognitive empathy for social behaviour has relied on parent‐report measures in younger children and self‐reported questionnaire measures in middle childhood (Longobardi et al., 2019; Simon & Nader‐Grosbois, 2021). Nonetheless, there are indications that task‐based indices of cognitive empathy, such as the Empathy Continuum, are associated with socially competent behaviours.…”