The codevelopment of sympathy and overt aggression from middle childhood to early adolescence.

Abstract

We assessed the extent to which feelings of sympathy and aggressive behaviors co-developed from 6 to 12 years of age in a representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273). Caregivers and teachers reported children's sympathy and overt aggression in three-year intervals. Secondorder latent curve models indicated general mean-level declines in sympathy and overt aggression over time, although the decline in sympathy was relatively small. Importantly, both trajectories were characterized by significant inter-individual variability. A bivariate secondorder latent curve model revealed a small-moderate negative correlation between the latent slopes of sympathy and overt aggression, suggesting an inverse co-developmental relationship between the constructs from middle childhood to early adolescence. In terms of predictive effects, an autoregressive cross-lagged model indicated a lack of bidirectional relations between sympathy and overt aggression, underscoring the primacy of the variables' rank-order stability.We discuss the co-development and developmental relations of sympathy and aggression, their potential conjoint social-emotional mechanisms, and the practical implications thereof.Keywords: sympathy, overt aggression, co-development, childhood, adolescence, secondorder latent curve model CO-DEVELOPMENT OF SYMPATHY AND AGGRESSION 3The Co-Development of Sympathy and Overt Aggression from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence The role of sympathy in children's aggressive behavior has received considerable attention from developmental scientists over the past three decades (Joliffe & Farrington, 2006;MacEvoy & Leff, 2012;Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). The ability to sympathize, which often includes encoding and experiencing others' emotional states, is thought to help children anticipate and recognize the negative consequences of aggressive acts (for a review, see Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Morris, 2014). Children with high levels of sympathy engage in less frequent and less severe aggression (Lovett & Sheffield, 2007;van Noorden, Haselager, Cillessen, & Bukowski, 2014). Such findings yield some support for social-emotional interventions to prevent and reduce aggressive behavior, which operate under the conceptual premise that fostering sympathy and related capacities in children will result in corresponding decreases in their aggression (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011;Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, & Colasante, 2016). However, the extent to which a child's mean-level growth in sympathy is related to a parallel, mean-level decrease in his or her aggression has not been empirically detailed within a longitudinal framework. We aimed to bridge this theoryevidence gap by investigating the co-development of sympathy and aggression from age 6 to 12 in a large, representative sample of Swiss children. In addition, given the scarcity of past longitudinal studies analyzing predictive relations between sympathy and aggression, we aimed to investigate their possible reciprocal effects and thereby offer a...

Resting heart rate, guilt, and sympathy: A developmental psychophysiological study of physical aggression

“…In the present study, we focused on physical aggression (e.g., attacking others and causing bodily harm) for the following reasons: (1) it is thought to be particularly contingent on developmentally invariant factors, such as resting HR, whereas other aggressive and rule‐breaking behaviors are more susceptible to contextual factors (e.g., peer pressure–induced exclusive behavior; Eisner & Malti, ); (2) its consequences are relatively severe and visible to children, thus increasing its likelihood of triggering guilt and sympathetic concern (Zuffianò, Colasante, Buchmann, & Malti, ); and (3) it occurs—albeit to different extents—in early, middle, and late childhood (Tremblay, ), thus spanning the age groups under study.…”

Cross-Informant Assessment of Children's Sympathy: Disentangling Trait and State Agreement

“…For illustrative purposes of the STMS model, we analyzed data published in Zuffianò et al [10]. Data were from a cohort of 6year-olds (reassessed at ages 9 and 12) from the Swiss Survey…”

“…Sympathy is a specific emotional response that includes feelings of concern or sorrow for another's emotional state or welfare [5]. In comparison to empathy, which generally involves sharing the emotions of another, but not necessarily feeling concern for them, sympathy is more likely to be implicated in prosocial and aggressive behaviors [9,10].…”

“…For analytical purposes, we only used the three items of the scale (i.e., "feels sorry for others, " "feels sorry for other children who are being teased, " and "feels sorry for other children who are sad or upset") that were content-invariant across time points and informants. In addition to allowing for our proposed analyses (which are contingent on content invariance), these items captured the prototypical "feeling sorrow" component that is considered the core of sympathy [10].…”

The development of interindividual differences in sympathy: The role of child personality and adults’ responsiveness to distress

“…Aggression has been found to be related negatively to sympathy from the age of approximately 6 years onwards (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Morris, 2014;Zuffianò, Colasante, Buchmann, & Malti, 2018). Yet, during the preschool years, there is evidence for a positive relation between aggressiveness and prosocial tendencies (Feshbach & Feshbach, 1969;Gill & Calkins, 2003;Kienbaum, 2001;Radke-Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler, 1976).…”