Empathy and Sympathy Assignment

Empathy and Sympathy Assignment

Empathy and Sympathy Assignment

Another emotional capacity that becomes more common in early childhood is empathy, which serves as an important motivator of prosocial , or  altruistic, behavior —actions that benefit another person without any expected reward for the self (Spinrad & Eisenberg,  2009 ). Compared with toddlers, preschoolers rely more on words to communicate empathic feelings, a change that indicates a more reflective level of empathy. When a 4-year-old received a Christmas gift that she hadn’t included on her list for Santa, she assumed it belonged to another little girl and pleaded with her parents, “We’ve got to give it back—Santa’s made a big mistake. I think the girl’s crying ‘cause she didn’t get her present!”

As children’s language skills and capacity to take the perspective of others improve, empathy also increases, motivating prosocial, or altruistic, behavior.

Yet in some children, empathizing—feeling with an upset adult or peer and responding emotionally in a similar way—does not yield acts of kindness and helpfulness but, instead, escalates into personal distress. In trying to reduce these feelings, the child focuses on his own anxiety rather than the person in need. As a result, empathy does not lead to  sympathy —feelings of concern or sorrow for another’s plight.

Temperament plays a role in whether empathy occurs and whether it prompts sympathetic, prosocial behavior or self-focused personal distress. Children who are sociable, assertive, and good at regulating emotion are more likely to empathize with others’ distress, display sympathetic concern, and engage in prosocial behavior, helping, sharing, and comforting others in distress (Bengtsson,  2005 ; Eisenberg et al.,  1998 ; Valiente et al.,  2004 ). In contrast, when poor emotion regulators are faced with someone in need, they react with facial and physiological indicators of distress—frowning, lip biting, a rise in heart rate, and a sharp increase in EEG brain-wave activity in the right cerebral hemisphere (which houses negative emotion)—indications that they are overwhelmed by their feelings (Jones, Field, & Davalos,  2000 ; Pickens, Field, & Nawrocki,  2001 ).

As with other aspects of emotional development, parenting affects empathy and sympathy. When parents are warm, encourage emotional expressiveness, and show sensitive, empathic concern for their preschoolers’ feelings, children are likely to react in a concerned way to the distress of others—relationships that persist into adolescence and early adulthood (Koestner, Franz, & Weinberger,  1990 ; Michalik et al.,  2007 ; Strayer & Roberts,  2004 ). Besides modeling sympathy, parents can help shy children manage excessive anxiety and aggressive children regulate intense anger. They can also teach children the importance of kindness and can intervene when they display inappropriate emotion—strategies that predict high levels of sympathetic responding (Eisenberg, 2003 ).

In contrast, punitive parenting disrupts empathy at an early age (Valiente et al.,  2004 ). In one study, physically abused preschoolers at a child-care center rarely expressed concern at a peer’s unhappiness but, rather, reacted with fear, anger, and physical attacks (Klimes-Dougan & Kistner,  1990 ). The children’s behavior resembled their parents’ insensitive responses to others’ suffering. Empathy and Sympathy Assignment.

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 Peer Relations

As children become increasingly self-aware and better at communicating and understanding others’ thoughts and feelings, their skill at interacting with peers improves rapidly. Peers provide young children with learning experiences they can get in no other way. Because peers interact on an equal footing, children must keep a conversation going, cooperate, and set goals in play. With peers, children form friendships—special relationships marked by attachment and common interests. Let’s look at how peer interaction changes over the preschool years.