Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22157803
AutoresAlexis S Smith-Flores (0000-0002-6755-4986, University of California San Diego), Gabriel J Bonamy (University of California San Diego), Lindsey J Powell (0000-0001-5142-5998, University of California San Diego)
Año2023
Volumen7
Páginas837-854
Fecha de publicación2023-10-27
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaOpen MIND (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2470-2986 • E-ISSN: 2470-2986
EditorialMIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/opmi_a_00109
PMID37946849
OpenAlexW4388052501
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas66

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

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Empathy · Theory of mind · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Child and Animal Learning Development · Education and Critical Thinking Development · Psychology · Social Psychology

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