UNDERSTANDING HOW CHILDREN DEVELOP EMPATHY
The capacity to
notice the distress of others, and to be moved by it, can be a critical
component of what is calledprosocial behavior, actions that benefit others:
individuals, groups or society as a whole.
Dr.
Eisenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, draws a
distinction between empathy and sympathy:
Empathy is
experiencing the same emotion or highly similar emotion to what the other
person is feeling.
Sympathy is
feeling concern or sorrow for the other person.
The ingredients of
prosocial behavior, from kindness to philanthropy, are more complex and
varied. They include:
·
the ability to perceive others’
distress
·
the sense of self that helps sort out
your own identity and feelings
·
the regulatory skills that prevent
distress so severe it turns to aversion, and
·
the cognitive and emotional
understanding of the value of helping.
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Prosocial behaviour is motivational
Scott Huettel, a
professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, described prosocial behavior
was essentially motivational: It feels good to help other people.
Experimental studies
have shown that the same brain region that is activated when people win money
for themselves is active when they give to charity — that is, that there is a
kind of neurologic “reward” built into the motivational system of the brain.
“Charitable giving
can activate the same pleasure-reward centers, the dopaminergic centers, in the
brain that are very closely tied to habit formation,” said Bill Harbaugh,
an economist at the University of Oregon who studies altruism. “This suggests
it might be possible to foster the same sorts of habits for charitable giving
you see with other sorts of habits.”
Prosocial behaviour
is based on social cognition
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The other theory of prosocial
behavior, Dr. Huettel said, is based on social cognition —the recognition that
other people have needs and goals. The two theories aren’t mutually
exclusive: Cognitive understanding accompanied by a motivational reward
reinforces prosocial behavior.
But shaping
prosocial behavior is a tricky business. For instance, certain financial
incentives seem to deter prosocial impulses, a phenomenon called reward
undermining, Dr. Huettel said.
Consider that in the
United States, historically, blood donors could be paid, but not in Britain.
And the British donated more blood. “When you give extrinsic motivations, they
can supplant the intrinsic ones,” he said.
Fostering prosocial
behavior in children, from kindness on to charity
Parental
modeling is important, of course; sympathy and compassion should be part
of children’s experience long before they know the words.
Explain how other
people feel. Reflect the child’s feelings, but also point out, look, “you hurt
someone’s feelings.”
Don’t offer material
rewards for prosocial behavior, but do offer opportunities to do
good — opportunities that the child will see as voluntary. And help
children see themselves and frame their own behavior as generous, kind,
helpful, as the mother in my exam room did.
Working with a
child’s temperament, taking advantage of an emerging sense of self and
increasing cognitive understanding of the world and helped by the reward
centers of the brain, parents can try to foster that warm glow and the
worldview that goes with it.
Empathy, sympathy,
compassion, kindness and charity begin at home, and very early.
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