From cognitive empathy to affective empathy: empathic skill cultivation strategies in adolescents based on value identification

• In Event: Transforming education through social emotional learning: Happiness curriculum, garden of listening, and empathy cultivation through storytelling

Proposal

Background
Empathy is a complex skill. Cognitive empathy is an important basis for affective empathy, but cognitive empathy does not automatically lead to affective empathy. In the case of school bullying, the more the bully understands the other person's feelings, the easier it is to use this against the bullied. Cognitive empathy is a cognitive development, whereas emotional empathy is more moral.

Research Purpose
Therefore, exploring how to cultivate students' empathy ability, so that students can move from cognitive empathy to affective empathy, is an important issue in cultivating students' prosocial behavior.

Main Finding
Based on social identity theory, this study tries to explore how to cultivate students' empathy ability. This study holds that value identification is the key link between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Identity development is the central task of adolescence. In this stage, adolescents confirm their identities through self-reflection on social roles, thus forming value identification and influencing behavior choice. In the process of the occurrence of empathy, adolescents make value judgment by associating their own experiences and self-reflection of social roles, and then make empathic choice, choose to reject empathy or affective empathy.

Conclusion
Based on this, this study puts forward the experience-based "narrative interaction" training strategy, and puts forward three effective training methods based on this, emphasizing the participation of students in the context of events to guide them. 1) Read complex text. When students read, they can relate to the characters in the book. Readers' responses help develop the skills needed for emotional empathy and behavioral empathy. If the literature is complex, reading literature is more likely to enhance students' empathy. A text that is too simple can prevent the reader from experiencing the story, while a slightly more complex text can help teenagers recognize the similarities between the problems faced by people in the real world and the characters in the book. 2) Reflective writing. The ability to empathize depends on how a person reads and writes about the world. Narrative writing is what shifts young people from passive empathy to active empathy, it's getting students to embrace empathy as a self-identified value, it's not just getting students to write stories. In the process of evaluating the world through reading and writing, the interactions between individuals, others, and the culture in which they live together shape each person's identity. Reflective writing emphasizes the breakthrough of traditional values and the reflection and acceptance of new values. For example, to describe the psychological activities of a villain, the writer has to face the pain of others after entering an uncomfortable state, and students have the opportunity to have emotional empathy when writing narratives. 3) Oral storytelling. Oral storytelling involves talking to others about yourself. Explaining events through storytelling helps people understand what they are going through. Oral storytelling is the ability to relate remembered events to a life story in which themes emerge and emerging themes give the story a living meaning. The theme tells people the values chosen by the storyteller, and the values chosen by a person determine his behavioral motivation, helping to clarify the identity development of adolescents.

Author

• LIANG CHENXI