“It Shaped Her to Be More Protective”: Adults and Middle School Students’ Perspectives on Empathy

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Empathy is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. While some simplify its definition to feeling as another person does, others focus on its ability to transform feeling into action (Batson, 2010; Bloom, 2016; Eisenberg et al., 2016). In this manuscript, we will focus on empathy-induced altruism: the empathic concern that motivates altruistic behavior.

Some schools are designed to focus on such skills. EL Education is a network of schools committed to character development, with the goal of each student becoming “ethical people” who “contribute to a better world” (EL Education, 2020). The objective of this study is to examine and compare empathy-induced altruism of students who attend EL and typical schools.

A purposive sample of four schools from a larger longitudinal study were chosen for analysis. We draw from interviews and focus groups with 33 students (17 boys), 14 teachers, and 18 parents conducted during the 2019-2020 school year. All participants were asked a series of questions about empathy, including its definition and examples of empathetic behavior. Our research questions are: (1) How do students, parents, and teachers describe empathy-induced altruism? (2) How do the understandings and descriptions vary between EL Education and control schools?

Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and are being analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Groups within schools are the unit of analysis (e.g. parents at School 1, parents at School 2). As such, the authors will create codebooks for each group. Each is engaged in writing memos and reflection and, once consensus is reached, the team will conduct a thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006; Hill et al., 2005) to define group-based understandings of empathy-induced altruism. With a team of four and a weekly meeting schedule, the analysis will be complete and written up by December 2020.

Preliminary results show that teachers and parents identify empathy-induced altruism in students when the actions are most visible, including helping or including others. Students describe their own empathy-induced altruism similarly except for one difference: they describe decisions not to act (e.g., empathizing with a teacher and choosing to not speak with their friend during a lesson). Students also spoke of feeling empathy but deciding not to act altruistically after weighing the costs of an action (e.g., speaking to friend during lesson to avoid a potential friendship fallout even after empathizing with the teacher). These initial findings speak to the unique challenges of teaching, modeling, and coaching empathy-induced altruism in early adolescence.

In many discussions of empathy, connected, interrelated processes have been artificially separated, losing meaning and social impact (Batson, 2009). Indeed, when engaging in school contexts, understanding the whole of empathy-induced altruism is crucial to teaching character development. To the author’s knowledge, this rarely explored phenomenon has never been studied through the perspectives of all key players in middle schools. Our approach will add not only to the growing literature on the importance of both empathy and altruism in adolescence (Fuligni, 2018; Ma et al., 2019), but will support the teaching of these important skills.

Authors

• Theresa Pfister, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Sara Rimm-Kaufman, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lia Elaine Sandilos
  Non-Presenting Author

• Celine Thompson, University of Virginia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Byung Lee, University of Virginia
  Non-Presenting Author