Children’s Empathy and Trust Affect Observational Fear Learning from Others

• In Event: Learning to Fear in Childhood: Evidence from Experimental Studies

Abstract

Introduction. Past research indicates that children can learn to fear stimuli they see others responding fearfully to (e.g., Gerull & Rapee, 2002). However, there are often large individual differences in the levels of this observational (or ‘vicarious’) fear learning (e.g., Askew & Field, 2007). Two possible explanations for these differences could be that vicarious learning is related to children’s empathy levels or their trust in the person they are observing. These two potential factors were investigated in two age-appropriate observational learning studies.

Method. Children in both studies were aged 7 to 10 years. In both experiments, Askew and Field’s (2007) vicarious fear-learning procedure was used. This involved 10 observational fear learning trials in which children were shown pictures of a novel animal (either a cuscus or quokka) on a computer screen together with pictures of scared faces (‘models’). These trials were randomly interspersed with 10 control trials in which children saw a second animal (a quokka or cuscus) alone on the screen. Children’s fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for the animals were measured before and after the learning procedure. In study 1 (N=107), children’s trait empathy levels were measured via questionnaire and they were randomly assigned to one of three state empathy manipulation groups: high, low and control. Children in the high empathy group were instructed to pay particular attention to the emotion of faces during observational learning, to imagine how the person felt and what would make them feel that way. In contrast, those in the ‘low’ group were asked not to concern themselves with how the person felt or let it influence their own feelings. In study 2 (N=80), model trustworthiness was manipulated. Half of the children were given information indicating that four fearful models were highly knowledgeable about the animals, and the remainder were informed the models’ knowledge of animals was unreliable. As a manipulation check, children were asked to rate how much they trusted models at the end of the study.

Results. Higher trait empathy was associated with greater increases in fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for animals following observational fear learning. In addition, both control group children and those that had received the high state empathy manipulation showed significantly greater fear learning than children in the low empathy manipulation group (Fig.4). Children in this group showed no learning. Greater effects of observational fear learning were found in study 2 for children who had seen a trustworthy model compared to those who had seen an unreliable one (Fig.5).

Discussion. In line with previous studies, results showed that children can vicariously learn fear responses for novel stimuli if they observe someone responding fearfully. More importantly, 1) higher levels of both state and trait empathy were associated with greater observational fear learning; and 2) higher levels of trust in a model led to greater fear learning. Overall, the findings suggest that vicarious fear learning can be reduced or prevented by reducing children’s empathic appraisals for emotional faces or by lowering trust in the reliability of scared models.

Authors

• Chris Askew, University of Surrey
  Presenting Author

• Gemma Reynolds, Middlesex University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Molly O’Connor, University of Surrey
  Non-Presenting Author