Poster #48 - Associations Between Empathy-Related Processes and Prosocial Behaviors in Toddlerhood

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

Different prosocial behaviors, such as sharing, helping, and comforting emerge during the second year of life (Dunfield et al., 2010; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1992). Empathy-related processes play a key role in the development of such early behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Importantly, children can demonstrate empathy via personal distress or other-oriented empathy (empathic concern; Eisenberg et al., 2010). Whereas personal distress is considered an aversive reaction, associated with emotion dysregulation and desire to reduce one own’s discomfort, other-oriented empathy involves a concern for others—a feeling that should motivate one to alleviate another person’s distress (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Somewhat surprisingly, there is a dearth of studies examining how these two theoretically distinct empathy-related processes relate to various prosocial behaviors in early development. Thus, in this study we examined the role of other-oriented empathy and personal distress in sharing, helping, and comforting during the second year of life. We hypothesized that whereas personal distress would be unrelated, or negatively related, to prosocial behaviors, other-oriented empathy would be positively associated with prosocial behaviors (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990). Additionally, as comforting, in particular, requires toddlers to recognize and interpret another person’s emotions, we anticipated that other-oriented empathy would show the strongest association with comforting.
Participants were 200 mothers (Mage = 31.02 years, SD = 5.07) of toddlers ages 15-21 months old (48.5% boys) who completed scales measuring helping, sharing, and comforting (10 items; e.g., “My child helps with household chores”, “My child shares his/her things”, “My child comforts others when they are sad or unhappy”; Torréns & Kärtner, 2017), as well as other-oriented empathy and personal distress (4 hypothetical stories; e.g., “Imagine you are at a playground with your child. There is another child close by who is running around. Suddenly, that child trips and falls on the ground. He/she moans a few times, rubs his/her knee, and starts crying. How likely is it that your child would: look sad?”, come to you to be comforted?”; Peets & Del Vecchio, 2022). McDonald’s ω-s ranged from .81 to .86 for prosocial behavior, and .66 to .80 for empathy scales.
Correlations among the variables are shown in Table 1. Other-oriented empathy was positively correlated with all three prosocial behaviors while personal distress was positively associated with sharing and comforting. Our main hypotheses were tested with hierarchical regression analyses (Table 2). After controlling for age and gender differences, other-oriented empathy was positively associated with helping, sharing, and comforting, with the strongest association emerging for comforting. In contrast, personal distress did not have a significant effect on any of the three prosocial behaviors. In a second set of analyses where we also controlled for the overlap among the three prosocial behaviors, other-oriented empathy had a unique positive association with comforting, β = .39, p < .001, but associations with helping and sharing failed to reach significance. Our findings underscore the importance of making a distinction between empathy-related processes that are self- vs. other-oriented and studying their unique contribution to different types of prosocial behaviors in toddlerhood.

Authors

• Jordan Holmén, St. John's University
  Presenting Author

• Kätlin Peets, St. John's University

• Tamara Del Vecchio, St. John’s University