Empathyrelated responding and antisocial behaviour and social competence
Theorists and researchers have argued that empathy/sympathy contributes not only to prosocial behaviour, but also to individual differences in antisocial behaviour and social competence. For example, people who tend to experience empathy when they perceive cues of others' negative emotion would be expected to inhibit behaviours that have hurtful effects for others. This argument is consistent with the recognition that deficits in empathy and remorse are common in individuals with antisocial personality disorders. Moreover, because empathy and sympathy
would be expected to foster sensitivity to others and has been linked to greater prosocial behaviour, these vicarious reactions would be expected to contribute to children's social competence.
There is mounting support for the role of empathy and/or sympathy in antisocial behaviour and social competence (see Eisenberg et al 2006, Miller & Eisenberg 1988). For example, in a longitudinal study, Eisenberg et al (1996) found that teachers' reports of 6—8 year olds' dispositional sympathy were significantly correlated, concurrently and/or two years prior, with teacher-rated social skills and nonaggressive/socially appropriate behaviour, mothers' ratings of low levels of externalizing problems (including aggression and antisocial behaviour), and children's enacted and verbal socially competent responses in a puppet game in which they indicated what they would do in hypothetical social conflicts with peers. Four years later when the children were 10—12 years old, similar relations were found between teachers' reports of students' dispositional sympathy and measures of social competence concurrently and two, four and six years earlier, as well as with same-sex peers' reports of social status. Similarly, mothers' reports of children's dispositional sympathy were negatively related to mothers' and/or fathers' reports of externalizing problems (e.g. aggression, stealing) two, four and six years before, especially for boys (Murphy et al 1999). In a study of third graders in Indonesia, teachers' or parents' reports of children's disposi-tional sympathy tended to be associated with adults' and/or peers' reports of children's adjustment (i.e. low levels of externalizing problems) and popularity (Eisenberg et al 2001b). In a three-year follow-up, teacher-reported sympathy was still related to peer-reported liking, prosocial tendencies and low aggression, as well as teacher-reported social skills and adjustment, albeit primarily for boys.
Children's aggressive tendencies also have been correlated with situational measures of empathy-related responding. Zhou et al (2002) assessed elementary school children's facial and self-reported reactions to viewing mildly evocative slides of other people in positive or negative situations at two times, two years apart. In addition, parents' and teachers reported on the children's externalizing problem behaviours and social skills (i.e. socially appropriate behaviour and peer social status). At the first assessment, children's facial empathy (negative facial affect) in response to the slides depicting negative (but not positive) situations or others' facial expressions was negatively related to parents' and teachers' reports of children's externalizing problem behaviours; children's self-reported reactions were not related to their externalizing problems or social skills. Two years later, children's facial empathy to the negative slides and their self-reported empathy to both positive and negative slides (i.e., matching of the emotion in the slides) were associated with higher levels of adult-reported social skills and lower levels of adult-reported externalizing problems. In a structural equation model at the second assessment, empathy with the negative slides had stronger unique relations with children's social skills and low levels of externalizing problems than did empathy with positive slides, and this relation with problem behaviours held even when controlling for levels of empathy, social skills, and problem behaviours two years before.
Consistent with Zhou et al's (2002) findings, low levels of empathy may be especially important in the development of psychopathic tendencies and externalizing problems. Psychopaths or people with psychopathic traits appear to be less physiologically responsive to emotion-inducing stimuli (often mildly evocative slides) and to cues of others' distress than are non-psychopaths (Blair 1999). Thus, children who are not reactive to mild empathy-inducing stimuli may be at risk for externalizing problems. In a recent study, we (e.g. Liew et al 2003) found that boys (but not girls) who exhibited more heart rate or skin conductance responsivity when viewing slides depicting mild negative events or facial expressions were better regulated and had fewer externalizing problem behaviours than their less responsive peers. Because the stimuli were so mild, physiological arousal in this sample would not be expected to indicate personal distress (as it would in studies involving more evocative stimuli). It is important to keep in mind that either a lack of empathy or empathic overarousal (i.e. personal distress) may contribute to problems in moral and socioemotional development.
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