Nichols Sara R, Svetlova Margarita, Brownell Celia A
University of Pittsburgh.
Cogn Brain Behav. 2009 Dec;13(4):449-478.
The second year of life marks the beginning of empathic responsiveness to others' distress, a hallmark of human interaction. We examined the role of social understanding (self-other understanding and emotion understanding) and empathic disposition in individual differences in 12- to 24-month olds' responses to mothers' and an unfamiliar infant peer's distress (N = 71). Results reveal associations between empathic responsiveness to distressed mother and crying infant peer, suggesting that individual differences in prosocial motivation may exist right from the outset, when the ability to generate an empathic, prosocial response first emerges. We further found that above and beyond such dispositional characteristics (and age), children with more advanced social understanding were more empathically responsive to a peer's distress. However, responses to mothers' distress were explained by children's empathic disposition only, and not by their social understanding. Thus, as early as the second year of life some children are dispositionally more inclined to empathy regardless of who is in distress, whether mother or peer. At the same time, emotion understanding and self-other understanding appear to be especially important for explaining individual differences in young children's empathic responsiveness to a peer's distress.
生命的第二年标志着对他人痛苦产生共情反应的开始，这是人类互动的一个标志。我们研究了社会理解（自我-他人理解和情绪理解）和共情倾向在12至24个月大婴儿对母亲和陌生婴儿同伴痛苦反应的个体差异中的作用（N = 71）。结果揭示了对痛苦母亲和哭泣婴儿同伴的共情反应之间的关联，这表明亲社会动机的个体差异可能从一开始就存在，即当产生共情亲社会反应的能力首次出现时。我们进一步发现，除了这些性格特征（和年龄）之外，具有更高级社会理解能力的儿童对同伴的痛苦更具共情反应。然而，对母亲痛苦的反应仅由儿童的共情倾向来解释，而不是由他们的社会理解来解释。因此，早在生命的第二年，一些儿童无论痛苦的是母亲还是同伴，在性格上都更倾向于共情。同时，情绪理解和自我-他人理解对于解释幼儿对同伴痛苦的共情反应中的个体差异似乎尤为重要。
