Zach Maya, Palgi-Hacker Avigail, Israeli-Ran Liat, Meidan Adi, Seidmann Michal, Hijleh Ayah, Birnbaum Ramon, Gueron-Sela Noa, Uzefovsky Florina
Psychology Department, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Biology Department, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Child Dev. 2025 Jan-Feb;96(1):341-354. doi: 10.1111/cdev.14176. Epub 2024 Sep 29.
While most research focused on empathic responses to negative emotions, little is known about empathy to positive emotions. We aimed to bridge this gap by examining infants' and children's empathic responses to distress and happiness, while differentiating between cognitive and emotional empathy. We conducted three studies with N = 119 3-month-old infants; N = 169 10-19 months-old infants; and N = 61 24-60 months-old children (all Jewish-Israeli). Empathy was measured using experimenter simulations (studies 1 and 3) or peer-video (study 2). All studies showed that cognitive empathy to positive and negative emotions converged (small-medium effect size), but not so for emotional empathy. This suggests that understanding others' emotions is independent of emotion valence, while the ability to share in another's emotion is valence-specific.
虽然大多数研究集中在对负面情绪的共情反应上，但对于对正面情绪的共情却知之甚少。我们旨在通过研究婴儿和儿童对痛苦和快乐的共情反应来弥合这一差距，同时区分认知共情和情感共情。我们对119名3个月大的婴儿、169名10至19个月大的婴儿和61名24至60个月大的儿童（均为犹太裔以色列人）进行了三项研究。共情通过实验者模拟（研究1和3）或同伴视频（研究2）来测量。所有研究均表明，对正面和负面情绪的认知共情趋于一致（效应量为小到中等），但情感共情并非如此。这表明理解他人的情绪与情绪效价无关，而分享他人情绪的能力则具有效价特异性。
