Relation between empathy of children and that of mothers

Abstract

Study I examined the development of empathy in young children and presented a new index of empathy for use with young children. The subjects were 140 children aged three to six years old. Each child was taken individually into a room and was asked which card of 4 kinds of cards showed a “happy (or sad, surprised, angry) face ?.” They were then read stories with pictures and were asked which card explained the boy (or girl)'s feeling in these stories. The results indicated that even young children could discriminate facial expressions and understand feelings of others, and that empathy developed with age. Study II examined the relation between the empathy of children and that of their mothers. The subjects were 140 children and 235 mothers. The mothers' empathy was measured on the Mehrabian and Epstein's scale (1972). These results support that a higher level of empathy in mothers has more impact on the empathy of children than that of a lower level, and that the mother's warmth and nuturance may produce strong positive feelings in children. © 1986, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.