Emotion regulation dynamics in empathy in young children

Abstract

The capacity to empathize plays a pivotal role in most forms of social interaction, contributing significantly to adaptive social behavior. Empathy entails experiencing others’ emotions, making the ability to regulate one’s emotional reactions to both positive and negative emotions of others crucial for effective empathy. Both empathy and emotion regulation are capacities that develop within the context of parenting, yet the dynamics of this process are not well understood. Moreover, while there has been considerable research on empathy towards others’ distress, there is less understanding of how people regulate their emotions in response to the positive emotions of others. This lack of knowledge is particularly pronounced in childhood. To address these gaps, our study focused on young children (, years and 8 months, months, female), observing their attention patterns through eye-tracking as they watched video clips designed to elicit empathic responses, both positive and negative. Additionally, we collected mothers’ reports on the children’s behavioral symptoms. Our findings revealed a decline in the children’s attention to the face over time. However, this decline was slower in situations eliciting positive empathy and faster in those eliciting negative empathy. Interestingly, this pattern varied with the children’s behavioral problems. Specifically, children with higher internalizing problems maintained their attention in positive empathy situations, whereas those with medium to high levels of externalizing symptoms initially showed a decline, followed by an increase in attention to other’s negative emotional expressions. These results indicate that individual differences in behavioral issues are linked to distinct approaches to regulating emotions in empathic contexts.