Evaluación de la simpatía en niños de 6 y 7 años de edad

OROS, LAURA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; X Congreso Nacional de Psicodiagnóstico; 2006

ADEIP

Psychological investigation shows that positive emotional experiences, such as sympathy, help the development of beliefs, attitudes and constructive behaviors to manage stress. As a result of these findings, efforts are being made to evaluate and encourage positive emotions from an early age. The aim of the present work is to present the process of construction and validation of a scale to evaluate sympathy in children of 6 and 7 years of age. Sympathy, affective dimension of empathy, is defined as a vicarious emotional reaction based on the preoccupation for the emotional condition of another person, which involves feelings of sorrow and concern, and includes the desire for other person to feel better. Sympathy is not merely feeling what the other person is feeling, it also implies to be interested in the other person’s needs and to long for the other person’s well-being. (Eisenberg, 1991; Keinbaum, Volland and Ulich, 2001). This emotion is closely linked to the pro-social conduct. The preliminary scale, which included 13 triple choice questions, was analyzed psychometrically in a sample of school children. Satisfactory results were found in relation to the reliability and the discriminatory power, and theoretical coherence in relation to the factorial validity.     PALABRAS CLAVE: Medición; simpatía; infancia; cuestionario