Invited Address Empathy in children: Theory, development, and assessment.

MARÍA CRISTINA RICHAUD

YOKOHAMA

Conferencia; 31 International Congress of Psychology; 2016

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCIES

Although empathy is a basic process for social-emotional development, it has been difficult to develop a theorythat integrates emotional and cognitive aspects, while creating operational definitions in order to empiricallystudy the theories. In this presentation different theoretical perspectives of empathy, its development in children,and results about the dispositional and social origins of empathy and about their psychometric study will bediscussed. While some authors as Watt (2007) claim that the resonance induction of at least one version of thesuffering of others within us and intrinsic motivation to reduce suffering or distress of others are essential parts ofempathy, results will be presented suggesting that empathic process is malleable and can be modulated byvolitional acts of self-regulation and implicit assessment processes (Decety, 2011). Although these modulatorsprocesses may have adaptive advantages, they can also produce discriminatory behavior, so prosociality is notnecessarily a result of empathy.