A training to develop six- to nine-year-olds’ empathy towards ethnically different people

Abstract

ABSTRACT Europe has recently seen a massive multi-ethnic influx of migrants, marred by high social costs of inter-ethnic confrontation. This has prompted scholars to develop training schemes to improve the social skills needed to cope with this situation. Decades of studies have acknowledged empathy as a crucial variable in the development of positive interpersonal and intergroup relations. In this study, we tested a training program for enhancing empathy towards ethnically diverse people in 170 six- to nine-year-old children. The materials were drawn from other best-known training schemes and active techniques were used. Multicultural empathy was assessed with a self-report measure. Test, retest and follow-up (at 6 months) comparisons demonstrated the training’s efficacy, with improvement in multicultural empathy persisting six months later. The results suggest that it can be a useful tool to encourage the development of ethnocultural empathy starting from the first years of elementary school. The practical implications for school education are discussed.