Preschool children's prosocial judgments and their reasoning in the empathic situations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine preschool children's prosocial judgments and their reasoning for prosocial episodes. One hundred children were individually asked to do prosocial judgments and their reasoning for three prosocial episodes: helping, sharing, and comforting. In the episode there was a crying or a normal facial expression of a person in distress under the condition of high and low empathic situations. The results indicated that the crying face and high empathic situation increased the rate of prosocial judgment more than the normal face and low empathic situation, respectively, and older children (5-year-olds) did prosocial judgment than younger ones (4-year-olds). Furthermore, the crying face induced the empathic reasoning, especially in the high empathic situation. These results supported that preschool children were able to use the empathic reasoning reflected in the negative facial expression and the cause of distress of the victim.