Compliance or empathy - What links maternal sensitivity and toddlers' emotional helping?

Becher, Tamara; Essler, Samuel; Pletti, Carolina und Paulus, Markus (2022): Compliance or empathy - What links maternal sensitivity and toddlers' emotional helping? In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Bd. 226, 105547

Abstract

Emotional helping-that is, helping based on others' emotional dis-tress-has been suggested to be a central prosocial response to others in need. Developmental theorizing proposed that emotional helping has social origins. Whereas research indeed demonstrated a link between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional help-ing, developmental theories stress different mediating processes. Emotion-sharing theories claim empathic concern to be the crucial link for helping, whereas internalization theories base children's helping on children's compliance. To investigate these hypotheses, the current study explored empathy and compliance as two possi-ble mediators for the relation between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional helping at 18 months of age. Overall, maternal sensitivity was positively related to children's empathy, children's compliance, and children's emotional helping. Interestingly, chil-dren's empathy-but not children's compliance-mediated the link between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional helping. These findings deepen our understanding of the psychological pro-cesses subserving emotional helping during infancy and support theories that stress the socioemotional origins of children's proso-cial behavior.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Psychologie und Pädagogik > Department Psychologie
• Themengebiete: 100 Philosophie und Psychologie > 150 Psychologie
• ISSN: 0022-0965
• Sprache: Englisch