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Empathy as a buffer: How empathy moderates the emotional effects on Preschoolers’ sharing
Author(s) -
Guo Rui,
Wu Zhen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/bjop.12466
Subject(s) - sadness , empathy , psychology , happiness , developmental psychology , dictator game , prosocial behavior , social psychology , anger
This study experimentally investigated how empathy moderated the influence of external emotional stimuli on preschoolers’ subsequent sharing behaviour. Children aged 4–6 ( N = 218) were randomly presented with one of the video clips that elicited sad, happy, or neutral emotion, and were then asked to play a dictator game with puppet partners. Results revealed that compared to the neutral condition, children with higher empathy increased sharing after induced happiness but did not change sharing after induced sadness; by contrast, children with lower empathy decreased sharing after induced sadness. It appears that empathy may enhance the positive effect of happiness while reducing the negative effect of sadness on sharing behaviour. These findings provide experimental evidence in early childhood to support approaches that emphasize the role of immediate emotions in moral decision‐making; critically, such emotional effects vary with individual differences in dispositional empathy.