Nurturing Children’s Empathy: Opportunities for Behavioral Science
As a former elementary school teacher, I often reflect on the impact this post-pandemic era has had on my past students. The challenge of battling social isolation's effects was difficult for most adults, including myself, so I can only imagine how it was for these children. After all, they were at a crucial stage in developing socio-emotional skills: the capacities essential for enabling individuals to effectively manage stress, build relationships, and engage creatively and productively in their environments.1 Such skills include emotional regulation, social interaction, and resilience. The pandemic's disruption could have seriously impeded kids in developing these abilities.
Unfortunately, the research only confirms my suspicions. A recent study examining the socio-emotional impact of reopening primary schools after prolonged closures found that children were less likely to exhibit prosocial behavior.2 One third of participants reported concerns surrounding face-to-face interactions, such as maintaining physical distance with others or navigating changes in relationships. These results suggest that many children experienced the ultimate challenge of no longer finding “normalcy” normal.
This brings us to a critical question: how might we support children in developing (or re-developing) these essential socio-emotional skills such as empathy in a post-pandemic world?
What is empathy and how does it develop?
Empathy is “the capacity to resonate with and reflect upon the feelings and mental states of others.”3 It involves sharing someone else’s emotions (the affective component) and understanding why they feel that way (the cognitive component).
A huge part of how empathetic we are is rooted in our biology – such as particular genes, hormones, and brain areas.4 There is no need to fret, however, if you’re worried that you might not have inherited this “empathy gene” from your parents, or that you’re low in oxytocin (a hormone linked to higher empathy). The good news is that while nature does play a part in developing empathy, nurture also matters a lot. Thus empathy, to a large extent, can be learned and developed.
One way is through the direct role of parents – not just by teaching empathy, but by exemplifying empathy through their own behaviors.3 First, children learn by observing and modeling their parents’ self-regulation.5 Second, parents directly guide children through socialization, especially when it comes to emotionally challenging situations. Lastly, the climate parents create at home (whether that be warm and supportive or controlling and harsh) greatly influences their children’s socio-emotional competence – including their empathy.5
The importance of this parental role was even more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. With school closures forcing students to spend a lot more time at home, parents became the primary educators in their children’s emotional development. This period highlighted the critical importance of nurturing an empathetic home environment, as children relied heavily on their parents on how to understand and process their emotions in a confined and altered reality.
References
1. Danner, D., Lechner, C., & Spengler, M. (2021). Editorial: Do we need socio-emotional skills? Front. Psychol., 12, 1-3.
2. Wang, J., Wang, Y., Lin, H., Chen, X., Wang, H., Liang, H., Guo, X., & Fu, C. (2021). Mental health problems among school-aged children after school reopening: A cross-sectional study during the COVID-19 post-pandemic in East China. Front. Psychol., 12, 1-15.
3. Levy, J., Goldstein, A., & Feldman, R. (2019). The neural development of empathy is sensitive to caregiving and early trauma. Nature Communications, 10, Article 1905. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09927-y
4. Knafo, A., Zahn-Waxler, C., Van Hulle, C., Robinson, J. A. L., & Rhee, S. H. (2008). The developmental origins of a disposition toward empathy: Genetic and environmental contributions. Emotion, 8(6), 737–752. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014179
5. Morris AS., Criss MM., Silk JS., Houltberg BJ. (2017). The impact of parenting on emotion regulation during childhood and adolescence, Child Development Perspectives 11(4), 233–238.
6. Schwartz, H., Skoog-Hoffman, A., Polman, J., Kelly, O., Bañales, J., & Jagers, R. (2023). Integrated learning, integrated lives: Highlighting opportunities for transformative SEL within academic instruction. CASEL.
About the Author
Mariel Guevara
Mariel Guevara is a Junior Research Analyst at The Decision Lab. She is currently pursuing her MA degree in Developmental Psychology at Ateneo de Manila University. She has held several research positions in the past spanning different technology-mediated interventions tackling issues such as substance use prevention, mental health promotion, and civic engagement. She is especially passionate about making mental health services more accessible in the Philippines. In her free time she enjoys playing video games, going on nature walks, and playing sports.
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