Female Preschoolers' Verbal and Nonverbal Empathic Responses to Emotional Situations and Facial Expressions

Abstract

Several conceptualizations about the interdependency of three empathy responses during the empathic arousal process in children were contrasted, i.e., understanding, sharing, and facially expressing another's affect (cognitive, affective, and facial empathy, respectively). Videotaped episodes in which actors portrayed happiness, fear, sadness, and anger were presented to five-year-old girls in three conditions, 16 girls in each condition. In a first condition, emotions were conveyed by the actor's facial expressions, in a second condition by situational events, and in a third condition by both situational events and facial expressions. Girls' affective and cognitive empathy was assessed by asking questions about girls' own feelings and the actor's feelings, respectively. Girls' facial empathy was measured with Ekman and Friesen's Facial Action Coding System. Results corroborated an empathy conceptualization in which affective and facial empathy are mediated by cognitive empathy. An empathy conceptualization in which cognitive and affective empathy are aroused by afferent feedback of involuntary facial empathy was not supported by the results.