A Study Of The Relationship Between The Family Environment And The Sympathy Of Young Children

As an important part of infants' social quality, empathy is a crucial premise of infants' pro-social behavior.There are researches that have shown that empathy training could significantly promote the development of infants' pro-social behaviors,such as infants' cooperation,sharing,comfort and helping. The development of infants' empathy doesn't happen overnight, and it results from the interaction of subjective and objective factors.According to Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecology of human development model, infants' psychological development results from the interaction of many factors,and one of the most important factors is the Micro Systems that they are most familiar with and experience directly,namely the family environment.Sarnii etc. believe that for those infants who live in such family environments with abundant emotional expressions, their abilities to feel others' emotion are easier to get improved. On the basis of this, they are more likely to feel the plight or feelings of others,and thus it becomes more likely for them to have sympathetic behaviors.Considering all above,the effect that family environment plays on infants' psychological development can not be neglected.In the paper, 304 infants from 3 kindergarten are selected as the research subjects.The mothers' reports are used to assess infants' empathy and family environments. This study is aimed at investigating the general characteristics of infants' empathy development and discusses the relationship between infants' empathy and family environment(including the material environment and spiritual environment).The specific research problems contain the general characteristics and regulations of infants' empathy development,including age and gender differences;the relationship between the family environment and infants' empathy.The conclusions we get are as follows.First, there is gender difference in the development of the infants' empathy. Girls' empathy development level is higher than boys'.Second, family physical environment is related with the infants' empathy.Fathers' education background has a significant effect on infants' compassion experiences, compassion understanding and compassion behaviors. To be specific, Fathers' education background plays a greater role in comprehending the infants' roles, understanding emotions, psychological assistance and material assistance.What's more,mothers' career has important effects on infants' compassion experiences andcompassion behaviors. Specifically, mothers' career has a little significant influence on infants' response worries.However,it has significant effect on psychological assistance.Different family income has significant influence on infants' sympathy behaviors, specifically playing a more significant role in the infants' material assistance. Family type, the infants who are looked after by different caregivers and those who are whether the only child or not in their family have no statistical significance.Third, family mental environment is related to infants' empathy. Success, Intellect,Entertainment, Organization and Controlling are significantly positively related to infants' sympathetic understanding and sympathetic behaviors, specifically Intellect, Entertainment,Organization and Controlling are positively related to the comprehending the infants' roles,understanding emotions, psychological assistance and material assistance. Success is positively related to the comprehending the infants' roles,psychological assistance and material assistance.Success, Intellect, Entertainment and Organization are positively related to infants' compassion experiences. To be specific, Success, Intellect, Entertainment and Organization are only positively related to infants' response worries.Fourth, regression analysis shows that Success can predict the development level of infants' response worries, role understanding, psychological assistance and material assistance.In addition,Intellect can predict the development level of infants' response worries, role understanding and psychological assistance. Entertainment can predict the development level of infants' response worries, role understanding, emotion understanding, psychological assistance and material assistance.Organization can predict the development level of role understanding, emotion understanding and material assistance. Besides,controlling can predict the development level of infants' response worries, emotion understanding, psychological assistance and material assistance.