The Characteristics Of 3-6 Years Old Children's Empathy Development And Its Relationship With Mother's Empathy And Family Socioeconomic Status

Empathy is an important part of children's moral development,which can arouse children's prosocial behavior,restrain attacking behavior and help children to build a good peer relationship.So for the development of children,empathy is a very important skill.Confused about the contradictions between the findings of the study on child empathy and the mother's empathy,and curious about the relationship between family socioeconomic status and children's empathy,this study was carried out in order to understand the characteristics of empathy development of preschool children aged 3-6 years,to find the relationship between children empathy aged 3 to 6 years and maternal empathy,the socioeconomic status of children's families.Randomly selected 4 kindergartens in Xian,include 12 classes and 2503-6-year-old children and their mothers as subjects,of whom 131 were male and 119 female.Empathy continuum developed by Strayer is used as child empathy measurement tool;interpersonal reactivity Index is used for mother emnpathymeasurement;The measurement of the socioeconomic status of children's family uses the objective family socioeconomic status which consists of family income,parents 'education level,parents ' occupation,and MacArthur's 10-class ladder subjective family socioeconomic status.Descriptive statistics,Chi-square test,significant test,main effect test and correlation analysis were used to analyze data by SPSS20.0.(1)There were significant differences in effective empathy among children of different ages,the greater the age,the higher the correct rate of effective empathy.There were significant difference in effective empathy among children of different genders,the correct rate of emotional empathy is higher than that of men;happy effective empathy is the highest,followed by fear,sadness,Anger is the lowest of effective empathy.(2)The age main effect of empathy was significant,the older the child,the higher the empathy score.The gender main effect,the female empathy score was higher than the male,and the interaction between gender and age was significant.Between the empathy of the four basic emotions,children scored the highest for happy empathy,followed by sadness and anger,with the lowest empathy for fear.The greater the age,the greater the empathy for four basic emotions.Girls have the higher empathy score for happy,grief and anger than that of boys,and the absence of gender differences in fear of empathy.(3)The difference of effective empathy and empathy was not significant between the children of High maternal empathy score group and the low maternal empathy score group.There is no significant correlation between perspective taking,personal distress and empathy concern of the maternal empathy and effective empathy of the children.The Imagination of the maternal empathy can predict the children's sadness,scare empathy and effective empathy.There is no significant correlation between perspective taking,personal distress and empathy concern of the maternal empathy and enmathy of the children.The Imagination of the maternal empathy can predict the children's sadness,fear emotion empathy and empathy.There was no significant correlation between maternal empathy score and children's effective empathy and empathy score.(5)High objective SES group children had the highest effective empathy and empathy score.There was no significant difference in four kinds of basic emotion's effective empathy,empathy score,children's effective empathy and total empathy score between children of different objective family socioeconomic status Group.There was no significant correlation between the social economic status of the subjective and objective families and the effective empathy,empathy scores,children's effective empathy and empathy score in four basic children's emotions.(1)The effective empathy and empathy of 3-6-year-old children increased with the annual growth,and females empathy were higher than that of men.There are differences in emotional empathy and empathy between four basic emotions,and the highest level of empathy is empathy for happy emotions.There may be a general empathy mechanism for emotional empathy and empathy in 3-6-year-old children with different types of emotions.(2)The maternal empathy is not related to 3-6 children's empathy.(3)The subjective and objective socioeconomic status of the family is not related to the empathy of the 3-6-year-old children.According to the research results,it is suggested to use the method of mixed-age education in kindergarten education so that children of different ages imitate and learn each other,improve empathy level,and increase the chance to use empathy.Attention to empathy education of male children,because of the influence of gender social stereotype,which makes the empathy level of male children lower than female.Therefore it is necessary to pay special attention to empathy education for male children.Empathy education that focuses on negative emotions,the empathy of negative emotions plays an equally important role in the development of individuals,and attention to empathy education of negative emotions can help children understand the pain of others and provide more appropriate help behavior.