The Impact Of Family Pet Ownership On Children's Empathy Development

Companion animals play an important role in the socio-emotional development of a child.The current study aims to extend this research by exploring links between empathy and pet ownership and pet attachment in late childhood and to investigate how family pets influence the development of children's empathy.Participants consisted of children(10-16 years old)from a primary school and a middle school.Empathy includes two important components:dispositional empathy and empathic response.This research consists of three parts:In study one,the research studied the relationship of pet ownership,pet attachment and dispositional empathy by investigating 921 children with Lexington Attachment to pets scale and Interpersonal Reactivity Index.T-tests showed that there was significant difference between the research group(who have pets)and the control group(who don't have pets)in dispositional empathy.Multiple regression analysis showed pet owning and pet attachment could predict dispositional empathy,even if other variables including gender and age.In study two,in order to explore effects of pet ownership and pet attachment on children's empathic response,208 children completed Empathic Response Questionnaire under 4 groups of experiments.Results showed that the main effect of pet ownership and pet attachment was significant.Participants with high pet attachment had significantly higher scores of empathic response than participants with low pet attachment.And the relation between pet attachment and empathic response was partially mediated by dispositional empathy.In study three,to describe how pet ownership influence the development of children's empathy,a qualitative study was employed to explore the experience of children's pet keeping.The study conducted semi-structured interviews with 7 informants.All records were transcribed into texts and all the texts were analyzed based on grounded theory.By selective coding,15 secondary nodes were finally selected and then were categorized into 3 tertiary nodes.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Pet ownership and pet attachment are significantly associated with children'dispositional empathy.In terms of empathic response,children who recalled experiences with pets have higher level of empathic response.And Participants with high pet attachment had significantly higher scores of empathic response than participants with low pet attachment.And the relationship between pet attachment and empathic response was partially mediated by dispositional empathy.(3)As a whole,first of all,pet ownership can promote the development of children's empathy.And there are interactions among dispositional empathy,empathy ability and empathic response.Secondly,the relationship between children and pets can have an important influence on the development of empathy.And,family emotional education(which refers to parents' pet attitude and guidance during pet ownership)plays a crucial role throughout the process.