Eisenberg Nancy

The construct of empathy-related responding has been an important topic in developmental psychology; moreover, empathy-related responding is considered of relevance to moral development and moral behavior in multiple disciplines. Findings regarding the relations of empathy-related responding (i.e. empathy, sympathy, personal distress) to moral behavior are reviewed. It is argued that inconsistencies in findings are partly due to lack of differentiation in terms of empathy-related responses. In addition, literature pertaining to the development of children’s empathy and moral behavior is reveiwed. The relations of empathy-related responding to other aspects of children’s competence and maladjustment also are discussed, as are relations of children’s dispositional characteristics (especially self-regulation) to their empathy-related responding and moral behavior. The literature as a whole is consistent with the view that sympathetic concern (and sometimes empathy) are associated with children’s moral behavior, moral judgment, low levels of aggression/externalizing problems, and socially competent behavior.

Preston and Hofelich (2012) suggested that researchers disagree on the role of self–other overlap in empathy due to a failure to differentiate among neural overlap, subjective resonance, and personal distress; they also developed a framework for tying neural and subjective overlap to various aspects of functioning they include in the construct of empathy. Although we found their discussion of different processes that have been labeled empathy interesting and helpful, we found their discussion of self–other overlap to be somewhat less useful for conceptualizing differences among empathy-related processes. In addition, we provide an alternative perspective to their reasoning regarding the role of experience and neural overlap in an aspect of empathy-related responding (e.g., concern or compassion)