Altruism and the Assessment of Empathy in the Preschool Years

EISENBERG-BERG, NANCY, and LENNON, RANDY. Altruism and the Assessment of Empathy in the Preschool Years. CmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 552-557. The relationship between 51 4and 5-year-olds' prosocial behavior and empathy was assessed with a modified version of the Feshbach empathy measure. This technique differed from the Feshbach technique in that (a) the stories were more detailed, (b) only happy and sad stories were used, and (c) both verbal and nonverbal responses were used to score empathic responsiveness. The children were interviewed by either a familiar or unfamiliar experimenter to assess both empathy and comprehension of others' feelings, and the children's prosocial behaviors were assessed naturalistically over 10 weeks. The results were contrary to expectations. Spontaneous prosocial behavior was negatively related to the empathic measures (verbal and nonverbal), while prosocial behavior in response to a request was marginally positively related to nonverbal empathy scores. Comprehension (cognitive role taking) was unrelated to prosocial behavior. Unfamiliar interview circumstances resulted in lower comprehension but not lower empathic scores. Alternative explanations are discussed, including the possibility that the frequently used empathic techniques may actually measure social desirability.