Children have been observed to practice a type of natural and empathetic peer support. That is not only magical to observe but helping us understand the nature of peer support in general.
The ability of children to notice the distress of others, and to be moved by it emotionally, and act accordingly can be a critical component of what is called “prosocial behavior” (meaning those “actions that benefit others: individuals, groups or society as a whole”).
Psychologists, neurobiologists and child psychologists are increasingly interested in this specialized area of research as well the profound questions that come about when studying all this like “how and why we become our better selves.” This has lead to other related questions, for example: “How do human being develop this skill in the first place?”
“Are some people just born with this ability? Or is it learned?”
These types of questions are of concern to a number of people I’ve talked to who are actively involved in child development and learning- who wonder and amaze at the ability of children to teach us so much , not only about ourselves but how to be in relationship with others.
Recently a child psychologist related an interesting story of a hurt child, being helped by other children who seem to practice a type of natural peer support, many struggle today to re-learn as adults.
Researchers studying the biological origin of empathy (what they called “developmental neuroscientists”) found that infants are born with the ability to “imitate.”
We’ve all seen it: the newborn who copies his dad’s facial expression; the baby who shakes the rattle just like her mother.
This type of imitation lays the foundation for “empathy”, scientists suggest.
Empathy is the capacity to share or recognize emotions experienced by another.
“We believe that when infants imitate, they are becoming ‘like the other person’ in action, with simple body movements,” says Andrew Meltzoff, Ph.D, co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain & Learning at the University of Washington. “Later that can flower into empathy, which is the ability to become like the other person in emotion and perspective”, he continued.
What does all this mean or imply? The capacity for imitation (therefore “empathy”) is already wired into the DNA; our job is to help it grow into real emotional empathy and the ability to be compassionate. “Whether it blossoms or lies dormant largely depends on whether it is nurtured,” Michele Borba writes in her book, Building Moral Intelligence.
See book offer: Building Moral Intelligence; (subtitled) The seven essential virtues that teach kids to do the right thing http://www.amazon.com/Building-Moral-Intelligence-Essential-Virtues/dp/0787962260
This is amazing research in the subject of children and empathy.
Enter one Nancy Eisenberg, a unassuming professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Eisenberg is recognized around the world as an “expert” on the development in children of pro-social behavior (meaning: “voluntary behavior intended to benefit another”).
“Such behavior”, she says is often examine “through the child’s ability to perceive and react to someone else’s distress. Attempts at concern and reassurance can be seen in children as young as 1”, she said in a recent lecture I attended.
Empathy has an emotional and a thinking component. To have empathy means to feel another’s feelings (pain, sorrow, joy and other emotions). To have empathy one must also understand intellectually.
Eisenberg has literally pioneered the study of empathy and children and have concluded some amazing things:
1) “Empathy, at least the way I break it out, is experiencing the same emotion or highly similar emotion to what the other person is feeling,” she said.
2) Empathy is the cornerstone of ability to love, and therefore empathy is at the core of good character.
3) “Sympathy is feeling concern or sorrow for the other person.” While that may be based in part on empathy, she said, or on memory, “it’s not feeling the same emotion.”
By itself, intense empathy — really feeling someone else’s pain — can backfire, causing so much personal distress that the end result is a desire to avoid the source of the pain, researchers have found.
Empathy is both a genetically determined and a learned emphatic skill.
The ingredients of prosocial behavior, from kindness to philanthropy, “are more complex and varied, especially where children are concerned”, Eisenberg says.
They include such things as “the ability to perceive others’ distress, the sense of self that helps sort out your own identity and feelings, the regulatory skills that prevent distress so severe it turns to aversion, and the cognitive and emotional understanding of the value of helping.”
Dr. Eisenberg study in the close connections of how children develop and use empathy is critically important in our study of how human beings develop and use this skill innately and overtly within our own lives.
Empathy is generally considered part of emotional intelligence.
Therefore, a person who is empathetic is more intelligent is better connected within society.
Interestingly children are “always intelligence in their approach to empathy and peer support”, a friend remarked. “We can learn a lot from children if we are receptive to them and their capacity to teach us valuable moral lessons.”
See related video: Experts in Emotion 15.2b — Nancy Eisenberg on Emotion Regulation in Children http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QEG1C_MWtU