Sympathy, distress, and prosocial behavior of preschool children in four cultures

By Gisela Trommsdorff, W. Friedlmeier, Boris Mayer. 2007

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined emotional responding (sympathy and distress) and prosocial behavior as well as their relations across four cultures in a specific context. Preschool children ( N = 212) from two Western cultures, Germany and Israel, and two South-East Asian cultures, Indonesia and Malaysia, participated in this study. Children's emotional reactions and prosocial behavior were observed when interacting with an adult in a quasi-experimental situation. Results showed that children from the two South-East Asian cultures, as compared to children from the two Western cultures, displayed more self-focused distress and less prosocial behavior. Across cultures, a positive relation between sympathy and prosocial behavior and a negative relation between self-focused distress and prosocial behavior were found. The strengths of these relations were moderated by culture. These results are discussed with regard to their cultural meaning in the specific experimental situation as well as to general culture-specific characteristics.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c45cdb3bc5b21c39eaf6cb377bd5e9b07d6dfb60

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In Clinical Psychology

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries (2017, background): “Previous investigations of cultural differences in empathy have been limited by both a small number of participants and cultural regions, examining, at most, four countries in a single study (Cassels et al., 2010; Trommsdorff et al., 2007).”
The Role of Culture in Affective Empathy: Cultural and Bicultural Differences (2010, unknown): “As previous research found differences in children on empathic behaviour (Friedlmeier and Trommsorff, 1999; Trommsdorff et al., 2007), which is most comparable to the Empathic Concern subscale, we also performed pairwise comparisons on the Empathic Concern subscale.”
Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review (2010, background): “…four different cultures (Malaysia, Indonesia, Israel, and Germany) expressed sympathy (coded as inner eyebrows lifted, corners of the mouth turned down, lack of tension in the face, and a soft voice) when a female experimenter expressed sadness when her balloon broke (Trommsdorff et al., 2007).”