Contemporaneous and longitudinal prediction of children's sympathy from dispositional regulation and emotionality.
The relation of 8- to 10-year-olds' teacher-reported dispositional sympathy to regulation and emotionality was examined with a longitudinal sample. In general, sympathy was correlated with adults' reports of regulation and low negative emotionality contemporaneously and, to some degree, 2 and 4 years prior. General emotional intensity interacted with some aspects of regulation in predicting sympathy; for example, attention focusing predicted sympathy but only for children low in general emotional intensity. In general, the pattern of correlations changed little from age 6-8 to age 8-10 years, although parent-reported negative emotionality was more highly negatively related to sympathy at the older age. Dispositional sympathy was associated with verbal or physiological markers of sympathy in a laboratory setting.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104, USA. eisenberg@asu.edu
N
N
Eisenberg
R A
RA
Fabes
S A
SA
Shepard
B C
BC
Murphy
S
S
Jones
I K
IK
Guthrie
D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D002605:Character; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010553:Personality Development; D012938:Social Perception