How Do Kids Develop Empathy?

Like most adults, kids too have the natural caring instincts and empathize with those in pain, a new research suggests.

Empathy, the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". It is also described metaphorically as an emotional kind of resonance or mirroring.

The study conducted by the researchers at the University of Chicago, used the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to scale their responses on seeing others in to pain.

17 children (nine girls and eight boys) aged between 7 and 12 were shown animations of people experiencing pain, either received accidentally or inflicted intentionally.

The animations typically ranged from something accidentally slipping from someone’s’ hands to someone intentionally stepping over someone’s foot, all situations causing pain.

While undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans, children too showed similar brain activity as adults.

In situations were pain was accidental, the brain activity in the areas involved in pain processing sparked, while upon seeing situations where pain was intentional, regions of the brain involved in social interaction and moral reasoning also lit-up suggesting that the children realized the person was being wrongly treated.

"This study is the first to examine in young children both the neural response to pain in others and the impact of someone causing pain to someone else," said Jean Decety, Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

Researchers conclude that the ‘empathy’ was not entirely the product of nurturing or good parenting; instead kids are born with it. Studying empathy in children could explain bullying or other types of anti-social behavior, researchers hope.