Abstract
Prosocial emotions are thought to contribute to prosocial behaviors (behaviors intended to benefit another, such as helping, sharing, and comforting). The purpose of this chapter is to discuss children’s prosocial emotions and to review literature relevant to their development and origins. First, we review basic definitional and conceptual issues. We specifically focus on the prosocial emotions of empathy-related responding (i.e., empathy, sympathy, personal distress) and guilt (which can evoke sympathy). Then, we review literature on the emergence of prosocial emotions in childhood. Next, we consider the origins of individual differences in prosocial emotions, focusing on selected individual characteristics (e.g., genetics, sociocognitive abilities), as well as the socialization of empathy-related responding and guilt in the family. The relations of temperamental characteristics (i.e., emotionality, regulatory skills, shyness/inhibition) to prosocial emotions are also discussed. We argue that more research studying meditational processes and moderation is needed. Finally, we provide areas for future directions in research.
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Spinrad, T.L., Eisenberg, N. (2019). Prosocial Emotions. In: LoBue, V., Pérez-Edgar, K., Buss, K.A. (eds) Handbook of Emotional Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17332-6_14
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