Article summary with Caring babies: Concern for others in distress during infancy by Dadidov a.o. - 2020

What is the background of this study?

An important human quality is showing concern for other people in distress. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding its early ontogeny. This study aims to provide new insights into the onset, development, consistency and predictive power of early displays of concern for other people.

What is ‘empathy’ and ‘concern’?

Naturally, people experience emotional arousal in response to the emotional state of another person, which can result into concern for other people. The three components of concern for someone else are: cognitive, behavioral and affective.

The cognitive component, also known as cognitive empathy, represents the capacity to understand others’ situation and feelings. In young children, this includes the ability of trying to understand the distress of someone else.

The behavioral component is prosocial behavior: acting to benefit or help others (supporting, sharing, comforting). Feeling concerned for someone else provides a strong motive for action. Empathic concern does not always result into prosocial behavior, for instance because the child does not know how to act or is psychically unable to take action.

The affective component is empathic concern (or ‘affective empathy’). This includes caring for or worrying about the needs or hurt of someone else. Young children exhibit this by orienting towards the other, stopping what they are doing in combination with a concerned facial expression and/or comforting communication.

What are the classic theories regarding the early development of concern for others?

There are several theories about empathy development. According to the theory of Piaget and psychoanalytic theories, young children are too immature to experience concern for someone else. Hoffman argued that concern for others emerges in a child’s second year. However, this theory also emphasized a stage conceptualization of development.

Many studies in the last decades proved that the theory of Piaget underestimates the cognitive capacities of young children. The theory of Hoffman paid no attention to concern and caring. According to Hoffman’s theory, a child’s first year consists of empathic arousal (self-distress or contagious crying). An infant under the age of one was not considered as capable of other-oriented empathy, because infants don’t comprehend the difference between their own and someone else’s distress. Once they are able to distinguish themselves from others, (e.g. by recognizing themselves in a mirror, during their second year), they are capable of experiencing and expressing a sincere concern for others. Therefore, most research is focused on children from the age of 2 years.

The theory of Hoffman was refuted by studies demonstrating young infants’ responding also included the distress of others. Those studies were, however, limited (small group of participants, not directly examining the concern for others). One study found cognitive empathy and affective concern among infants aged 8 and 10 months. They tried to explore and understand the distress of the other and showed concern through facial expressions, gestures and vocalizations. This is in accordance with Darwin’s finding: his 6 month old child’s empathic response to seeing someone else cry.

Dadidov et al. (2013) presented a new theory of early empathy development: concern for other people is already present in a child’s first year. This challenges the classic theory that self-distress emerges first and does not develop into empathic concern before the second year. The capacity of infants to experience concern is not dependent on emerging cognitive qualities and empathy does not develop in stages. Davidov et al. argue that concerning responses do not require the capacity of explicit self-knowledge, but the capacity of implicit self-other distinction. This alternative theory is limited by knowledge gaps, especially regarding the onset, development, consistency and predictive power of early cognitive and affective concern for other people. This study targets these knowledge gaps.

What are the research questions?

Question 1 regarding ‘onset’: How early are cognitive and affective empathy for other people in distress seen?

Question 2 regarding ‘consistency’: Are individuals differences in concern stable over time and across situations?

Question 3 regarding ‘development’: How do the various responses to distress change with age?

Question 4 regarding ‘prediction’: Do early markers of concern for other people predict later prosocial action?

What method was used?
Who were the participants?

Followed were approximately 150 infants from Israel at 6 months, 12 months and 18 months old. They came from a diverse group of families with regard to income, family size and religious beliefs.

What procedure was followed?

Data were collected through home visits. The infants were exposed to three distress stimuli: experimenter simulation, mother simulation and video of a crying peer, and two neutral stimuli: peer video and mother.

What measures were used?

Experimenter simulation: the experimenter pretended to be in physical pain and distress. Eye contact was avoided, until the fake crying was stopped, which was followed by a smile and telling the infant she was feeling okay now. The simulation carried out by the mother was similar. The infants watched a video of a peer crying for 50 seconds on a tablet placed in front of the infant.

The used coding system included five dimensions:

• Concerned affect (facial expressions of concern, vocal and gestural-postural markers of concern). Coding is based on intensity and duration of the responses. 
• Inquiry behavior (to assess the cognitive dimension of empathy: attempting to understand the other’s feelings by visual scanning or intense looking, social referencing: gazing from victim to other adult and vocalizations: questioning or labeling feelings). Coding is based on intensity, duration and complexity. 
• Self-distress.
• Prosocial behavior (attempting to comfort or help the distressed person). 
• Other dimensions (avoidance, communicative smiles, positive affect).

The neutral stimuli included being read to from a book by the mother and watching a video of a babbling peer. The project started with the first neutral episode (mother), followed by the distress episodes and ended with the second neutral episode (peer).

What were the results?

Only one gender difference was observed: 18-months-old girls exhibited greater exploration of someone else’s distress. No significant differences showed regarding other demographic statistics. The manifestations of empathy, inquiry behavior and concerned affect, were positively intercorrelated at all ages (3, 6, 12 and 18 months) and frequently negatively with self-distress.

Interestingly, empathic responses (inquiry and concern affect) were not higher toward the mother, at some ages they were even higher toward the experimenter. Other responses (prosocial behavior, communicative smiles, self-distress and positive affect) were higher toward the mother at 12 and 18 months.

Onset: how early is concern for others in distress evident?

Infants aged 3-6 months exhibited concern for others. Inquiry behavior and concerned affect were higher in response to others in distress in comparison to the response to neutral stimuli. The comparison between the responses to the distressed mother simulation and the crying infant video on the one hand and the neutral stimuli on the other hand led to similar results.

The levels of self-distress in response to the distress of someone else, however, were significantly lower at 3 and 6 months. These levels also did not differ much from the levels of self-distress as a response to neutral stimuli. Most infants at 3 and 6 months did not exhibit self-distress in all three episodes. Only few infants exhibited no concerned affect at all, while many exhibited weak or brief concern.

Infants aged 3 and 6 months typically show their empathy for the distress of others through concerned facial expressions and by trying to explore and understand the situation of the other. Smiling (positive affect) also emerged as a typical response. Some smiles were wide and repeated, while others were fleeting. Some were the result of unease or confusion, others were communicative. The latter were quite common: 39.5% of the infants aged 3 months and 39% aged 6 months exhibited those smiles in at least one simulation. The positive affect responses were positively related or unrelated to the degree of inquiry behavior and empathic concern.

How consistent was concern for others?

Also examined was the consistency of the concern for others across age and situation. Self-distress and inquiry behavior responses were consistent across all three situations, although not as strongly as empathic concern. There was only moderate evidence of continuity over time for inquiry behavior, while there was strong evidence of consistent empathic concern.

The findings regarding the stability of individual differences between infants aged 12 and 18 months in prosocial behavior showed no correlation. Prosocial behavior was not exhibited by younger infants.  

Development: what changes with age were found?

Empathic concern increases with age, but the increase became less strong over time. Surprisingly, the growth pattern of inquiry behavior did not differ from that of empathic concern.

In levels of self-distress, no change with age was observed. This finding is in contrary to the theory of Hoffman.

A substantial increase with age was observed with regard to prosocial behavior. Nearly 14% of the infants showed prosocial behavior toward the experimenter or mother at 12 months, in comparison to nearly 41% at 18 months. Prosocial behavior was not exhibited by 3- and 6-month-olds.

What links between subsequent prosocial behavior and early empathy were found?

The prosocial attempts by 18-month-old infants included three forms of prosocial behavior: recruiting help, offering an object and physical comforting. 

Inquiry behavior proved to be a significant predictor of prosociality at the age of 3 months. 3-month-olds who exhibited greater exploration of the distress of others were at least three times more likely to exhibit prosocial behavior towards distressed others at 18 months. No other response to distress at 3 months proved to be a predictor. The total empathy score at 3 months was nearly significance.

Total empathy was a significant predictor at the age of 6 months, with a stronger effect for empathic concern. Infants who exhibited greater concerned affect at 6 months were nearly three times more likely to exhibit prosocial behavior at 18 months.

At 12 months, none of the responses to distress proved to be predictors. At 18 months, the total empathy score was linked to prosocial behavior.

What are the conclusions?

The responses by infants show the early onset of their ability to response empathic to others’ distress (as early as 3 months). The findings of this study challenge the Hoffman-theory of infants only showing self-oriented distress during their first year. The findings support the notion of Davidov et all., that infants are capable of self-distress and empathic concern during their first year. In this study, those responses were negatively correlated or not related.

Individual differences in concern for others were modestly consistent across age and situations  Already during the first year of life, an empathic disposition seems evident. The findings of this study show that empathic responses are not linked to people they know, which indicates that concern is not a relationship-specific response. Prosocial behavior, however, was higher towards the mother. Some infants may feel more at ease with exhibiting their concern in a familiar context and children are likely to have gained experience in responding to their mother, which encourages prosocial behavior.

Consistency was greater for empathic concern compared to prosocial behavior and cognitive empathy. An explanation could be that some abilities emerge during the first year (motor development, social referencing, ability to shift attention, stranger anxiety), which influences infants’ ability to explore someone else’s situation. Prosocial behavior requires certain cognitive and motor abilities that most infants do not possess at 12-18 months.

The findings of this study show no gender differences. Those are likely to emerge later in life when children start to understand gender role expectations by society.

As expected, affective empathy increased moderately with age. However, inquiry behavior did not increase significantly with age. Earlier studies show that this response is likely to increase later in life.

Earlier research proved that empathy promotes prosocial behavior in adults and children. This study shows that the same goes for infants. The current findings support the early ontogeny of concern for other people as a motivator of prosocial action. While smiling was seen as a frequent response to the distress of others, communicative smiles were not predictive of greater prosociality. Neither were smiles linked to less exploration of the other’s distress and less empathic concern.