Article summary with Concern for others in the first year of life: Theory, evidence, and avenues for research by Davidov a.o. - 2013

What is affective empathy?

Affective empathy is a term for having concern for others, an emotional response consisting of tender feelings on behalf of a distressed other. It is often accompanied by attempts to cognitively comprehend the other´s state and can motivate prosocial action to alleviate the other´s distress. Empathy is the ability to feel what another is feeling. It is thought to result from overlap in brain circuits. Exposure to another´s emotion activates some of the same neural mechanisms involved when the self experiences that emotion.

What is self-distress?

When empathy is evoked by another´s distress, it can give rise to concern if the person remains focused on the other in distress. If the observer becomes overly aroused or distraught, the focus of concern can shift from the other to the self, which results in self-distress.

What is Hoffman´s stage theory of early empathy development?

This theory posits that infants are born with the capacity for empathic distress but cannot experience empathic concern until the second year of life. According to the theory, young infants lack awareness of the self as a separate physical entity from others and cannot distinguish between another person´s distress and their own. This confusion of distress states leads the infant to respond with empathic distress that is self-focused and to seek comfort for the self.

What criticism can be given to Hoffman´s theory?

Three aspects of the theory can be commented on:

• The assumption that young infants cannot distinguish between the self and others is inconsistent with research on young infant´s implicit ability to differentiate between the self and others. A basic, prereflective form of self-knowledge that is present from the beginning of life is sufficient for experiencing concern for others. This sense of self is based on the infant´s subjective experience of his or her own sensory perception and self-generated actions. Parts of the neural network do not overlap when processing similar experiences of self and others.
• The suggestion that young infants are incapable of empathic concern is not supported by empirical research. Moderate levels of affective and cognitive empathy were already present at eight and ten months, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between sybtypes of empathy.
• The idea that self-distress occurs because infants confuse the other´s distress as their own neglects the role of emotion regulation.