Empathy and Socio-Affective Profiles in preschoolers: Variability according to age, gender, and personality

Details

Supervisors

Grosbois, Nathalie ; Simon, Poline

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

In this exploratory research, we aimed to examine the predictive relations between parental assessments of personality and parental reports on socio-affective adjustments of preschool children. Furthermore, we also explored the effects of age, gender and personality on these concepts. Forty-six typically developing children from the French-speaking region of Belgium (24 girls and 22 boys) participated in our study. The inclusion criteria were an age between three and six years old, an enrollment in preschool education and French as a first language. To evaluate our concepts, we used four parental questionnaires: the Griffith Empathy Measure - Dadds et al. (2008), the Empathy Questionnaire - Rieffe et al. (2010), the Preschool Socio-affective Profile - LaFreniere & Dumas (1992) and the Bipolar Rating Scales Based on the Five Factor Model - Roskam et al. (2000). During statistical analysis, we observed that fathers identified more signs of affective empathy in girls than in boys. For personality factors, Openness predicted higher levels of Cognitive empathy and more frequent Prosocial actions (as perceived by mothers) as well as part of the Social Competence and General adaptation socio-affective scales. Extraversion negatively predicted Emotional contagion (as seen by fathers) and the scale Internalized problems. Lastly, the empathic ability Attention to others’ feelings (as seen by mothers) predicted the Social competence scale. Mother-rated Cognitive empathy was also a significant predictor for the Social competence, Internalized problems, Externalized problems, and General adaptation scales. While father-rated Cognitive empathy predicted the Externalized problems and General adaptation scales. Finally, Affective empathy (as perceived by fathers) negatively significantly predicted the Internalized problems scale. This underlines complex and various interactions between personality traits, Empathic abilities, and Socio-affective adjustment as early as three years old.