A school intervention promotes compassion, empathy and social relationships in children

Abstract

There is increasing evidence to show that compassion and altruism are highly beneficial when cultivated from an early age. In the present study we explore the benefits of an intervention programme that seeks to develop affective empathy, compassion and altruism in 9-year-old children from a school of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A pretest-posttest controlled study was carried out with 48 children, half of whom carried out the intervention. The remaining children, who constituted the waitlist group, participated in academic tutoring activities conducted by the same research team. The intervention was successful in promoting children's altruistic and compassionate attitudes, evidenced by the results obtained in the universal altruism test, social integration, and affective response. Effect sizes ranged from medium to large in the intervention group. These positive findings were not observed in the waitlist group (non-significant effect sizes). This study shows that children's self-awareness and awareness of others tend to foster compassion and affective empathy, contributing to individual and collective well-being.

A Mixed-Methods Study of Compassionate Mind Training for Pupils (CMT-Pupils) as a School-Based Wellbeing Intervention

“…Thus, recruitment of 60-70 pupils was considered a sensible medium when considering standard class sizes and allowing for attrition. As with Kappelmayer et al (2023), as an element of our design was to investigate the effects of CMTpupils on prosocial behaviours in existing situations, this precluded random assignment of participants to each group. Six pupils (2 females, 4 males) from across the sample of 37 further took part in a focus group to discuss their experiences of CMT-Pupils in more detail.…”

“…In all cases, all T1 data were carried over, as missing data reflected the 4 children being absent from school on the date T2 data were collected. To preclude effects of potential differences in initial values between groups, as per Kappelmayer et al (2023), between-groups t-tests were used to establish if the groups significantly differed at T1 (i.e., baseline). If differences at T1 were not significant, a mixed-measures ANOVA, with time (T1, T2) as the within-subject factor and group (CMT-Pupils, PSHE as Usual) as the between-subject factors, was used to explore each quantitative wellbeing measure.…”

“…However, in promoting the motivation to share and care, acquire empathy skills and develop ethical values, further investigation of wider perspective compassion-based (vs. self-compassion based) curricula is required. Recently, Kappelmayer et al (2023) have demonstrated that an elementary-aged intervention more focused on promoting empathy, compassion and loving-kindness improved both individual and collective wellbeing of those (Argentinean) children that took part. That is, their curricula resulted in not only improved affective responding, but also altruism and social integration.…”

Enhancing health and well-being: unlocking the speed abilities of 9-year-old primary school children

“…Promoting the health and well-being of primary schoolchildren is of utmost importance for their overall development. Extensive research has been conducted to investigate various factors and interventions associated with child well-being [1,2,8].…”

“…Introduction 1 Ensuring the health and well-being of primary school children is a matter of utmost importance and urgency. A holistic approach that addresses their physical, mental, and emotional health is crucial in fostering their overall development and nurturing their potential.…”