“…These sympathetic reactions, in turn, are often induced by empathy or affect sharing (i.e., experiencing emotions similar to the ones of the other), suggesting that empathy relates to prosocial behavior (e.g., Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky, 2006;Hoffman, 2000;Young, Fox, & Zahn-Waxler, 1999). Early instances of empathic reactions can already be observed in the first year of life (e.g., Hay, Nash, & Pedersen, 1981;Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler, 2011), whereby these reactions are especially strong toward negative emotions (e.g., Geangu, Hauf, Bhardwaj, & Bentz, 2011). Theoretically, it has been proposed that a direct perception-action coupling is the basis of this phenomenon (Preston & de Waal, 2002) and that there is thus a biological basis for the capacity for empathy (see also Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, & McShane, 2006).…”