The roles of temperamental inhibition in affective and cognitive empathy in Chinese toddlers

Abstract

Empathy, crucial to harmonious interpersonal relationships and moral development, has both affective and cognitive components. Previous studies found that toddlers' temperamental inhibition may influence their empathy, but mainly focused on emotional response to others' distress. Little is known about whether inhibited children's poor empathy is due to high reactivity and social withdrawal when sharing others' affective states, such as distress (affective empathy), or to a difficulty in comprehending and inferring others' perspective (cognitive empathy). The current study investigated the role of behavioral inhibition (BI) in affective empathy (response to pain simulation) and cognitive empathy (performance in perspective-taking task) among 163 Chinese toddlers and tested in both only and non-only children. Correlation analyses showed that BI was only negatively associated with affective empathy. The relation between BI and cognitive empathy was moderated by self-regulation and inhibited children who were low in selfregulation presented low cognitive empathy. Additionally, only children presented advanced cognitive empathy but poorer affective empathy than non-only children. These findings imply different roles of BI in affective versus cognitive empathy in early childhood. Although highly inhibited children rarely show positive social expression toward others' distress, caution is needed in inferring that they lack a capacity for cognitive empathy.

Revisiting associations between behavioral inhibition/shyness and social competence in young Chinese children: Sociohistorical imprint on three samples.

“…This finding is in line with the meta-analysis (X. Zhang et al, 2021) and some recent Chinese studies (Chen et al, 2014; Zhai et al, 2020). Moreover, fear and shyness were moderately interrelated.…”

“…Specifically, inhibition/shyness was found to be positively (Chen, Chen, et al, 2009; Dong et al, 2018) or negatively associated with cooperative behaviors (Chen et al, 2014). Moreover, inhibition/shyness was found to be negatively (Li et al, 2016; Zhai et al, 2020) or not associated (Zhu et al, 2023) with prosocial behaviors. However, these studies have used small samples and none of them has included both observations and parental reports to assess child temperament and social competence outcomes.…”

Negative trait inference in behaviorally inhibited children influences their internalizing behaviors.

“…In the behavioral tasks, children interacted with unfamiliar adults and played with a series of novel toys. The children’s approach (e.g., latency to touch/approach the stimuli, the proportion of time children stayed within arm’s reach of the mother) and negative affect (e.g., frequency of facial fear and vocal distress) were coded by two coders who were naïve to the design of this study (see Zhai et al, 2020 for a description of the procedure and coding). Reliabilities across 25% of the cases were achieved separately for each code during each episode.…”

“…Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperamental trait characterized in early childhood by intense negative affect and vigilant reaction to novel and challenging situations (Fox et al, 2001; Kagan et al, 1984). Inhibited children often display social withdrawal during peer interactions (Bohlin et al, 2005; Rubin et al, 2002), are more likely to be immersed in a fearful or anxious mood (Tarullo et al, 2011; Zhai et al, 2020), and experience increased risk for internalizing behaviors (Clauss & Blackford, 2012; Fox et al, 2001; Putnam et al, 2006). Rothbart and Bates (2006) proposed that temperament creates a bias in the processing of social information, and this may be one of the pathways through which early temperament influences children’s social development.…”

Behavioral inhibition and social maladjustment: The moderation role of social behaviors during cooperative and competitive peer interactions.

“…The children interacted with an unfamiliar experimenter and played with a number of new toys (i.e., a wolf mask, toy snake, black box, poppers, vacuum, trampoline, and blood pressure cuff) in a fixed order in a quiet room, while their mothers were required to sit about two meters away and complete the questionnaires. Children’s approach (e.g., latency to touch/approach the stimuli, proportion of time children stayed within arm’s reach of the mother, number of experimenters’ prompts, and intensity of approach toward the stimuli), and negative affect (e.g., frequency of facial fear and vocal distress) were coded by two coders who were blinded to the design of this study (see Zhai et al 2020 for a detailed description of the procedure and coding). Reliability across 25% of the cases was achieved separately for each code during each episode.…”