While most research focused on empathic responses to negative emotions, little is known about empathy to positive emotions. We aimed to bridge this gap by examining infants' and children's empathic responses to distress and happiness, while differentiating between cognitive and emotional empathy. We conducted three studies with N = 119 3‐month‐old infants; N = 169 10‐19 months‐old infants; and N = 61 24‐60 months‐old children (all Jewish‐Israeli). Empathy was measured using experimenter simulations (studies 1 and 3) or peer‐video (study 2). All studies showed that cognitive empathy to positive and negative emotions converged (small‐medium effect size), but not so for emotional empathy. This suggests that understanding others' emotions is independent of emotion valence, while the ability to share in another's emotion is valence‐specific.

中文翻译：

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幼儿期共情关注和共情幸福的趋同与分歧：来自幼儿和儿童的证据


虽然大多数研究都集中在对负面情绪的共情反应上，但人们对积极情绪的共情反应知之甚少。我们的目的是通过检查婴儿和儿童对痛苦和幸福的共情反应，同时区分认知共情和情感共情，来弥合这一差距。我们对 119 名 3 个月大的婴儿进行了三项研究； N = 169 名 10-19 个月大的婴儿； N = 61 名 24-60 个月大的儿童（均为犹太裔以色列人）。使用实验者模拟（研究 1 和 3）或同伴视频（研究 2）来测量同理心。所有研究都表明，对积极和消极情绪的认知同理心是一致的（中小效应），但情感同理心却并非如此。这表明理解他人的情绪与情绪效价无关，而分享他人情绪的能力是特定于效价的。