TY - JOUR
T1 - Empathy, anger, guilt: Emotions and prosocial behaviour
AU - Roberts, William
AU - Strayer, Janet
AU - Denham, Susanne
N1 - Generated from Scopus record by KAUST IRTS on 2023-09-20
PY - 2014/10/1
Y1 - 2014/10/1
N2 - Along with anger, the social emotions of empathy and guilt influence children's social behaviours in important ways, and arc also implicated in broader aspects of behaviour such as self-regulation (ego control). Despite their importance, few studies have assessed these emotions simultaneously or across sources. We obtained measures from 99 children (Mage = 9.7 years, range: 6-13.3; 66% girls), their fathers, mothers, teachers, and best friends. As expected, more empathie children scored higher on adaptive guilt and lower on anger. In path models, emotions were strongly related to behaviours in expected directions. Empathy and adaptive guilt accounted for over 50% of the variance in friendly behaviour, independently of anger. Adaptive guilt and anger predicted 42% of the variance in bullying behaviours, 51% of the variance in cooperative behaviour, 33% of the variance in persistence (a measure of ego overcontrol), and 44% of the variance in ego undercontrol. Present findings help differentiate the contributions of empathy, guilt, and anger to various social behaviours and suggest important links between emotions, self-regulation, and prosocial behaviour.
AB - Along with anger, the social emotions of empathy and guilt influence children's social behaviours in important ways, and arc also implicated in broader aspects of behaviour such as self-regulation (ego control). Despite their importance, few studies have assessed these emotions simultaneously or across sources. We obtained measures from 99 children (Mage = 9.7 years, range: 6-13.3; 66% girls), their fathers, mothers, teachers, and best friends. As expected, more empathie children scored higher on adaptive guilt and lower on anger. In path models, emotions were strongly related to behaviours in expected directions. Empathy and adaptive guilt accounted for over 50% of the variance in friendly behaviour, independently of anger. Adaptive guilt and anger predicted 42% of the variance in bullying behaviours, 51% of the variance in cooperative behaviour, 33% of the variance in persistence (a measure of ego overcontrol), and 44% of the variance in ego undercontrol. Present findings help differentiate the contributions of empathy, guilt, and anger to various social behaviours and suggest important links between emotions, self-regulation, and prosocial behaviour.
UR - http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/a0035057
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84928662916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/a0035057
DO - 10.1037/a0035057
M3 - Article
SN - 0008-400X
VL - 46
SP - 465
EP - 474
JO - Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science
JF - Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science
IS - 4
ER -