Ana Tur

Are women more empathetic than men?: a longitudinal study in adolescence

Since the 1970s there has been a growing interest in analysing sex differences in psychological variables. Empirical studies and meta-analyses have contributed evidence on the differences between male and female individuals. More recently, the gender similarities hypothesis has supported the similarity of men and women in most psychological variables. This study contributes information on womens greater empathic disposition in comparison with men by means of a longitudinal design in an adolescent population. 505 male and female adolescents aged between 13 and 16 years were evaluated at two different moments (grade 2 and grade 3, lower secondary education). They completed the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents by Bryant and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index by Davis. The results confirm a greater empathic response in females than in males of the same age, differences growing with age. The sizes of the effect estimated in the second evaluation (average age 14 years) are large for emotional empathy and medium for cognitive empathy.

The longitudinal relations among dimensions of parenting styles, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, and prosocial behaviors

Developmental scholars assert that parents are important in fostering prosocial behaviors in adolescents, but longitudinal investigations on this topic are limited. Participants consisted of 372 boys and 358 girls with a mean age of 10.84 years (SD = 1.57) at Wave 1 from a mostly middle class community in Spain. Across three successive years, participants completed measures of fathers’ and mothers’ warmth and strict control, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, and self- and peer-reported prosocial behaviors. Results showed that parental warmth, sympathy, and prosocial moral reasoning were predictive of prosocial behaviors. Further analyses showed bidirectional effects such that early prosocial behaviors predicted later parenting and adolescents’ prosociality. Findings lend support to cognitive-developmental and moral internalization models of prosocial development.

Psychological processes and family variables as prosocial behavior predictors in a sample of Spanish adolescents.

A review of personal and family variables that regulate prosocial behavior is based on a sample of 1,433 Spanish adolescents (ages 9 to 13; 743 boys and 690 girls) who were assessed on the Prosocial Reasoning Objective Measure, the Physical and Verbal Aggression Scale, the Emotional Instability Scale, the State-Trait Anger Inventory, the Childs Report of Parental Behavior Inventory, the Prosocial Behavior Scale, and the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents. Discriminant analyses showed that empathy, self-control in anger-provoking situations, and affection in family relationships are the best predictors of prosocial behavior.