Empathie en Sociale Attributies bij Kinderen: de Modererende Rol van Etnische Minderheidsstatus

In a multicultural society, it is important to gain insight into mechanisms that contribute to inclusion. One key aspect is how children socially evaluate other children. This study examined the relation between children’s empathy and the attribution of positive and negative traits to other children, and whether this relation is moderated by ethnic minority status. The sample consisted of 264 children aged 6 to 10 years (46% boys, 54% girls) with White Dutch (n = 143, 54%), Turkish-Dutch (n = 71, 27%), or Afro-Dutch (n = 50, 19%) backgrounds. Empathy was measured through parent report (Griffith Empathy Measure; Dadds et al., 2008). Social attributions were assessed using the Desired Interracial Closeness task (Levy et al., 2005), in which children assigned positive and negative traits to photographs of peers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Results showed no significant relation between empathy and the total attribution of positive or negative traits to other children. Similarly,...Show moreIn a multicultural society, it is important to gain insight into mechanisms that contribute to inclusion. One key aspect is how children socially evaluate other children. This study examined the relation between children’s empathy and the attribution of positive and negative traits to other children, and whether this relation is moderated by ethnic minority status. The sample consisted of 264 children aged 6 to 10 years (46% boys, 54% girls) with White Dutch (n = 143, 54%), Turkish-Dutch (n = 71, 27%), or Afro-Dutch (n = 50, 19%) backgrounds. Empathy was measured through parent report (Griffith Empathy Measure; Dadds et al., 2008). Social attributions were assessed using the Desired Interracial Closeness task (Levy et al., 2005), in which children assigned positive and negative traits to photographs of peers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Results showed no significant relation between empathy and the total attribution of positive or negative traits to other children. Similarly, there was no relation between empathy and positive or negative attributions toward ingroup members, nor did ethnic minority status play a moderating role in this relation. Empathy was associated with positive attributions toward outgroup members, but only among children from the ethnic majority group. This association was not found among children with ethnic minority status. These findings suggest that empathy may help reduce outgroup bias among majority group children, while this effect may be overshadowed by other factors among minority group children. This indicates that empathy does not function uniformly across groups, but operates differently depending on a child’s ethnic background.Show less

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Empathie en Sociale Attributies bij Kinderen: de Modererende Rol van Etnische Minderheidsstatus