Much of my work has addressed two issues. One is the development of empathy-related responding in children and its relation to prosocial behavior (e.g., helping and sharing) and to moral judgment and behavior. The other is emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to individuals’ positive social functioning and indices of maladjustment, including externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, defiance, and delinquency) and internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal). Perhaps my most important findings are those that emerged from my work on empathy and led to my work on differences among people in the degree to which they regulate their emotions and associated behavior.

In my early work on prosocial behavior, I found that preschool children who spontaneously shared with other children at a cost to themselves (e.g., giving up toys they were using) were more likely than their peers to experience empathy or sympathy. Empathy is experiencing an emotion similar to that of another in response to comprehending what the other is feeling or is likely to experience (e.g., observers feeling sad when exposed to someone who is sad or likely to experience sadness). Sympathy is feelings of concern for another based on some understanding of their emotional state or situation (akin to compassion – e.g., feeling concern for a person who is sad rather than solely feeling sadness).

Those children who engaged in spontaneous prosocial behavior also were relatively likely to refer to others’ needs or feelings when discussing hypothetical moral dilemmas in which children had to decide whether to assist others at a cost to the self. Moreover, they engaged in more neutral and positive social interactions with peers and were assertive when they needed to be; their peers also reacted positively to them when they did engage in prosocial actions.

In contrast, children who were high in prosocial behavior mainly in response to peers’ requests (verbal or often non-verbal, e.g., reaching for an object) tended to be non-assertive and less social with peers than those who were spontaneously prosocial. Peers often would state or non-verbally indicate that they wanted help or reach for what children high in such requested or compliant prosocial behavior were playing with; thus, children high in requested prosocial behavior frequently seemed to be easy targets for peers wanting objects or assistance.