Shaping caregivers

Compassion develops in the second year of life

Children show compassion for other people as early as 18 months old, according to a new study. (symbolic image).(Bild: stock.adobe.com – Andriy Medvediuk)

Children show compassion for other people as early as 18 months. This can be recognized by their facial expressions or expressions, as a study by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich has now shown. How empathetic the child reacts depends on the person they are with.

The more sensitive the mothers in the study were to the needs of their children, the better they were able to show empathy with strangers in the second year of life. According to the research team, in order to experience empathy, a child must be able to differentiate between itself and another person. This ability only develops during the second year of life and can be seen, for example, when children recognize themselves in the mirror.

Regulating emotions
"From an early age, young children are infected by the feelings of others, such as fear or sadness (...). Compassion is about being able to regulate the emotion and not being overwhelmed by it," says Markus Paulus, Chair of Developmental Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. The feeling helps us "to react to the plight of others and deal with it appropriately. It is a motivation to act on behalf of others, to stand up for others," adds co-author Tamara Becher in a press release.

127 mother-child pairs observed
For the study, the team observed 127 mother-child pairs in behavioral experiments over a period of one and a half years. At four different points in time, signs of compassion from the children were recorded in playful situations. For example, they observed how another person lightly bumped into them and felt pain. The children's reaction was compared with their behavior when they saw another person laughing. The first time the children observed were six months old, in the last experiment they were one and a half years old.

A child could not survive without sensitive caregivers who act compassionately.

Studienautor Markus Paulus

"A child could not survive without sensitive caregivers who act compassionately. Children learn from them how to deal with negative emotions. This enables them to apply this themselves later on," says Paulus.