Exploration of the Development of Children's Empathy

Empathy is an important social skill. It is believed to play an essential role in socioemotional and moral development. The current study aimed to explore empathy development during childhood especially among students in the primary and middle schools located in Southern Vietnam. Bryant's Empathy Index for children and adolescents was administrated on 403 children, including 210 boys and 193 girls. The results showed that there was no significant difference between boys and girls in affective empathy. The results further indicated that there is a significant grade difference on affective empathy with the fourth-grade students being placed higher than those of the second and the sixth grades. A separate analysis was conducted for each of the dependent variables. It was found that the fourth graders were significantly higher than the second and the sixth graders on Understanding Feelings, Feelings of Sadness and Bryant's Empathy Index respectively. The result also showed that the Vietnamese version of Bryant's Empathy Index has acceptable reliability and can be used for future research.