(Malti+ 2016)

School-Based Interventions to Promote Empathy in Children and Adolescents:A Developmental Analysis

Tina Malti, Maria Paula Chaparro, Antonio Zuffianò, and Tyler Colasante

University of Toronto

Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Objective. Empathy has been identified as a core component of social and emotional functioning across development. Various prevention and intervention programs have utilized components of empathy-related responding to promote the development of children’s and adolescents’ socioemotional functioning and impede their aggression in school contexts. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of select school-based empathy interventions and the extent to which they align with developmental theory and research.

Method.

• First, we review current conceptualizations of empathy-related responding, identify its components, outline its normative development, and describe the need for developmentally tailored interventions.

• We then identify and assess the effectiveness and developmental sensitivity of 19 school-based programs with strong empirical support that target empathy-related responding across childhood and adolescence.

Results. While the majority of these programs showed some degree of developmental differentiation between grades, none considered developmental differences within grades.

Conclusions. Commencing interventions that have proven to be effective earlier in development and targeting higher numbers of empathy-related constructs were, in part, associated with larger outcomes. We discuss how future research can bridge the gap between basic developmental research and the design of developmentally tailored interventions to promote empathy-related responding.