This study examined the mediating effects of cognitive empathy and affective empathy in the relationship between dispositional awe and prosocial behaviour in medical students, and whether perceived stress moderated this association. A total of 631 medical students from two medical tertiary institutions in Liaoning Province, China, participated in…

Childhood is marked by profound changes in prosocial behaviour. The underlying motivational mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigated the development of altruistically motivated helping in middle childhood and the neurocognitive and -affective mechanisms driving this development. One-hundred and twenty seven 6-12 year-old children…

Perspective taking, defined as the ability to assume another's perspective, can be considered a multidimensional construct which is composed of three different components: cognitive, visual and affective. This study wanted to verify the possibility of promoting perspective taking in preschoolers using ecological training. The maintenance of…

Moral conviction predicts interpersonal tolerance in adults, but its role in children and adolescents is not as well understood. This study measured moral conviction for a variety of issues along two separate dimensions--cognitive and affective--in children and adolescents (4th-12th grade). Results showed that, like adults, when children and…

Advanced technologies have made it possible for neuroscientists to make remarkable discoveries regarding how our brains learn. This research should provide new insights into the designs of learning environments. This essay is an attempt to suggest how the possibilities of neuroscience might be employed to meet contemporary educational demands,…

The present study examined the validity of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES) [Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006a). Development and validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. "Journal of Adolescence," 29, 589-611; Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006b). Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. "Aggressive…

Society is in turmoil that can be termed a moral crisis the result of dogmatic materialistic worldviews. A more holistic framework for moral development based on the tripartite theory that considers cognitive, affective and conative domains and capacities is presented along with some guiding principles as an answer to the needs of the modern…

Positive and negative mood conditions do affect principled moral reasoning. Results do not imply that affective states raise levels of moral reasoning, but a positive affective state provides a condition conducive to using more principled level moral reasoning. (Author/JAC)

This study examined effects of accessible self-discrepancies on subjects' mood states and the effects of these mood states on compliance. Two affective states, agitation and dejection, were induced in 115 college students by priming their available self-discrepancies. After the subjects had received specific primes and their mood states had been…

Students participated in dyadic disclosure exercises over a five-week period. Results indicated members of high functional similarity dyads evidenced greater attraction to one another than did members of low functional similarity dyads. "Friendship" pairs of male undergraduates displayed greater functional similarity than did…

Inadequacies of previous theoretical formulations of the concept of empathy are discussed. A comprehensive theory of empathy which considers the role of various cognitive, affective and social factors is postulated. (BD)

Preschoolers through second graders were given an opportunity to help another child obtain toys. Help that required a specific form of affective attribution and reconciliation was found to be related to the affective attribution and reconciliation measures when the demands of the helping opportunity matched the social cognition measure demands.…