Empathy as a personality variable and as related to social behavior in young children has not been examined for its specificity with regard to various affect classes but has generally been treated as a global response to all affect classes. Three kinds of evidence relative to the specificity of empathic responses are analyzed: (1) correlations between empathic responses to four affect classes (happiness, sadness, anger, and fear); (2) a comparison of the empathic responses of 3- and 4-year-olds to the affect classes and (3) correlations between cooperative social behavior and the empathic sensitivity to the four affect classes. The experience of positive feelings in response to others' happiness appears distinct from the responses to the affective states of anger, fear or sadness, both as it appears developmentally and as it relates to social behavior. (Author/DB)