My Most Important Characteristic is "My Empathy:" Exploring the Connection Between Empathy and Identity in Adolescence
Buckingham, Mary.
2019
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Empathy plays an important role in young people's everyday
experiences and plays a formative role in promoting their development as positive
and contributing members of civil society. Empathy motivates youth to feel concern
for others and motivates them to demonstrate that concern through their positive
social actions. Accordingly, empathy may become a defining feature of a young
person's ... read moresocial relationships and, if so, then it also may be the case that a
person's identity may include valuing empathy. As such, a young person may benefit
from valuing empathy as a core component of his or her self-definition. In the
current investigation, I present a relational developmental systems (RDS)-based
model of empathy and its integration with identity development. I situate empathy
within RDS metatheory and identity development and discuss research on the links
between empathy and prosocial behavior. Using this theoretical framework, I
conducted an investigation of the potential link between empathy and identity in
adolescence. More specifically, I explored whether adolescents included empathy as
a valued feature of their identity when asked to complete open-ended statements
about themselves. I then investigated the possible connection between empathy and
identity within and across time. Accordingly, I investigated the implications of
such an identity for prosocial behavior. I anticipated three contributions of this
research: 1. to provide preliminary descriptive data regarding adolescents reports
of empathic characteristics; 2. to investigate empathic identity within and across
time; and 3. to explore the relation between reports of empathic characteristics
and prosocial behavior. Results demonstrated that empathy is valued as an
important aspect of identity for many adolescents. Findings also indicated
covariation between responding to the questions "Who am I?" and "What do you think
is your most important characteristic?" within and across time. As well, findings
indicated that across times of testing, and regardless of type of responding to
the "I Am" statements, participants who described an empathic characteristic as
their most important characteristic at one or more times of testing reported
higher levels of prosocial ideology. The implications for a relational and
mixed-method approach to understanding and studying empathy-identity links and
prosocial behavior are discussed.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2019.
Submitted to the Dept. of Child Development.
Advisor: Richard Lerner.
Committee: Ann Easterbrooks, Sara Johnson, and Belle Liang.
Keyword: Developmental psychology.read less - ID:
- w0892q08v
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