Empatia e reconhecimento de emoções na infância

Abstract

Emotions can be a factor of improvement in social interactions. Expressing emotions brings an informational burden both to the individual who expresses them and to the individual who perceives them, and this creates a relationship between them, which is the basis of social interaction. For humans, the first established emotional relationship occurs between the baby and his or her primary caregiver. It is in this first relation that there is the development of what we call empathy, an emotional and behavioral perception before the emotions of the other. Empathy is a social skill that has its intricate roots with emotional attachments and the ability to relate to others. Thus, an inclusive, affective family background with authoritative parents end up favoring empathic abilities. The main objective of this work was to understand the development of empathy and the perception of emotions in childhood. This research is composed by four articles, two theoretical articles and two empirical articles. Theoretical articles addressed the topics emotions and empathy and were made from bibliographic documentary research. The empirical articles were collected in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. For the empirical study on emotions we had a total sample of 153 participants, divided into three age groups (1: 5 and 6 years, group 2: 7 and 8 years and group 3: 9 and 10 years), of both sexes, students from a municipal school and a private school. The collection was performed individually and the children performed an emotion perception test, performed through a computer, in which they were presented three images of individuals expressing each of the six basic emotions so that the emotion could be identified. For the empirical article on empathy, we used two questionnaires guided with the children and a questionnaire was sent to parents to respond to their children's empathy (n = 306). It was observed that the child's age influences the ability to recognize emotions, unlike the gender that, in children belonging to the same age group, does not influence the perception of emotions. The results showed that there is no influence of the sex of the child on empathy in any of the three groups, however, that age is an important factor in children's empathic ability. It has also been observed that parents can not correctly perceive how empathetic their children are. Our findings bring a greater understanding of the role of emotion recognition and empathy throughout childhood, as well as the social role that the two abilities - which are intrinsically related - exert in the child and in its surroundings.