Development
A study was conducted with a group of children as well as a separate group of adults; both groups were to watch a video. The video was of a negatively emotional news story. While they watched the video their facial expressions where recorded, as well they self reported how they felt after viewing the video. The results found that there is indeed a stark difference between sympathy and personal distress. Markers of sympathy were related to prosocial responses on the other hand facial indexes of personal distress were unrelated. For adults it was found that facial sadness and concerned attention tended to be positively related to prosocial tendencies, children on the other hand had a negative relationship between prosocial behaviour and facial personal distress. This displays how there is not only an observable difference between sympathy and personal distress. It can also be seen that there is a difference between how children and adults experience either personal distress or sympathy this is largely related to the level of development that the individual has achieved.
Read more about this topic: Personal Distress
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For decades child development experts have erroneously directed parents to sing with one voice, a unison chorus of values, politics, disciplinary and loving styles. But duets have greater harmonic possibilities and are more interesting to listen to, so long as cacophony or dissonance remains at acceptable levels.”
—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)