The Role of Gender and Race in Children's Empathy Skills Across a Preschool Year

Children’s ability to recognize and respond appropriately to peers’ emotional states becomes increasingly significant as children enter formal schooling, where they will encounter challenging and diverse social situations. Despite extensive research on racial and gender biases in early childhood, and children’s empathetic behavior toward peers, there remains a notable gap in understanding how children's responses to their peers' emotions may vary based on demographic characteristics such as peer race and gender, especially in the preschool years.

This study aims to investigate systematic differences in preschoolers' responses toward a child visually depicted in a stimulus photograph exhibiting anger or sadness, across diverse participant and stimulus demographics. Specifically, we explore systematic differences across three response outcomes: emotion recognition, expression of a supportive response strategy for the stimulus child, and whether their responses are agentic (ie., imply the participant’s personal involvement in the response). We estimate likelihoods of each outcome as a function of the participant’s gender, race, and age; the stimulus’ gender and race; and the interaction of the participant and stimulus’ gender and race. Our sample consists of racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse children in urban preschools, assessed at two points throughout the school year (fall, N = 508; spring, N = 849).

We found that overall, all students show improvements in empathy skills from fall to spring assessments, especially in the expression of supportive strategies for the distressed peer. Across racial lines, Black and White students are more likely to express supportive response strategies to a distressed child compared to Asian and Latine students. However, follow-up analyses reveal that many of the differences we see for Latine students are driven by language differences rather than culture. Girls show greater emotion recognition skills and expression of supportive strategies at both time points. We do not find significant differences in responses on the basis of the stimulus race or gender, nor in responses across the interaction of participant and stimulus race or gender. Therefore, we do not find any evidence for ingroup-outgroup differences in children’s responses. This research expands on our current understanding of the development of racial and gender dynamics in children’s empathetic responses toward diverse peers.