Testing Causal Effects of Empathy on Children's Prosociality in Politeness Dilemmas - An Intervention Study.

Empathy is commonly considered a driver of prosociality in child ontogeny, but causal assumptions regarding this effect mostly rely on correlational research designs. Here, 96 urban German children (5-8 years; 48 girls; predominantly White; from mid-to-high socioeconomic backgrounds) participated in an empathy intervention or a control condition before prosocial behaviors (polite lie-telling: rating the drawing as ; prosocial encouragement: utterances interpreted as cheering up the artist) were assessed in an art-rating task. Contrasting children's empathy at baseline with their empathy after the intervention indicated promoted empathy compared to the control group.