The roots of empathy: Toward an integrative model of empathic development

Contemporary empathy theorists usually conceptualize empathy as a complex phenomenon consisting of a variety of different physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural processes. As a result, most of them acknowledge that the process of empathic development depends on the development of the related psychological capacities. However, the main shortcoming of contemporary theories of empathy is that they do not provide a sufficiently detailed picture of the way these processes interrelate and how they contribute to the occurrence of advanced empathy, nor do they bridge the gap between cognitive and affective aspects of empathy in any satisfactory way.; I argue that there are two main reasons for the current state of affairs in the research on empathy. The first reason is an underlying assumption about the nature of affects and cognition and the way they relate, which is implicitly endorsed by most contemporary theorists. The crux of this assumption is that cognition and affects are independent and only externally related capacities. The second reason is the underlying assumption about the nature of psychological development. According to this assumption, the child is to work his/her way out to the social and physical world and is to acquire different cognitive/emotional/social/linguistic capacities based on the initially given innate constraints.; Both aforementioned assumptions are problematic insofar as they imply the affective-cognitive and the nature-nurture dichotomies. When these dichotomies are accepted it is not possible to develop more comprehensive view of empathic development. In order to do so we need to abandon these assumptions. So, if we assume that emotions and cognition are internally related and constitutive of each other we will be in a better position to account for levels and kinds of empathic reactions and bridge the affective-cognitive gap present in most contemporary theories. Also, if we do not start with the aforementioned inside-out view of development, we will be able to identify in a better way the underlying developmental processes involved in empathic development instead of simply relying on the innate capacities. In this way we will be well positioned to provide an integrative model of empathic development.