Abstract
This research proposal suggests a need for empathy training in white American males as a preventative action for reducing unfairness and inequality in future society due to increased discrimination since the spread of COVID-19. The training is meant to promote compassion in children and teach them how to understand other people’s experiences to increase intolerance to injustice in their adulthood. The research proposes focusing on two groups of participants from a kindergarten, with one undergoing empathy training, to compare quantitative results collected from a questionnaire and a scale with measurable outcomes. Certain activities will need to be followed, such as developing a training program with specialists, getting consent from parents of minor participants, and tracing the participants when they enter adulthood.
Introduction
The development of civilization depends on children as they are the basis of future generations. As any member of society, a child can witness and experience unfairness towards or from other people. Whether the younger population perceives bias, racism, or any discrimination as acceptable or contradictory to human rights can affect equality in the future. Addressing the problems of inequality in the early periods of life can be based on empathy training by teaching children to be more compassionate and understanding towards others. Due to various reasons, the white population has been experiencing less unfairness than the representatives of other cultures and, therefore, should be the focus of researching the impact of empathy. Moreover, girls are typically more likely to comfort others and provide advice, showing that boys need more training to develop a sense of compassion (Vera et al., 2018). One needs to study how empathy training in white male children can affect their behavior towards discrimination in adulthood to determine ways of promoting equality.
The Rationale for Present Study
Biases, racism, and discrimination have been spread for years in many parts of the world. In the US, the cases of unfairness and inequality have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, especially in terms of systemic racism (Roozeboom, 2021). Racial discrimination becomes more urgent with the development of implicit bias that contributes to “white privilege” ignoring cases of inequality (Roozeboom, 2021, p. 2). Implicit bias affects one’s actions and decisions in an unconscious manner based on social categorization processes (Roozeboom, 2021). Implicit bias, discrimination, and racism are interconnected and cause unfairness and inequality in society.
Empathy training is a way of addressing the issues of bias, racism, and discrimination and can be characterized by two components. The first component, affective, refers to sharing others’ emotional responses, whereas the other one, cognitive, refers to understanding someone’s experiences by putting oneself in another person’s mind (Gevaux et al., 2020). Moreover, in children, empathy contributes to their willingness to intervene in situations that involve bullying (Vera et al., 2018). With that being said, empathy training is supposed to teach children to understand other person’s feelings and thoughts and how they may feel while experiencing unfairness.
Overcoming unjust differentiation in society requires continuous work with long-lasting results. According to Roozeboom (2021, p. 8), “debiasing” helps to overpower discrimination, but it is an intentional effort that requires creating new mental associations. Those associations need to outbalance the old ones through repeated practice and training (Roozeboom, 2021). A similar study to the one proposed in this paper is described by Aslan & Köksal (2019) and was recently conducted in Turkey. During the study, 17 kindergarten children participated in empathy training, and, as a result, the program had a significant impact on their perspective-taking abilities even after a month (Aslan & Köksal, 2019). However, the study did not aim at evaluating its possible results in the long term. Another research on empathy training in children was conducted earlier, but there were only two participants as the program was aimed at those who had autism (Sivaraman, 2017). With that being said, there is a need to research the impact of empathy training from childhood to adulthood, especially among the citizens of the US, where there are more instances of racism and discrimination.
Hypothesis
Following everything mentioned above, there are two hypotheses for the study. Hypothesis 1: Empathy training in white male children teaches them to understand other people’s feelings and thoughts. As Turkish research shows that empathy training affects children after a month since its end, there is a need to evaluate more prolonged results. Hypothesis 2: Empathy training in white male children reduces implicit bias, racism, and discrimination in their adulthood. The research proposal assumes that by learning to understand other people’s experiences, children will become more compassionate and will stand up against any discrimination further in their lives.
Instrumentation
The participants will be asked to assess their levels of empathy and experiences with discrimination to evaluate the results of empathy training and examine their relation to implicit bias, racism, and discrimination. Empathy assessment will be done three times throughout the study, the first one being before the training, the second one after, and the last one when the participants reach adulthood, along with discrimination assessment. At the first stage will focus on minors, and a limitation of adapting empathy-related questions to children is expected, so they could give answers without the help of adults who may interfere with the results. For that reason, there will most likely be a need for consulting with a specialist.
Empathy assessment will be done based on the Empathy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescence (EmQue-CA). Compared to other questionnaires, EmQue-CA is more relevant for children but will likely have to be transformed for older age groups (Overgaauw et al., 2017). Also, as mentioned before, there may be a need to adapt certain questions for younger participants as EmQue-CA is more suitable for children but only for those above the age of 10 (Overgaauw et al., 2017). The questionnaire consists of 21 items evaluated on a 3-point scale with higher scores reflecting higher empathy (Overgaauw et al., 2017). EmQue-CA can be used for quantitative empathy assessment but may need some modification for children and adults.
Discrimination assessment will be done based on the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS). The scale is a self-report scale that will be adapted for the purposes of the study to reflect the participants’ perceptions of discrimination since it was initially meant for racial minorities (Harnois et al., 2019). However, the scale was chosen as it is often used to assess discrimination based on various factors and unfair treatment in general (Harnois et al., 2019). EDS consists of 9 items with a 6-point scale, of which higher scores show more experiences of unfairness (Coimbra et al., 2020). EDS can be used to evaluate the cases in which the participants come in contact with discrimination but will need to be modified.
Participant Pool
The choice of participants depends on various factors, with the first one being based on the two components of empathy. While both affective and cognitive components are significant, they form at different periods of life and vary in relation to morality (Gevaux et al., 2020). Affective empathy develops earlier in life, whereas cognitive empathy emerges across pre-school and school age and can impact the senses of fairness and justice more than the former component (Gevaux et al., 2020). As EmQue-CA evaluates both affective and cognitive empathy, the participants will be from the last year of kindergarten with a focus on the cognitive component (Overgaauw et al., 2017). The first part of the study will concentrate on children who will soon finish kindergarten and their levels of empathy.
Following that, the source for choosing the participants needs to be determined. While most participant pools recruit undergraduates, and those like Mechanical Turkers (MTurkers) typically have older and working full-time adults, they are not as relevant to the research (Cho, 2019). It may be more appropriate to follow the example of the Turkish study, where the researchers focused on the attendants of public kindergartens (Aslan & Köksal, 2019). Therefore, depending on the area of the research, a kindergarten will be selected, with the participants attending their last year. This decision assumes that the children will be more comfortable in a familiar setting rather than the unfamiliar one of the first year of school, thus benefitting training effectiveness. As the participants will be minors, the parents will have to provide written consents for their children to join the study, and the teachers will be asked for help in communicating with their pupils.
Instruments
Instruments for collecting data to prove the hypotheses will be based on EmQue-CA and EDS. The results of EmQue-CA will provide information on affective and cognitive empathy and intention to comfort (Overgaauw et al., 2017). EmQue-CA will show the participants’ capacity to recognize other people’s emotions, ability to understand reasons for those emotions, and willingness to help (Overgaauw et al., 2017). EDS is expected to measure the participants’ thoughts and perceptions about discrimination and the reasons behind it, such as race or biases based on gender, age, and income level (Coimbra et al., 2020). As instruments, EDS and EmQue-CA are meant to provide measurable information on the results of empathy training.
Materials
Since the participants will be children, some materials will be needed to enhance training. As previous studies in this area show (Aslan & Köksal, 2019; Sivaraman, 2017), books and educational toys, such as puzzles and kaleidoscopes, can be used to make the learning process easier for children. However, exact materials will be decided after consulting with a specialist or a kindergarten teacher to determine what will have a better effect.
Procedures
The main procedures of the research will revolve around empathy training as the core basis for overcoming bias and discrimination through increasing the level of empathy. The training program will be based on theoretical and practical teaching technics that would enhance participation, such as interactive games (Jalón et al., 2020). The training will have to start by increasing attention and mindfulness through meditation, mindful breathing, and other exercises to enhance the stability of the mind and awareness (Engbretson et al., 2020; Jalón et al., 2020). Then the focus will be on developing compassion by examining compassionate gestures or expressing affection to learn how to differentiate between emotions and reactions (Engbretson et al., 2020; Jalón et al., 2020). The training will use activities such as showing images that evoke tenderness to promote kindness to others and center on empathy (Engbretson et al., 2020; Jalón et al., 2020). The training procedures will be developed jointly with specialists and will have to be approved by the parents and representatives of the kindergarten.
Research Design
The research will focus on enhancing empathy in white male children to teach them compassion and understanding of other people’s experiences so they would have less tolerance to unfairness and inequality in their adulthood. The participants will be chosen from those attending a kindergarten and divided into two groups, one undergoing empathy training and one regular group, to compare levels of empathy and the results of training. Each group will consist of approximately ten participants whose parents or legal guardians will have to provide formal written consent and contact information. Since the results will be determined after several years, it may be difficult to trace multiple participants when the children enter adulthood, as the provided contact information may change without notification. Fewer participants may interfere with the results as training involving peers may be more effective (Sivaraman, 2017). The research will gather two groups of participants to compare final results when they become adults.
The main group will attend empathy training, but all the participants will answer questions to collect data for measurable results. Research suggests (Aslan & Köksal, 2019; Engbretson et al., 2020; Jalón et al., 2020; Sivaraman, 2017) that empathy training should last for about ten weeks with three lessons a week. The detailed training program will have to be developed jointly with specialists and kindergarten teachers who are expected to know how to approach children better. The participants from both groups will answer questions from EmQue-CA before and after the training and EDS after they are contacted when they become adults. The questionnaire and the scale are expected to be adapted but will provide quantitative results that will be compared between the two groups. Higher results of empathy and discrimination assessment from the main group will show more resistance towards unfairness and inequality and will serve as evidence supporting the hypotheses.
Conclusion
To summarize, empathy training in white male children is expected to affect their behavior towards discrimination in adulthood by forming less tolerance to inequality and unfairness through learning to understand other people’s feelings and thoughts. As bias, racism, and discrimination have increased in the US with the spread of COVID-19, there is a need to promote compassion and kindness towards others and take preventative actions to support equality. Such an action can be focused on empathy training in children as they will form future society. The present research proposal suggests conducting research to determine if empathy training will help overcome discrimination by comparing quantitative results between two groups of participants in childhood and adulthood. The training program should be developed with specialists who understand children along with adapting questions to avoid mistakes and gather better results. A need for further research is also suggested to determine if training would be more effective if, for instance, the parents also participated in promoting empathy both within the classroom and at home.
References
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