My teacher, the baby

The game goes into the second round. It's the decisive moment: how will the children behave, fairly or selfishly? The fifth-graders are excited and talking out of turn. As head teachers, we struggle to keep the classroom quiet. A boy in the front row is looking at his neighbour's paper, while two girls at the back are whispering. «Every man for himself, please!» my colleague calls into the classroom and stands in front of the boy, who takes the hint: he looks straight ahead at his desk, at the sheets of paper in front of him. Silence returns.

What is being played here is called the «trust game». It was invented by economists and has been used all over the world, but rarely with children. Initially, the aim is to test the girls' and boys' trust in the altruism of their fellow players. Then all the children receive 20 coins. Now their own altruism is put to the test: does a child keep the majority of the talers for themselves or do they divide the talers fairly between their team-mate and themselves? The children tell us their decision anonymously on the sheets of paper handed out. They make their crosses with concentration.

Empathy and aggression are connected

We are interested in these crosses because we are evaluating the effects of a programme that the children went through last year. The programme is called «Roots of Empathy» (see box at the end of the text). Last school year, the fifth-graders at Stigeli primary school in Affoltern am Albis were visited nine times by a mother and/or father with their baby.
The aim was for the children to learn how to develop their empathy by meeting the baby - and thus to better understand, categorise and process their own feelings. They were supported by a trainer who was trained by «Roots of Empathy». The programme is called «Roots of Empathy» because it aims to promote empathy.

But it is about more than that: strengthening empathy should also indirectly lead to the promotion of prosocial behaviour, so that the children help each other more often and share more with each other. By becoming more empathetic, they should also treat each other less aggressively and insult, belittle, bully, hit and exclude each other less.

The aims of the programme are based on the assumption that empathy and social behaviour, especially empathy and aggression, are closely linked: The more we can empathise with other people, the better we understand their feelings, the more we care about others doing well. So we prefer to help and share rather than inflict suffering. So much for the theory on which «Roots of Empathy» is based. But does the programme achieve the effects that the adults hope it will?

How do you feel about sharing?

The «Trust Game», which the pupils play in year five, is one of many methods we use to find this out. While the children are busy with their sheets of paper, teacher Claudia Bachmann sits in the next room and answers our questions about each individual pupil. How does she perceive the children in everyday life? Do they find it easy to share with others? In the previous lesson, we asked the pupils themselves in writing: How do you feel about sharing? In which situations do you do it and in which not? In the next sequence, the children will assess each other: Which classmates help others particularly often? Who finds it more difficult?

By the end of the morning, using these and other methods, we have everything we need to get an idea of how fair and pro-social the children behave, but also how empathetic they are and how often they treat each other aggressively. This is not the first time we have been in Claudia Bachmann's class. Because we are interested in the changes that have occurred since the start of the programme, we were here once before at the beginning of the school year.
To expand the data set, we will take into account the data from many more classes participating in the Roots of Empathy programme. We will also compare the programme classes with those that did not take part in the programme. This is the only way to scientifically verify whether the changes that have occurred since the start of the programme can actually be attributed to «Roots of Empathy» (see box on the study).

The study

A team of researchers from the Bern University of Applied Sciences (Department of Social Work) has scientifically evaluated the «Roots of Empathy» programme. The study was financed by the Swiss Fund for Child Protection Projects with money from the UBS Optimus Foundation. Around 500 children from 23 classes in the canton of Zurich took part in the study, spread across primary three to six. The classes were experimentally divided into two groups: Classes that took part in «Roots of Empathy» and those that did not. During allocation, care was taken to ensure that the characteristics of the children, teachers and school communities were equally distributed in both groups. The surveys were carried out at the beginning of the school year before the programme began and at the end of the school year after the programme was completed. The researchers conducted further surveys one year after the end of the programme in order to assess the longer-term effects.

The programme works

A few weeks after the appointment in Claudia Bachmann's class, my colleagues and I sit in our Bern office and scrutinise our data, ruling out obvious measurement errors. Then we start the statistical analysis, test hypotheses, calculate effect sizes and discuss as a team how the results should be interpreted.

Our analyses prove that «Roots of Empathy» actually works. The easiest way to show this is to combine the findings from different sources and bundle them into indicators. These indicate how empathetic, prosocial and aggressive the pupils are overall. The analysis of these indicators shows that the children in the «Roots of Empathy» classes developed better in all three areas than the children in the other classes. The girls benefited slightly more than the boys in the areas of empathy and aggression. However, the gender differences were not large.

In a sub-sample, we are investigating how long the observed effects last. Are the children perhaps only more empathetic, more pro-social and less aggressive at the end of the school year because they still have the baby and their encounters with him in their minds? Do these effects disappear when the new school year begins with its new demands, stimuli and developmental impulses?

There is no evidence of this in our study. When we returned to the classes one year after the end of «Roots of Empathy» to carry out our surveys, tests and observations, we found that the effects of the programme remained stable. That is extraordinary. Unfortunately, research shows that the effects of prevention programmes are often sobering and short-lived.

There is clear evidence that «Roots of Empathy» works. However, it is not clear how the programme works. In our study, we analyse two hypotheses, among others. The first states that the Roots of Empathy lessons actually promote empathy in children: As the baby cannot yet communicate verbally, it needs to be observed closely so that you can name its feelings and needs. In this way, boys and girls generally become better at recognising, understanding and empathising with their own feelings and those of others.
The second hypothesis states that children do not improve their empathy per se, but are encouraged to use it more often, i.e. to make more frequent use of their potential for empathic behaviour.

To differentiate between the two hypotheses, our study includes an empathy test. The children watch videos of other children and adults expressing a certain feeling. They are then asked to choose the word that best describes the emotion shown.

To our surprise, the evaluation of this test showed that the pupils in the classes that did not take part in «Roots of Empathy» are just as good at recognising and naming feelings when they have to do so in a test. Nevertheless, they behave less empathetically on average. If these findings are correct, then «Roots of Empathy» achieves its effect by awakening skills that are already dormant in the children - and not by creating new skills.

Is the importance of empathy overrated?

«Roots of Empathy founder Mary Gordon wrote: "Empathy is the best peace pill we have». And in recent decades, dozens of books have been published that promise nothing less than the recovery of the world by increasing empathy.

Interestingly, however, critics have also increasingly been speaking out in recent years. They are not quite as confident in our ability to empathise with others. And they give reasons for their scepticism.
Psychologist Steven Pinker shows in his book «Violence. A History of Humanity», psychologist Steven Pinker shows that the expansion of empathy, as it has actually taken place in history, is probably only to a small extent responsible for the fact that the world has become much more peaceful over the past two thousand years. His colleague Paul Bloom even warns of the considerable risks of empathy in «Against Empathy». Both argue along similar lines: empathy is a limited good, we cannot possibly empathise with everyone else - and therefore prefer to do so with those who are similar to us, with whom we have something in common, according to Bloom.
Empathy thus paves the way for partiality, for unfairly favouring some over others. It would be better if we measured our decisions not by how empathetic they are, but how rational: how well they can be objectively justified.

The most important findings of the study

• «Roots of Empathy» works: On average, children who took part in the programme became more empathetic, helped and shared more and were less aggressive when living together.
• These effects continued one year after the programme was completed.
• «Roots of Empathy» probably doesn't improve children's empathy, but encourages them to use it more often.
• It is unclear whether the observed effects are limited to the children's own class: In a game with other children, «Roots of Empathy» children did not behave more socially than children in the comparison group.
• The programme is an interesting opportunity for teachers to promote their pupils' social and emotional skills.
• Parents could be inspired by the method: The guided exploration of a baby's development and feelings has a positive influence on children's empathy and social behaviour.

We investigate the objections

In our study, we investigate these objections. We do this by incorporating a variation into the «Trust Game». Once the children in Claudia Bachmann's class have made their crosses, they can hardly be kept on their seats. Most of them immediately want to know how many coins they have won and how much extra pocket money they will receive from us. But we put them off, explaining that there is one last round of the game to come.
This time, the pupils don't play with children from their own class, but with children from another school, children they don't know. We do this to test the limits of empathy: Do those children who took part in «Roots of Empathy» also behave more fairly towards other children than those who were not encouraged in their empathy? The test is intended to test the argument of empathy sceptics Pinker and Bloom.

Our results support the sceptics. When playing with other children, the children from the «Roots of Empathy» classes do not behave any more fairly than their peers. In fact, they tend to make selfish choices slightly more often than their peers. It is as if the fifth-graders want to get back the money they have lost through their fairness towards their classmates by playing with other children.

When playing with other children, the empathy-promoted children tend to behave more
more selfish than the others.

Despite these findings, «Roots of Empathy» performed remarkably well overall in our study. This is because the effects on empathy, prosocial behaviour and aggression within the class are clear, while those on discrimination against other children are merely tendencies.

However, our test shows something important: If the world is truly to be healed by empathy, then empathy must not stop at the boundaries of one's own group. Its influence must extend beyond that.

The Roots of Empathy programme

«Roots of Empathy is an award-winning Canadian organisation that currently operates in twelve countries and has reached almost one million children. The organisation offers two programmes: "Roots of Empathy» for primary school children and «Seeds of Empathy» for children in daycare centres. The programmes aim to promote social and emotional competence, self-regulation and executive functions - skills that are important for successful development. Children taking part in Roots of Empathy learn by engaging intensively with the development of a baby who attends the school class over the course of a year with their mum and/or dad and a specially trained trainer. The trainers instruct the pupils to observe the baby's development and name its feelings. Based on this, they also reflect on their own feelings and the feelings of others. In this type of learning, the baby becomes the «teacher».

More about «Roots of Empathy»:

• In an interview with Swiss parenting magazine Fritz+Fränzi, «Roots of Empathy» founder Mary Gordon explains how parents can develop empathy in their children.
  
• How do empathy lessons with a baby work? We were there.