Developmental studies are useful in terms of understanding the origins and acquisition of empathy, as children only exhibit certain parts of the behavior which can then be related to parts of the brain that have not yet matured, as will be seen. Infants have been shown to exhibit attempts of reassurance and concern as young as 1 year old (Klass, 2012), and these sorts of behaviors have been shown to be long lasting in our lives - that is to say, over the course of our lives we continue to use other peoples expressed emotions to gain clues as to what they are feeling (Gallagher, 2009) and a reward pathway exists in the brain to reinforce the prosocial behavior of helping someone visibly in need (Klass, 2012).
Experiments of facial mimicry and neuroimaging of children have attempted to provide some neurological framework for the mechanisms involved in the expression of empathy as well as debate for the fact that certain aspects of it are genetically acquired (Decety & Svetlova, 2012). Twin studies have shown some genetic factor involved in empathy, as it has been shown experimentally that monozygotic (or identical) twins react more similarly to someone pretending to be in distress than do dizygotic (or fraternal) twins (Klass, 2012). However, this is not to say that there is a particular gene that codes for how much empathy is expressed by an individual. It is more accurate to think of the genetic factor of empathy as an emergent property of inherited personality characteristics, thus providing a spectrum of variability between individuals which explains why the increased similarity between monozygotic twins isn't as large as it should be were the only factor genetics (Klass, 2012).
Although a portion of empathy has been related to genetics, there is still considerable amount of variability displayed between children and adults, which points to cognitive acquisition as a mechanism for further refinement of empathy as an affective response. This has been shown in cross-sectional studies, in which subjective pain intensity was measured as a function of age, and it was found that as you age you are more likely to consider pain suffered by another as less intense than a child would for the same stimulus (Decety & Svetlova, 2012). It should be noted that there are limitations to cross-sectional studies, as it does not control for generational differences - that is to say, it is possible that there could be other factors in play here, such as amount of violence in the media that each generation was exposed to during various critical periods. A second study, however, used neuroimaging software to account for these sorts of differences. In an fMRI study of participants aged 4 to 37 watching a stranger experiencing either intentional or accidental harm, and it was shown that they all showed increases in activity in the same areas of the brain regardless of age. This is not to say that there is in fact no difference between adults and children in terms of empathy - it is actually quite the opposite. This study provides the basis for stating that while the neural mechanisms one experiences may be no different for a particular stimulus, the processing of this information is affected by age, and thus social cognition is a significant factor in regards to empathy.
To sum up, it is clear that both ontogenetical and social cognitive factors play a role in the acquisition of empathy and expression of prosocial behavior. There is a lot to be learned from this information, but the most applicable is with regards to how we can raise the next generation to be more prosocially inclined. Additionally, the reward mechanism involved in prosocial behavior should be incentive enough for us all personally to engage it in more, although it is not yet well enough understood to implement into any sort of rule of thumb.
References:
Decety, J. & Svetlova, M., 2012. Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspective on empathy. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 2 (2012), 1-24
Gallagher, S., 2009. Two problems of intersubjectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies 16, 289-308
Klassi, P. (2012, December 10). Understanding how children develop empathy. Retrieved from http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/understanding-how-children-develop-empathy/
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