Question: How do you tell weather children are hurtfull or cold?

Luna Munoz answered on 15 Mar 2011:

I use a lot of different methods. I steal a bit of David’s research and say that it’s a bit like trying to find the epicenter of an earthquake. You triangulate many different factors and see if they all point to the same thing.

So, I have a questionnaire that I give to children who are old enough to fill one out which asks about their emotions, how much they care about other people, and whether they feel bad or apologize after doing something wrong. Sometimes I have parents or teachers fill out the questionnaire about the child. I generally worry that the child could be a cold and hurtful person if the parents and teacher both report that the child is cold and uncaring.

Recently, I did a study which further triangulates these using a measure that you can’t lie on. I gave children the questionnaire I told you about. Then, I showed them some faces of people showing a lot of different emotions. Then, I showed them some body language of people showing emotion (for example, jumping up in the air for happiness). The ones who could not identify a fear face or a fear body language were the ones who had the highest scores on the questionnaire. The most cold and uncaring children were the ones who seemed to be “blind” to fear in other people.

It could be that knowing when others are afraid stops you from hurting them, but this is something I will study next.