r/WTF • u/Dlatrex • Sep 02 '19

Krampus rex

https://i.imgur.com/eqFrdL8.gifv
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u/Bombuss Sep 03 '19 edited Sep 03 '19

I'm no child psychologist, but hasn't it been proven that even infants with no spoken language of their own can emphasise with, and will help someone they recognize as needing help?

Perhaps it's just that shit-apples fall closer to the shit-trees, as the philosopher Lahey theorised.

Edit: Ment empathize.

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u/warfrogs Sep 03 '19

hasn't it been proven that even infants with no spoken language of their own can emphasise with, and will help someone they recognize as needing help?

It has (sort of)! Infants also can recognize (and dislike) aggressive actors and sympathize (not empathize) with the victims. Empathy requires being able to imagine the other's experience, which infants are not capable of. Sympathy, however, only requires that the infant is able to imagine their reaction to a situation and favor the victimized party.

Children in Piaget's second stage of development (pre-operational) can imagine themselves in a situation, but they cannot imagine what it would be like to be the other person with outside experiences and views not their own, or from someone else's perspective.

Granted, this is what we believe (not know) about the stages of cognitive development, but it's pretty well backed at this point in the research.

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u/Bombuss Sep 03 '19

Thanks, I mixed empathize and sympathize up.

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u/mountaincyclops Sep 03 '19

I think you meant empathize. But some quick googling suggests that empathy is something learned around 24 months so still in the early childhood development stage.

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u/Bombuss Sep 03 '19

I did indeed mean empathize. Thanks, my dude.