Essay On Cognitive Empathy

527 Words2 Pages

Over 315,000 young people were served by the Children’s Advocacy Centers around the United States in 2014. Among these children, 60,897 reported physical abuse. Every child responds to abuse in a personalized way, but recently, researchers have been examining the link between domestic abuse and conduct disorder. Whether the abuse is experienced or witnessed, it affects today’s youth just the same. Domestic child abuse and exposure to domestic abuse causes conduct disorder in youth which is predominantly displayed though animal abuse. A child’s abuse of an animal could be a predecessor of a violent future.
How are children supposed to know better than violent behavior when their sperm donor or womb bearer are going at it MMA style in the …show more content…

Ascione said, “In a climate of pervasive terror, the roots of human empathy may wither and die, or fail to develop at all.” Children raised in violent homes may blunt or diminish their emotional responses to trauma as an adaptation. These emotional responses are often referred to as empathy. Webster defines empathy as, “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions; the ability to share someone else’s feelings”. However, this specific study focuses on cognitive empathy, which is an intellectual understanding of another’s experience. In terms of cognitive empathy (and other emotions) it becomes a use it or lose it situation. This is when children do not exercise their “I feel bad about doing this” feelings so they weaken. The Hartman et al study states that lower levels of cognitive empathy predict animal abuse in children. Think about it in Grinch terms. His heart gets smaller the less and less he uses it. While lower levels of cognitive empathy are a predictor, so are high CU trait scores. CU traits are callous-unemotional trails which exemplify lack of empathy, guilt, and regard for others. When a child has higher CU traits, they are generally more aggressive and have a tendency for delinquency and

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