Children’s intergroup empathic processing: The roles of novel ingroup identification, situational distress, and social anxiety Carrie L. Masten a, * , Cari Gillen-O’Neel a , Christia Spears Brown b a Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA b Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA article info Article history: Received 10 June 2009 Revised 6 January 2010 Available online 3 March 2010 Keywords: Children Empathy Intergroup relations Group identification Social anxiety Peer rejection abstract Individuals often feel more empathy toward members of their own social groups than toward members of other social groups. How- ever, individual factors contributing to this empathy bias remain largely unexplored among children. This study examined inter- group empathic processing among 94 children (mean age = 8.74 - years, SD = 1.76) assigned to novel color groups. After 1 week in their group, children were interviewed to assess their ingroup identification and trait levels of social anxiety. Subsequently, a social threat was simulated, and children’s feelings of situational distress and empathy bias for others who experienced the same threat were assessed. Findings indicated that, among children who reported more social anxiety and situational distress, those with a stronger ingroup identity displayed more empathy bias favoring their ingroup. Given that empathy is an important con- tributor to prosocial behavior, implications for children’s inter- group relations are discussed. Published by Elsevier Inc. Introduction Feeling empathy for others is a crucial aspect of social interactions and is important in influencing children’s attitudes and behavior toward others. In particular, greater empathic ability has been linked with more prosocial and helping behaviors (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Findlay, Girardi, & Coplan, 2006; Litvak-Miller, McDougall, & Romney, 1997), less aggression (Bryant, 1982; Findlay et al., 2006), and a 0022-0965/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.01.002 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: cmasten@ucla.edu (C.L. Masten). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 106 (2010) 115–128 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp