The Role of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Children's Machiavellianism, Prosocial Behavior, and Motive for Helping

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Abstract
Fourth- and fifth-grade children (N = 117) were categorized into high- and low-empathy and affective-perspective-taking (APT) groups based on their scores on the Bryant (1982) empathy scale and a modified version of the Rothenberg (1970) and Silvern, Waterman, Sobesky, and Ryan (1979) APT measures. Children in the low-emphathy/high-APT group had significantly higher Machiavellianism scores on Braginsky''s (1970) measure than did children in the other emphathy/APT groups. Highly emphatic children were rated by their teachers as more helpful under certain circumstances and cited other-oriented reasons for their own helping behavior more frequently than did less emphatic children.