[Early forms of compassion]

The present study deals with the problem of whether early forms of compassion are already evident in the first year of life. For this purpose, tape recordings of other children crying were played as acoustic stimuli to 210 newborns and infants. Vocal and motor reactions were observed, and numerous measures were evaluated. It was found that a) children cry with another child from birth on; b) this responsive crying becomes less frequent as the child grows older; c) the motor reactions become increasingly differentiated; d) the responsive crying does not disappear entirely despite increasing cognitive abilities, although it is partly transformed into a more restrained reaction with a sad expression; e) hungry children react more strongly than satiated children, children with siblings more often than only children, and girls more often than boys; f) responsive crying to an indifferent acoustic stimulus was observed very rarely. This leads to the conclusion that early forms of compassion already exist in the first year of life. Two such forms are described. It is assumed that compassion is already present in a primitive form at birth, and is thus inborn.