iability after the 4-month program relative to children in the control group. In the condition emphasizing stories and drama, children showed an even greater increase in these behaviors. These results indicate that empathy can be consciously taught, and that utilizing drama and stories, where children can take on and see and hear the role of another, is a very effective method of teaching empathic behavior. There is further evidence to indicate that the use of stories is an effective way of teaching empathy to young children. Kagan and Knudson (1982) conducted a study in which five to seven year olds were played tapes of adults involved in happy, angry, anxious, and sad interactions. The same participants were also told stories about children experiencing the same four emotions. Children showed significantly higher levels of affective empathy toward the children in stories than the adults on tape. This lends further support to the idea that children respond more empathetically to characters in stories than in other media. The results also suggest that children are more empathetic to other children than toward adults, possibly because it is easier to identify with the feelings of a peer whose emotions they are more likely to share. Children also showed more empathy toward protagonists who experienced misfortune than they did toward those in more everyday circumstances (Strayer & Roberts, 1997). The purpose of the present study was to measure levels of empathy in preschool-aged children when storytelling was incorporated, and to compare these levels to empathy exhibited when storytelling was not used. Where previous research used stories as an integral part of empathy measures, in the current study storytelling was not directly involved in the empathy measure. Because most young children are simply read stories and not consciously taught empathy along with them, this seemed a more realistic model for testing the effectiveness of storytell...
