The development of empathy-related responding

In summary, individuals who are well regulated appear to be relatively high in sympathy, especially dispositional sympathy. Relations of emotionality with empathy-related responding vary with the measure of emotionality (negative, positive, or general) and with the age of the study participant and reporter (i.e., self- or other-reported emotion). Yet overall the findings suggest that empathy-related responding is related to temperamentally based individual differences in regulation and emotionality, which suggests that constitutional factors contribute to individual differences in empathic capabilities.