Compassion underlies kindness and as such, is important for creating harmonious societies. We examined children and adolescents’ personal experiences of compassion and then how youth with different compassion profiles differed in their kindness (i.e., dispositional sympathy and prosocial behavior). An ethnically diverse sample of 8-, 11-, and 15-year-olds (N = 32; 66% girls) provided narratives of times they felt compassion. Next, in another diverse sample of 7-, 11-, and 15-year-olds (N = 168; 49% girls), we assessed youths’ potential for global compassion (i.e., compassion that transcends intergroup boundaries) using a novel interview procedure. We also collected self- and caregiver-reports of dispositional sympathy and prosocial behavior. Youths’ narratives revealed that youth often experienced compassion toward peers and relatives following both physical and psychological sufferance and often mentioned responding to the suffering other with helping behavior. On average, youth reported moderate levels of global compassion (i.e., compassion toward a suffering victimizer) and developmental trends revealed that 15-year-olds reported lower feelings of compassion than 11-year-olds. Next, latent profile analysis showed that compassion-oriented youth (i.e., youth who displayed moderate-high levels of global compassion) were rated as more prosocial than non-compassion-oriented youth (i.e., those who displayed low levels of global compassion). We discuss findings in relation to theory and research on the development of kindness in general and in intergroup contexts.

同情心是善良的基础，因此对于创造和谐社会很重要。我们检查了儿童和青少年的个人同情经历，然后研究了具有不同同情特征的青年在他们的善意方面有何不同（即性格同情和亲社会行为）。一个 8 岁、11 岁和 15 岁的种族多元化样本（N = 32；66% 的女孩）提供了他们感到同情的时间的叙述。接下来，在另一个 7 岁、11 岁和 15 岁的不同样本中（N= 168; 49% 的女孩），我们使用一种新颖的访谈程序评估了青少年的全球同情心（即超越群体间界限的同情心）的潜力。我们还收集了关于性格同情和亲社会行为的自我和照顾者报告。青少年的叙述表明，青少年经常在遭受身体和心理痛苦后对同龄人和亲戚产生同情，并经常提到以帮助行为回应他人的痛苦。平均而言，青年人报告了中等水平的全球同情心（即对受难者的同情心），发展趋势显示，15 岁的人报告的同情心低于 11 岁的人。接下来，潜在概况分析表明，以同情心为导向的青年（即，表现出中高水平的全球同情心的青年）被评为比非同情心导向的青年（即表现出低水平的全球同情心的青年）更亲社会。我们讨论与一般和群体间环境中善良发展的理论和研究相关的发现。