Explorando as relações entre Teoria da mente, empatia e resolução de problemas interpessoais

Abstract

Some abilities are fundamental to the children social and cognitive development. Among them, this master thesis elected the Theory of Mind (ToM), since it shows important to other two key psychological processes for social competence: empathy and interpersonal problem solving. ToM is the capacity to comprehend, explain and predict the human behave in terms of mental states e allows the children to form the understanding of the social world. Empathy has been described as the capacity of the individual to stand in someone’s place, thus understanding his or her feelings. Interpersonal problem solving concerns about using strategies to generate and use effective coping answers/strategies to problematics situations. Therefore, three variable show relevant to a positive social development in childhood. This work had, as general objective, analyze empirically and theoretically relations between ToM, empathy and interpersonal problem solving. To do so, two studies were conducted. A narrative review of literature describes the historical and conceptual panorama in ToM field and its interfaces with empathy and interpersonal problems resolution. Besides de the lack of studies about the relations between these psychological processes, it is possible infer that they occurs in form of reciprocal determinism. An empirical investigation associated these three variables into a sample of 56 children at average age of 6.32 years old. It is necessary elucidate that, in case of interpersonal problem solving, only generation of alternatives were considered. The data was collected in two moments at the public school where the participants attended. On the first one, the Theory-of-Mind Scale and Empathy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents were applied. On the second one, they performed the Interpersonal Problems Solving Tasks. Few associations between ToM, empathy and generating alternatives for interpersonal problems solving were observed, revealing that these variables are more independent than associated, if linear direct causality is considered. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future researches are presented.