Programa primeiros socorros psicológicos para heróis

: da prevenção do comportamento bystander à promoção da empatia em crianças do 1º ciclo

Abstract

The 'Psychological First Aid for Heroes' program has as its main objective the prevention of bystander behaviour and the promotion of proactive and pro-social behaviours in crisis and emergency situations. Regarding the aim of this research, it is intended to evaluate the effectiveness of this programme with regard to the promotion of empathy. The study sample is composed of 142 children of both sexes attending the fourth year of primary school. For data collection, the Empathy Evaluation Scale (Veiga & Santos, 2011) was applied before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the program. In addition, a test on the knowledge about the program contents was administered. The results obtained demonstrate that children in this age group have a higher level of affective empathy than cognitive empathy. Furthermore, there were no statistically significant differences between the scores obtained on the affective and cognitive empathy scales before and after the intervention, except for two items of cognitive empathy. Furthermore, no significant gender differences in affective and cognitive empathy were observed. With regard to the knowledge test, we found significant differences in terms of gender; girls, in particular, had higher averages than boys.

Date of Award	29 Nov 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Mariana Barbosa (Supervisor)