If i had my choice i would study the development of empathy, when it starts what influences it's development, and why some people don't develop it at all. One of the ways I would go about figuring it out would be looking at the past of the subjects, asking the parents, teachers, councilors, etc... "Was he/she home a lot? Did they have many friends? Where they bullied at school?" and questions of the like to gather information. Then take the information from one subject and compare it with another to see if there is a correlation. If there is a common factor between all the subjects in the development it could be considered a concrete cause more then likely one of many. That's just one way maybe it was more simple then the environment from when the child grew up. Abusive parents, head trauma, chemical, not socialized right, bad role models, bad nutrition or maybe the child just snapped. Try to test all the other variables and weed out the possibilities in the long run.
there are so many different variables and ways to go about this it's a bit over whelming but fascinating at the same time. This is the one i would try if i had a choice. If anyone can think of other ways to test this please by all means let me know.
I think an interesting way to test this would be to give the child scenarios, ask what their response would be and the reasoning behind it. Something simple like "If you were walking on the sidewalk and saw and ant what would you do?".. you might be able to use the responses ( say, step around it, squash it, pick it up and move it off into the grass, etc. to judge how empathetic they are. I agree with you, this is an amazing topic.
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