The Influence of Reading Moral Stories on the Development of Empathy in Children Aged 4–6 Years

Abstract

Empathy is one of the important aspects of social-emotional development in early childhood, particularly in the age range of 4–6 years, because at this stage children begin to be able to recognize their own emotions and those of others and to show early social responses to their environment (Eisenberg et al., 2015; Denham et al., 2018). However, various studies indicate that children’s empathy abilities still require structured stimulation in order to develop optimally (Malti & Noam, 2016). One method considered effective in instilling empathy values is the reading of moral stories, because stories allow children to understand emotions, perspectives, and moral consequences through characters that are close to their own experiences (Hibbin, 2016; Isbell et al., 2017). This study aims to systematically examine the effect of reading moral stories on the development of empathy in children aged 4–6 years through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach based on the PRISMA-ScR guidelines (Tricco et al., 2018). The articles reviewed consisted of Indonesian and international empirical studies published in the period 2015–2025 and obtained through the Google Scholar, Scopus, and ScienceDirect databases. The results of the synthesis show that reading moral stories consistently contributes positively to the improvement of children’s empathy, both cognitive and affective, and fosters the emergence of prosocial behaviors such as sharing, helping, and understanding the feelings of others (Aram & Shlak, 2019; Nicolopoulou et al., 2020). These findings substantiate that the practice of reading moral stories constitutes an effective pedagogical strategy for advancing empathy and promoting character education in early childhood.