Experimental studies on the origins of socio-moral evaluations have focused on moral reasoning such as harm, help, and fairness in distributive behavior. In this paper we discussed of development of socio-moral evaluations according to several previous studies, then introduced our original studies concern to fairness in infants and sympathy in preverbal infants. We conclude that 1) infants have knowledge of prosocial behavior in some sense, 2) infants prefer helper to hinderer, 3) infants link helping dispositions to a propensity for fairness in distributing actions, and 4) infants show rudimentary sympathetic behavior to the weak.

In this paper, a theoretical and empirical overview of the development of preschoolers’ narratives on their own emotional experiences is presented. More specifically, we present exploratory evidence that narratives on emotional experiences emerge in infancy and continue to increase in complexity, integration, and differentiation during the preschool years, and we demonstrate that adult-guided conversations about past events that include discussion and negotiation of emotional experiences lead preschoolers to construct narratives of their own emotional experiences. We argue that through narratives of emotional experiences constructed in social interaction, preschoolers create personal meaning of the events that contributes to their developing autobiographical memories and understanding of self.

School prevention and intervention programs such as Social Emotional Learning, which includes children’s sociability and emotional development, is a universal support system introduced to schools that is designed to prevent various potential crises and problems at school. These guidelines aim not only to support the positive effects of these programs on children and school staff, but also to establish a positive school climate where everyone feels unconstrained. Therefore, these are universal approaches that improve the natural healing powers inherent in the school and the school’s immune system itself from preventing all school crises, in the metaphorical sense of the word. However, in order to guarantee actual effectiveness, knowledge pertaining to the development of emotional literacy is an indispensable part of the children’s fundamental curriculum. When and in what way will children either learn or be taught how to understand and express one’s emotions as well as the emotions of others will become evidence of the guidelines’ efficacy. At the same time, there must be a plan in place to assess the practical effectiveness of the methods for the children. This manuscript, under the heading of “well-being,” alludes to the importance of emotional literacy for children and anticipates the development of effective education in order to establish and maintain the healthier school climate.

Recently there have been accumulating evidences on the mechanism of some emotions supporting human sociality. In this essay, firstly, I point out that humankind’s ultimate strength is the higher and sophisticated sociality. And then, on the basis of recent trends of socio-emotional psychology and behavioral economics, I discuss the function of some emotions as estimator and/or coordinator of the balance of interests and welfares between self and others. Additionally, I mention the nature of shame, sensitizing us to others’ social “eyes” and orienting us towards moral conducts.

Mirror neurons in the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) and inferior parietal cortex (area PFG) in the macaque monkey brain has provided the physiological evidence for direct matching of the intrinsic motor representations of the self and the visual image of the actions of others. The existence of mirror neurons implies that the brain has mechanisms reflecting shared self and other action representations. This may further imply that the neural basis self-body representations may also incorporate components that are shared with other—body representations. It is likely that such a mechanism is also involved in predicting other’s touch sensations and emotions. However, the neural basis of shared body representations has remained unclear. Here, we propose a neural basis of body representation of the self and of others in both human and non-human primates. We review a series of behavioral and physiological findings which together paint a picture that the systems underlying such shared representations require integration of conscious exteroception and interoception subserved by a cortical sensory-motor network involving fronto-parieto-inner perisylvian circuits (the ventral premotor [PMv]—the ventral intraparietal area [VIP]/inferior parietal area [PFG]—secondary somatosensory cortex [SII]/insular cortex [IC]).

The concept of empathy comprises emotional and cognitive components. The organizational model of empathy describes its mechanism as integrating individual differences, implicit processing, and social behavior. Although studies in various research areas have revealed the genetic, neural, and psychological mechanisms of empathy, these mechanisms are often investigated independently. An imaging genetics approach, which combines genotyping and brain function measurement, investigates these multi-layered mechanisms. Here, we review a multi-layered mechanism of empathy by combining the organizational model of empathy with an imaging genetics approach. This review presents a comprehensive perspective integrating the genetic, neural, and psychological mechanisms of empathy.

Though brain regions which are related to social behaviors and social affects have been widely elucidated, the mechanisms how those regions determine social mind are not understood. Here I suggest that a theoretical framework inspired by research on decision-making and reinforcement learning might be useful to consider the mechanisms underlying human’s social mind. Specifically, it has been argued that three systems of decision-making, the Pavlovian system, goal-directed system, and habit system interact, based on evaluation of values, to determine wide ranges of behaviors of humans and animals. The present article proposes that such framework can be expanded to social behaviors and social affect, to shed new lights on interpretations of significance of the social phenomena and to draw new hypotheses for future empirical studies.