Nancy Eisenberg

Nancy Eisenberg (born 1950) is an American developmental psychologist known for research on prosocial behavior, empathy, sympathy, moral development and self-regulation in children and adolescents. She took her bachelor degree at the University of Michigan and her doctorate in developmental psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976, where she trained under Paul Mussen, then spent her career at Arizona State University, becoming Regents Professor in 1991. Her work helped separate empathy, sympathy and personal distress, showing that sympathy goes with helping while personal distress often does not. She served as president of the Association for Psychological Science from 2014 to 2015, was the first woman to edit Psychological Bulletin and founded Child Development Perspectives in 2007. She received the G. Stanley Hall Award in 2009.