<![CDATA[Empathy is an important social-emotional disposition that may support character development by enabling students to understand others’ perspectives, respond to emotional experiences, and translate interpersonal sensitivity into prosocial action. This systematic literature review examines the relationship between trait empathy and character building and identifies educational mechanisms through which empathy can be transformed into prosocial, caring, and responsible character. Twenty studies included in the research corpus were systematically mapped and synthesised, covering correlational, regression, experimental, quasi-experimental, mixed-method, psychophysiological, and educational intervention designs. The findings show a generally positive relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior, social care, helping, cooperation, voluntarism, and responsibility. However, empathy is multidimensional, and its components do not demonstrate uniform effects. Affective empathy, empathic concern, and perspective taking frequently show meaningful associations with prosocial outcomes, while other dimensions display more context-dependent patterns. Educational evidence indicates that empathy can be strengthened through perspective writing, values-based counseling, role-playing, social interaction, emotionally responsive curricula, gratitude, and repeated prosocial practice. The review concludes that empathy contributes most effectively to character building when perspective understanding and emotional sensitivity are integrated with emotional regulation, moral values, reflection, and opportunities for responsible social action.]]>
