In investigating the relationship between the problem solving skills and emphatic tendency skills of the 4th grade primary school students

Childhood years where behavioral changes with permanent marks occur, provide a basis to the personality. Thus it is the most critical period of the human life and has a special importance. It is known that the skills acquired in this period affect and shape adulthood era behaviours. The foundation of the daily experiences is based on the human relations. Building proper human relations depend on acquiring or developing certain skills. Individual's possesion of empathy and problem solving takes an important place in interpersonal communication. For this reason, in this research, based on primary school period and these two skills were studied. The aim of the research is to investigate whether there is a difference between the problem solving skills of fourth grade primary school students according to their level of empathetic tendency. Another aim of the research is to find out whether the level of empathetic tendency and the problem solving skills of fourth grade primary school students differ according to the the gender of the student, number of siblings, socio-economic level, the age and the educational level of the parents. The sample of this research consist of 418 students of whom there are 208 girls and 210 boys from three different primary schools. In the research, "KA-Sİ Empathy Tendency Scale" (Child Form) was used by Kaya and Siyez to measure students' empathetic tendency in 2010 and the "Problem Solving Inventory" and "Personal Information Form" which was prepared by the Serin, Bulut-Serin,Saygılı were used to measure the problem solving skills in 2010. The data obtained from the sample group were analyzed and interpreted in the SPSS 23 program. Independent Groups t Test, One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Kruksal Wallis H Test were used for determining the difference between the groups in the analysis of the findings; Tukey and Mann Whitney U test was used for designating which groups are different and Pearson Product Moments Correlation Analysis was used for determining the relation between the groups. When research findings were evaluated, Pearson Product Moments Correlation Analysis was performed in order to determine the relationship between empathetic tendency level and problem solving skills. As the result of analysis, there is a positively directioned, moderate relationship between the empathy scores and the confidence on the problem solving skills and problem solving scores of the students. On the other hand, there is a positively directioned, very weak relationship between empathy and avoidance score. While there was a significant difference between the empathetic tendency levels of the students and the gender, number of siblings, age and educational level of mother, educational level of father and socioeconomic level variables; there is no significant difference between to the age of the father and the empathetic tendency. While there was a significant difference between the problem solving skills of the students and the educational levels of mother and father and socioeconomic level variables; there is no significant difference between gender, number of siblings, age of the parents and the problem solving skills. Key Words: Empathy, Empathetic Tendency, Problem, Problem Solving, Problem Solving Skill