Investigating adult age differences in real-life empathy, prosociality, and well-being using experience sampling

While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and real-life data are scarce. Research using ecological momentary assessment recently demonstrated that adults...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2022-03, Vol.12 (1), p.3450-3450, Article 3450
Main Authors: Pollerhoff, Lena, Stietz, Julia, Depow, Gregory John, Inzlicht, Michael, Kanske, Philipp, Li, Shu-Chen, Reiter, Andrea M. F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/136/7
631/477/2811
Adolescent
Adult
Age
Age differences
Altruism
Cognition
Ecological Momentary Assessment
Emotions
Empathy
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Life span
Middle Aged
multidisciplinary
Sampling
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Social Behavior
Social interactions
Well being
Young Adult
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Summary:While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and real-life data are scarce. Research using ecological momentary assessment recently demonstrated that adults commonly experience empathy in daily life. Furthermore, experiencing empathy was linked to higher prosocial behavior and subjective well-being. However, to date, it is not clear whether there are adult age differences in daily empathy and daily prosociality and whether age moderates the relationship between empathy and prosociality across adulthood. Here we analyzed experience-sampling data collected from participants across the adult lifespan to study age effects on empathy, prosocial behavior, and well-being under real-life circumstances. Linear and quadratic age effects were found for the experience of empathy, with increased empathy across the three younger age groups (18 to 45 years) and a slight decrease in the oldest group (55 years and older). Neither prosocial behavior nor well-being showed significant age-related differences. We discuss these findings with respect to (partially discrepant) results derived from lab-based and traditional survey studies. We conclude that studies linking in-lab experiments with real-life experience-sampling may be a promising venue for future lifespan studies.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-06620-x