The effects of affective and cognitive empathy on adolescents’ behavior and outcomes in conflicts with mothers

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology 2017-06, Vol.158, p.32-45
• Main Authors: Van Lissa, Caspar J., Hawk, Skyler T., Meeus, Wim H.J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescence; Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior - psychology; Adolescent-parent relationships; Adult; Affect; Cognition; Conflict resolution; Empathy; Experiment; Family Conflict - psychology; Female; Humans; Male; Mother-Child Relations - psychology; Negotiating - psychology; Personal Construct Theory; Perspective taking; Problem Solving; Theory of Mind
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.01.002

•A cognitive empathy manipulation reduced conflict escalation for low-perspective taking adolescents.•A cognitive empathy manipulation promoted listening for low-perspective taking adolescents.•An affective empathy manipulation promoted problem solving behavior (trending).•Affective and cognitive empathy manipulations both promoted outcome satisfaction.•Only a cognitive empathy manipulation promoted outcome fairness. The current study investigated whether manipulations of affective and cognitive empathy have differential effects on observed behavior and self-reported outcomes in adolescent–mother conflict discussions. We further examined how these situational empathy inductions interact with preexisting empathic dispositions. To promote ecological validity, we conducted home visits to study conflict discussions about real disagreements in adolescent–mother relationships. We explored the roles of sex, age, and maternal support and power as covariates and moderators. Results indicated that the affective empathy manipulation had no significant effects on behavior, although a trend in the hypothesized direction suggested that affective empathy might promote active problem solving. The cognitive empathy manipulation led to lower conflict escalation and promoted other-oriented listening for adolescents low in dispositional cognitive empathy. State–trait interactions indicated that the empathy manipulations had significant effects on self-reported outcomes for adolescents lower in dispositional empathic concern. For these adolescents, both manipulations promoted outcome satisfaction, but only the cognitive manipulation promoted perceived fairness. This suggests that cognitive empathy, in particular, allows adolescents to distance themselves from the emotional heat of a conflict and listen to mothers’ point of view, leading to outcomes perceived as both satisfying and fair. These findings are relevant for interventions and clinicians because they demonstrate unique effects of promoting affective versus cognitive empathy. Because even these minimal manipulations promoted significant effects on observed behavior and self-reported outcomes, particularly for low-empathy adolescents, stronger structural interventions are likely to have marked benefits.